Staying away from preservatives and chemicals!
This article discusses preservatives, and the amount of shampoo going down in the drain each day. Suds aren’t natural, therefore it clogs the drains and pollutes. Going green seems strange when one goes against the “culture” but to stay vital and alive, we might want to think about mother earth and how to share our energy and caring for her.
Avocado Oil: Avocado oil has amazing health benefits for your hair. It has a high quantity of monounsaturated fats and lubricates the hair, thus making it shiny and stronger. Monounsaturated fat, when applied directly in a hair mask, nourish and strengthen hair strands. Avocado oil is also rich in Vitamin E and B, allowing it to work deep into the epidermis and strengthen the hair. Vitamin B also supports hair growth, while the Vitamin E works on repairing hair damage.
Shea Butter: Shea butter comes from the seeds of the fruit of the Shea (Karite) tree. It’s rich in Vitamins A, E, and F and offers UV protection from the sun. It also provides the skin with essential fatty acids and nutrients necessary for collagen production. It contains oleic, stearic, palmitic and linolenic acids that protect and nourish the skin to prevent drying. Shea butter has been used in Africa for thousands of years as a moisturizer.
Jojoba Oil: Jojoba Oil is extracted from the seeds of jojoba trees. The resulting product is actually not an oil, but rather a Wax Ester. Wax Esters are very similar to our own oil produced by our bodies. Because of this, using Jojoba Oil can help with balancing the production of oil, because the body recognizes it as its own. Jojoba Oil is rich in essential nutrients, vitamins E and B, and important minerals like silicon, copper and zinc.
*** this just looks delicious***
DIY SHAMPOO BAR
Who needs all the chemicals that come with most shampoos on the market? Why not make your own shampoo bar and bypass the plastic container along with the questionable ingredients!
This recipe comes from The Natural Beauty Solution, a book full of simple, well-photographed DIY recipes.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
- Strong pale ale or hoppy beer (Gluten-free is optimal. New Planet Beer is on option.)
- Rhassoul clay or kaolin clay
- Jojoba oil
- Avocado oil
- Rosemary essential oil
DIY SHAMPOO BAR
Feel free to adapt this recipe to your individual needs and always follow with a natural hair rinse to avoid build-up.
Save Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound natural Castile bar soap, shredded
- 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons pale ale (or any type of strong, hoppy beer)
- 2 tablespoons rhassoul or kaolin clay
- 1 tablespoon jojoba oil
- 1 tablespoon avocado oil
- 2 teaspoons rosemary essential oil
Instructions
-
- Grate the soap.
- Combine shredded soap with 1/2 cup pale ale in double boiler or crock pot set to low.
-
- Heat the mixture, stirring often, until fully melted.
- In a separate bowl, combine the remaining 2 tablespoons of pale ale with the clay.
-
- Add the clay mixture, jojoba oil, avocado oil, and rosemary essential oil to the soap and stir well.
-
- Transfer to a wooden mold lined with parchment paper. (Silicone molds which come in a variety of shapes may also be used.)
- Allow the soap to cool and harden for up to three days.
- Remove from mold and slice into bars.
- Allow the soap to harden for an additional one to three weeks.
HOW TO USE YOUR SHAMPOO BARS
Wet your hair. Work the bar into a rich lather between your palms. Apply the lather to your head and massage into your scalp. There is no need to apply shampoo to the ends of your hair, simply focus on the scalp. Rinse well and follow with a natural hair rinse. (See 3 Natural Hair Conditioners.)
I recommend a natural sheep horn comb. The keratin of the horn produces a smooth comb that helps prevent unruly hair and evenly distributes the natural oils for richer, shinier hair.
Prefer not to make your own? Try Just So Natural’s Rosemary Rhassoul Shampoo Bar modeled after this recipe!
*** end of shampoo bar***
*** I am playing with this recipe to get it to where I want it to be.
Ingredients
Makes about 60 bars.
5 litres water
5 litres olive oil
1kg lye (caustic soda)
I want it to be softer so I am going to put less lye in it, since it comes in 1 pound bags which is less than a kilo (1 kilo is 2.2 pounds.
