DIY Lemongrass & Tangerine Liquid Dish Soap

I love my lemony fresh dish soap but I am always up for trying out new cleaning soaps, especially new fragrances! I read about this homemade liquid dish soap over at the Prairie Homestead and thought I would give it a try. 

In her recipe she uses her own homemade tallow soap, since I don't have any of this or know how to make it I decided on a bar of castile soap. I LOVE my Dr. Bronner's liquid castile soap but the bar is quite expensive so I opted to try out Kirk's brand. (I got this bar for only $1.89 compared to almost $5 for Dr. Bronner's bar.)  For one batch of this soap I didn't even use 1/4 of the bar! 

INGREDIENTS:

~ 3 Cups water

~ 3 TBS finely grated castile soap

~ 1/2 tsp Super Washing Soda

~ 1 tsp Vegetable Glycerin 

~ 10 drops Lemongrass Essential Oil 

~ 15 drops Tangerine Essential Oil

Both Essential Oil links will take you directly to the Spark Naturals website & that particular oil! Don't forget to get an extra 10% off your order, use code: Nature at checkout!

(The original post also gave a few other variations of essential oil blends to try out!

**I used less lemongrass than the prairie homestead stated since it has a strong aroma & was overpowering the tangerine a bit.)

DIRECTIONS:

Step 1: Finely grate 3 TBS of your castile bar soap. As you can see there is still lots of bar left =) The finer the better, it makes it much easier to melt.

Step 2: Add the water, grated soap & washing soda into a pot. Set to medium heat and stir until everything is completely dissolved. 

Step 3:  Pour the blend into a glass jar then stir in the vegetable glycerin. WAIT until the mixture has cooled before adding in the essential oils. 
This is looking luxurious so far. 

Step 4: After the mixture has cooled add in the essential oils, give it another good stir, seal it up and let it set at room temperature for 6-12 hours, allowing the soap to thicken. 

Once it is all set, give it another good stir. It may seem pretty thick at first but will soften while stirring. For easy use pour your new soap into a soap container. (I reused an old squeezable 9oz dawn container I collected & cleaned from my mom, plus I have enough for a 2nd refill!) 

*NOTE* this is not a sudsy cleaning soap but definitely gets the job done! It rinses off the dishes with no problem & leaves no residue/buildup afterwards. It has a great consistency to it, not runny yet not too thick either! However, you may need to give the bottle a good shake every once in awhile if it does begin to thicken again. 

**This is NOT a dish soap for dishwashers, only handwashing**