New recipe
5 litres water
5 litres olive oil (used oil is great!)
Substitutions as desired,
black cumin oil
Avocado oil
Theives Essential Oil
2 pounds of potassium hydroxide (food grade) lye (caustic soda)
Homemade soap, the traditional Castile way
We spend our lifetimes living and learning, collecting little pearls of wisdom and knowledge that shape the way we think and act and perceive our world.But sometimes, I think, we forget that the elders in our society have walked these same paths before. They’re like a great beautiful leather-bound book of knowledge just waiting to be cracked open and read. We just have to find the time to honor that wisdom, to seek them out and listen and learn from their stories.A few months back I spent an afternoon with the grandmother of my friend Juan (y’know, the guy of homemade vegan Nutella fame.)
Grandmother Francisca is 81-years-old, and grew up in Spain during the difficult years of civil war and rule under Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, a time of using and reusing by necessity because often there simply wasn’t enough to go around.
Francisca now lives in San Vicente, a little town just outside my adopted city of Alicante, along Spain’s southeastern Mediterranean coast. But she grew up in Castilla-La Mancha, that wide, sparsely-populated and windswept plateau dominating Spain’s interior. The region is famed for its proudly no-nonsense yet endlessly hospitable people, and for the bold wines and vast quantities of high-quality olive oil they produce.
Spaniards across this great nation use an astonishing amount of olive oil in their daily lives. They smother their breads and salads in the stuff. They fill heavy bottomed pans half-full with thick, bubbling layers, then fry their famous tortillasor dunk all kinds of vegetables and meats in the piping hot liquid gold.
Often, they reuse this frying oil, allowing it to infuse with the flavour of meal’s past, until it takes on a deep golden colour, peppered with the crumbs of this and that.
Then, in the old way, this olive oil is recycled some more — into soap.
This is actually the traditional basis of Castile soap, that astoundingly all-purpose soap famed around the world as a natural and biodegradable base for everything from homemade hand washes and laundry detergents to green cleaning products. It’s one of the oldest soaps known to mankind and is named after the region from which it originates: Francisca’s Castilla-La Mancha.
So naturally, I turned to her to learn the traditional recipe. We sat on her front porch for three hours one afternoon, chatting and laughing while gently stirring a giant red tub of soap by hand with a rough branch fossicked from the garden. (Okay, so Juan did most of the stirring. It’s actually pretty tough work.)
Here’s the recipe Francisca shared with us.
Ingredients
Makes about 60 bars.
5 litres water
5 litres olive oil
1kg lye (caustic soda)
For a smaller batch (makes about 25 bars):
400 millilitres water
2 litres olive oil
220g lye (caustic soda)
Method
If you’re using recycled olive oil, first run it through a sieve to remove any remaining food crumbs.
In a well-ventilated area, add the lye to the water in a sturdy, heat-resistant plastic or stainless steel tub. Allow the mixture to cool for half an hour or so. Be very careful with this step! Never add water to the lye, as it can cause the lye to splatter, erupt, or explode out of the container. Lye in this form is also highly corrosive and can burn your skin, so protect yourself with gloves. Head here for more tips on working safely with lye.
Don’t worry about the caustic element to the lye. As this article explains, when fats like olive oil are combined with lye in proper proportions, a chemical reaction called saponification occurs. The end result is soap plus glycerin, which is all-natural and completely safe to use on your skin.
Pour the olive oil into the cooled lye mixture and begin stirring. Traditional wisdom says you mustn’t stop and should always stir in the same direction. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens and forms a trace after the stirrer (as in the photo below — kind of like the consistency of honey). This can take a pretty long time by hand (think hours) so swap to a stick blender if you’re short on time. It should take about 10 minutes, sometimes even less.
Pour the mixture into a large soap mould. We just used a cardboard box lined with old clothing rags. Plastic containers and metal cake tins also work great but line them with baking paper if you plan to use them for food again in the future.
Stand the soap in a dry place until the block hardens. After a week or two (depending on the size of your block), it will be hard enough to chop into smaller blocks for further drying and curing. Be careful as the lye can still be caustic at this stage, so protect yourself with gloves.
You can see in the photo below that the blocks are still quite moist on the inside. They probably need another week or two of drying, until they turn a pale yellowy-white colour all over.
Once completely dry, go ahead and use your all-natural, homemade soap. These bars also form the base of my super-simple homemade laundry detergent.
Cold process versus hot process soap making
There’s actually two ways to make your own soap from scratch. This recipe uses the cold process version, which means the bars of soap take about a month to six weeks to completely cure and dry.
There’s also a much-quicker hot version, with the soap bars ready to use in as little as a week. This article explains how to do both processes.
This Castile soap recipe is a great base from which you can play around with all kinds of natural colourings and fragrances. I’m currently having a bunch of fun experimenting with things like turmeric, beetroot, flowers and essential oils. I’ll update you on what works best very soon.
And to sign off, I have to say a huge thanks to Juan for sharing his grandmother with me, and an even bigger thanks to Francisca for sharing her wisdom with us all.
***Next article****
how to make diy liquid castile soap
I made 6 gallons of liquid soap so you don’t have to.
You know about Dr. Bronner’s Liquid Castile Soap. It’s been an all-in-one, all-natural cleaning solution for generations of hippies, greenies and all manner of natural living advocates. Dr. Bronner’s is great, but at $60 a gallon, it’s not the cheapest cleaner out there.
So, these were my goals: to create a cost-effective, basic liquid soap that most people could make with the gear they have around the house and commonly available oils.
I wanted a recipe that was reliable, safe and performed similarly to Dr. Bronner’s in home and body care recipes. The result should be enough finished soap to make this worth the DIY hassle, but not so much soap that it would be overwhelming to store or use in a reasonable timeframe. My goal was a total of about 1 gallon of finished liquid soap.
Two weeks and 6 batches of liquid soap later, I think I’ve gotten it down. Wanna make your own liquid castile soap? Here’s how I do it.
1. assemble your stuff
Like any true soap, liquid castile soap is made through the chemical reaction of fats and a very strong alkali called lye. This reaction is called saponification; when it’s complete the fat and lye are totally transformed into a new thing we call soap.
tools you’ll want to make liquid castile soap
The process of making liquid soap is make a zillion times easier if you have:
- A large crock-pot (6 quarts or larger, please). If you don’t already have a crock-pot, check the thrift store first. I have an older version of this crock pot. It’s fine. I think they are all about the same, honestly.
- An immersion blender – I like the kind with a stainless blender attachment.
- A reliable digital scale that can measure both ounces and grams. I have this kitchen scale. It’s been really good.
Any time you’re working with lye, use only heavy-duty glass or stainless bowls. No aluminum, please, or you’ll find both your soap and your vessel quite destroyed.
Essential tools: crock pot, immersion blender, digital scale.
lye for liquid castile soap
Liquid soap is made with a type of lye called potassium hydroxide. This is the lye you want.
Potassium hydroxide is different from sodium hydroxide, the drain cleaner lye used to make a hard bar soap.
These two lye saponify differently, are used at different rates, and result in different textured soaps. So, even though both are called lye, sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide are not interchangeable in soap recipes.
- Potassium hydroxide saponifies fats without forming hard, opaque crystals so the resulting soap can be diluted to a liquid consistency without getting gloopy.
- Potassium hydroxide tends to give a more bubbly lather, highly desirable in liquid soaps.
- Potassium hydroxide is only about 90% pure as compared to nearly 100% pure sodium hydroxide, and this must be accounted for when you create a liquid soap formula. (See more about this in the Lye Calculations for Liquid Soap sidebar)
Sodium hydroxide for bar soap on left; Potassium hydroxide for liquid soap on right.
oils for liquid castile soap
Castile soap is made exclusively with vegetable oils. There will be no lard, tallow, or other animal fats in a Castile soap. Traditionally, a Castile soap was made with 100% olive oil, but modern Castile-style soaps, including Dr. Bronner’s, blend in other vegetable oils, like coconut.
For my liquid soap, I used a 60/40 blend of easy-to-find olive and coconut oil. That’s what you’ll see in this tutorial.
- Olive oil is mostly long-chain fatty acids. Olive oil soaps have a fine, moisturizing lather that’s gentle on the skin but can feel slimy on its own.
- Coconut oil is full of medium-chain fatty acids which create a soap with strong cleaning ability and big, well-structured bubbles. Coconut oil soaps can be drying because they grab and hold oil – i.e., clean – really well
Put coconut and olive oil together and you get, in my opinion, a nice, all-purpose liquid soap with good bubbles. The result is a cleanser that is strong enough to tackle greasy grime in your kitchen while still being skin-friendly.
2. prepare the oils and lye solution
Measure all ingredients carefully. No one wants a Fight Club situation.
Carefully measure the olive oil and coconut oil into your big ol’ crock pot. Turn the heat to high to allow the coconut oil to melt.
While the oils are warming, carefully measure the water into a stainless steel bowl or pyrex pitcher. Set the container of water in your sink.
Put on your safety gear: heavy rubber gloves, goggles, etc. Measure the potassium hydroxide lye flakes into a small stainless or heavy duty glass jar. Carefully tip all the lye flakes into the water. Never add the water to the lye – always add the lye to the water.
The lye-water mixture will bubble, hiss and look generally terrifying. This is normal. Don’t stick your face over the lye mixture or breathe in the lye fumes. The lye flakes will dissolve quickly – give them a careful stir if needed to encourage this.
3. stick blend your soap to trace
Stick blend to thick trace – look for a texture like Elmer’s glue.
You’re still wearing your gloves and stuff, right? Good – it’s time to bring the oil and alkali together to create soap, glorious soap.
When the lye is fully dissolved, carefully tip the lye-water mixture into the warm, melted oils in your crockpot.
Get out your immersion blender. Blend the soap mixture on medium until it turns uniformly creamy and begins to thicken slightly. This should take about 5 to 10 minutes.
Now, go do something else, but don’t stray too far. For the next half hour or so, come back to the crock pot every 5 minutes and give your soap a good blending with the immersion blender. Every time you show up for blending duty, you’ll notice your soap paste gets thicker, paler and more bubbly.
Keep periodically blending until your soap reaches a thick trace – you’re looking for a texture like Elmer’s glue – and it’s no longer practical to use your immersion blender in the soap.
4. cook the soap paste
Give the soap paste as much time as needed to get to the fully gelled, translucent stage shown lower-right.
At this point we begin to “cook” our soap paste. With your crock pot still on high heat, adjust the timer to 3 hours and set the lid on the crock pot.
As the soap cooks, it will become increasingly translucent, moving from a runny white liquid to a puffy taffy texture to, eventually, a yellowy-clear, thick gel. This is normal. I think of these stages as:
- runny cream
- cake batter
- Elmer’s glue
- puffy white taffy
- confused semi-gelled blob thing
- translucent gel
During this cook period, we’re going to take the soap from Elmer’s glue texture to finished, translucent gel. The soap paste in the crock pot will mostly tend to itself during this time.
To keep the gel progressing evenly, periodically fold your soap paste over on itself and stir it around with a sturdy wooden spoon (very sturdy – I broke a spoon on soap batch #4) or high-heat spatula.
As the soap cooks, it will get puffy as the air bubbles trapped in the soap heat up and expand. Eventually, the paste will start to look more translucent. If your crock pot has hot spots, you may see some chunks of fully gelled soap even if the bulk of the soap paste isn’t ready.
That’s all ok.
Just aim for a good fold-over and stir about every 30 minutes or so, or more often if you can. After 3 hours, check your soap paste. When your paste is done it should look quite a bit like amber – translucent and golden.
Don’t rush getting to this stage – if your soap needs more time at the end of the 3 hours, take the time to cook the paste for longer – nothing bad will happen to the soap paste.
5. check clarity
Once the paste looks fully gelled and translucent throughout it is ready for the next stage.
At this point, the soap will probably be fully saponified and ready to dilute. But better safe than sorry, so before we commit to dilution, we’re going to do a clarity test.
Clarity (in combination with carefully measured lye) is a very good test of full saponification. If your soap paste makes a cloudy dilute soap, it is not done cooking. Cloudy soap* can indicate non-saponified oil (too much of this can make your soap go bad) and potentially non-saponified lye (this can cause chemical burns).
If, however, the diluted final soap is translucent enough to read through, your soap paste has finished cooking.
Lower-right: cloudy, unfinished soap on left; translucent, finished soap on right.
to test soap clarity
- Measure out an ounce of soap paste (about a golf-ball sized blob will do it).
- Add 4 oz (1/2 cup) of boiling or very hot water to the soap paste. Stir gently until the soap paste is totally dissolved.
- Allow the dilute soap to cool.
- If the soap is opaque, or if a scum of oils floats to the surface, continue cooking your soap paste for another hour or two before re-testing.
- If the dilute soap is clear or slightly pearlescent (the soap won’t be colorless, just translucent), proceed with dilution.
*alternate oils and clarity
If you change up the oils in your soap – and particularly if you use tallow, lard, palm, or other “hard” fats – you may end up with a soap that never becomes completely clear.
There’s nothing you can really do about this, as I understand it – it’s just a matter of the type of fatty acids in certain oils.
The coconut and olive oils used in the formula given here should cook out to a fully gelled soap paste in between 3 to 6 hours, depending on the temperature of your crockpot, how often you stir, etc.
6. dilute the soap paste
The melting process is very slow.
Once the soap paste has fully gelled, proceed with dilution. Like the cook phase, dilution of the paste is a sloooowwww process, but the soap will pretty much take care of itself.
Add 10 cups distilled* water to the soap paste in the crockpot. Break up the soap paste into the water into smaller blobs of paste as best you can but don’t worry about the paste dissolving yet.
Turn the crock pot heat to keep-warm, lid the crockpot and give the soap paste all day or overnight to dissolve. If possible, every hour, or as you happen to think of it, give the soap a stir to help it along. (If you’re sleeping during this phase, don’t worry about stirring!)
If, after 8 hours-ish, you’re still seeing a lot of chunks of soap, or you see a skin forming at the top of the soap, add in another cup of distilled water and let the soap continue to dissolve. Repeat with the final cup of distilled water if needed.
When your soap is fully dissolved with no chunks of soap paste remaining, it’s ready to bottle.
*is distilled water necessary?
I call for distilled water for three reasons.
- I have no idea what the pH and mineral content of your water is. Mine is 7.4 – pretty neutral – and soft like a baby’s butt. You might have tap water so full of minerals it’s practically gravel, with a pH of 9.5. That’s just way too much starting variation for a soap recipe that doesn’t ask for pH testing and buffering.
- Impurities in water – mostly those aforesaid minerals in hard water – can cause soap to do funny things. Clumping and particulate are possible.
- There is a miniscule possibility that contaminated tap water could introduce spoilage organisms to your soap on dilution.
The most important reason is (1) – so if you have a way to test the final pH of your soap, such as a pH meter or phenolphthalein pH testing drops, and feel confident adjusting your soap pH with a citric acid or borax buffer if necessary…well, then honestly you probably don’t need this soap tutorial at all! 🙂
I have made this recipe with my own near-neutral, soft water without issue. Hard water folks might find tap water trickier to work with from an impurity standpoint.
7. bottle and adjust quantity
I have a lot of soap now.
Before bottling, I like to strain my soap to catch any bits of scum or soap paste that hasn’t fully dissolved. This is optional, but it doesn’t add much time.
Ladle or carefully pour your dilute soap into a perfectly clean and dry 1-gallon glass or plastic jug. Old apple juice, milk or vinegar are good for this – just ensure any reused container is thoroughly cleaned.
Your soap should be just about the right volume to fill your jug with maybe a pint or so left over for topping up soap pumps around the house.
But, because of different cook times for the soap paste, evaporation, how much water you added, etc, your soap might be a bit low. If that’s the case, just top up your soap with a bit more water until you’re at that 1-gallon mark.
lye calculations for liquid soap
If you prefer to change up your base oils or your base oil quantities, make sure to run your modified formula through a reliable soap making lye calculator to determine how much potassium hydroxide (often referred to by it’s chemical notation KOH) you will need to use.
Assuming you are using commonly available KOH flakes, you have to account for the fact that your lye is only 90% pure. If you have gotten your hands on some kind of industrial, super-high purity KOH you’re on your own when it comes to your lye calculations.
Good lye calculators like Soap Calc will have an option for 90% KOH. Use that formulation with a 3% superfat.
If the lye calculator does not have a 90% KOH option, set the lye calculator to a superfat of -7% (that’s negative seven percent) when working with potassium hydroxide. This offsets the impurity issues of potassium hydroxide and ensures a sufficiently saponified, safe soap.
Because of the way the math works, you will not get exactly the same numbers with a 90% KOH + 3% Superfat as you will with KOH – 7% Superfat. That’s ok – both results are within safe tolerances for thorough saponification without a lye excess.
what’s the cost?
A batch of this soap comes in at about $20 – $30, depending on where you get your ingredients and if you opt for organic or otherwise more expensive base oils. That’s between one-third and one-half the cost of Dr. Bronner’s.
breakdown of cost using organic oils
- Coconut Oil – $10.25 for 16 oz = $0.64/oz * 16oz = $10.25
- Olive Oil – $17.75 for 34 oz = $0.52/oz * 24 oz = $12.53
- Potassium Hydroxide Lye – $12.99 for 32 oz = $0.41/oz = $3.90
- Total = $26.68
When I use bulk oils from Costco (which is pretty much always) the ingredient cost drops to about $18.
Like Dr. Bronner’s, this soap is highly concentrated. I dilute the liquid concentrate further when I use it.
printable recipe for liquid castile soap
DIY Liquid Castile Soap
Ingredients
- 24 oz weight (680 grams) olive oil
- 16 oz weight (454 grams) coconut oil
- 9.35 oz weight (265 grams) Potassium hydroxide lye flakes
- 32 oz (4 cups | 907 grams) distilled water, for lye-solution
- 10 to 12 cups distilled water, to dilute, plus extra as needed
Instructions
Make The Soap Paste
- Add the olive oil and coconut oil to a large, (6 quart minimum) crock pot. Turn the crock-pot on high.
- While the oils are warming, put on your safety gloves and goggles, and carefully measure the potassium hydroxide lye into a stainless steel or pyrex bowl.
- Measure the water into a medium stainless bowl or pyrex pitcher. Set the container with the water into your sink, then very carefully tip the lye flakes into the water. Stir to dissolve.
- When the oils in the crockpot are warm, carefully tip the lye solution into the oils. Leave the crockpot on high.
- Use an immersion blender to blend the oils and lye solution together. Immediately after adding the lye solution to the oils, blend for about 5 minutes, until the mixture looks uniformly opaque and begins to slightly thicken. For the next 30 minutes, come back and blend the soap paste about every 5 minutes. The mixture will get thicker and thicker, progressing through an icing texture to something like Elmer’s glue.
Cook Soap Paste
- When the soap mixture becomes too thick to blend with an immersion blender, lid the crock pot and cook the soap mixture for 3 hours on high.
- Every 30 minutes or so, come back and fold and stir the soap paste with a heat-resistant silicone spatula or heavy wood spoon to ensure the soap paste cooks evenly.
- As the soap cooks, it will become increasingly translucent, moving from a runny white liquid to a puffy taffy texture to, eventually, a yellowy-clear, thick, translucent gel.
Test Soap Clarity
- After 3 hours, or once the paste looks fully translucent and gelled throughout, check the soap with a clarity test.
- Measure out an ounce of soap paste (about a golf-ball sized blob will do it). Add 4 oz (1/2 cup) of boiling or very hot water to the soap paste. Stir gently until the soap paste is totally dissolved.
- Allow the dilute soap to cool. If the soap is opaque, or if a scum of oils floats to the surface, continue cooking your soap paste for another hour before re-testing.
- If the dilute soap is clear (it needn’t be colorless, just translucent), proceed with dilution.
Dilute the Soap Paste
- Add 10 cups water to the soap paste in the crockpot. Break up the soap paste into the water as best you can but don’t worry about the paste dissolving fully.
- Lid the crock pot and turn the heat to warm for 8 hours or overnight. If you happen to walk by, give the soap a stir to help it along but don’t worry if you can’t.
- After 8 hours, if you notice chunks of remaining soap or thick skin of soap forming even after the chunks of soap dissolve, add another cup or two of water to further dilute the paste.
Bottle Soap
- When your soap is fully dissolved with no chunks of soap paste remaining, ladle your dilute soap into a perfectly clean and dry 1-gallon glass or plastic jug.
Lemon and melaleuca are great for dealing with oily hair (melaleuca has also been known to strengthen hair). Rosemary and peppermint may stimulate blood flow to the scalp and help your hair grow strong and healthy.
***Mimi’s note about lemon. See the article below. Changing the pH with lemon may not be a good idea. It turns the soap back into oil because it is the alkalide base in the lye which makes oil soap. ***
DIY shampoo is a great option for most people as you can easily change the essential oils used to fit your hair type and needs!
- 15 drops lemon essential oil
- 10 drops peppermint essential oil
- 10 drops rosemary essential oil
- 25 drops melaleuca essential oil
- ½ c. castille soap (*** from Mimi. Dr. Bronners uses hemp oil which I may bypass for avocodo and yew tip, etc. I will need to practice with the lye ratio since my oils aren’t on a table.***)
- 1 c. filtered water
A Word of Caution About Acid/lemon/vinagar and Castile Soap
Dr. Bronner’s Castile soap and vinegar can clean an entire house. They are effective, versatile, biodegradable and non-toxic. But the sole point of this post is to emphasize that these two should not be mixed directly. This is true for the Castile soap and any acid – any vinegar or lemon juice.
Since there have been several recommendations in online recipes and on TV to mix these two together, I want to address this topic. It’s not a dangerous combination, but it’s definitely moving in the wrong direction as far as getting things clean.
Here’s why.
In great part it’s due to the fact that vinegar is an acid and the Castile soap is a base. They will directly react with each other and cancel each other out. So, instead of getting the best of both (the scum cutting ability of the vinegar and the dirt transporting ability of the soap), you’ll be getting the worst of something entirely new. The vinegar “unsaponifies” the soap, by which I mean that the vinegar takes the soap and reduces it back out to its original oils. So you end up with an oily, curdled, whitish mess. And this would be all over whatever it was you were trying to clean – your laundry or counters or dishes or whatever.
Check out this picture of Dr. Bronner’s Peppermint Castile soap mixed directly with distilled white vinegar:
It doesn’t matter what else is in the solution, or in what order you combine them. If you end up with the soap and the vinegar in the same container, this reaction will occur.
The mom in me has to point out that if you have kids who wonder about the purpose of science class in “the real world”, you can show them this little reaction. Of course, drinking milk and orange juice at the same time will also point out why you should know your acids from your bases.
So, for cleaning, there is a better way. Use the soap to clean and the vinegar as a rinse agent.
One common complaint with using the Castile soap, especially on hard or shiny surfaces is that it leaves a film behind. This film is caused by the soap reacting with minerals in the water. It is not actually soap itself left behind, but rather certain salts. When this builds up on sinks and tubs, we call this soap scum. Vinegar is a great way to cut this. So after you’ve handwashed your dishes with Castile soap and rinsed them, dip them in a sink of vinegar water. Or after you’ve wiped down the sinks and tubs with soapy water, rinse, and then spray with a vinegar solution (about 1 cup vinegar/quart water).
I’ll give more time to windows later (one of the things I actually really enjoy cleaning), but briefly, for dirty exterior windows, spray them with my Castile soap solution, wipe them with a chamois, then spray them with vinegar and squeegee. Works great! Better than Windex.
Also, on the hair, if you do not have our Citrus Hair Rinse, but just want to use vinegar or lemon juice, rinse the soap out of your hair first. Then apply the vinegar or lemon juice.
So Dr. Bronner’s Castile soap and vinegar are a fabulous one, two punch. One after the other. Not at the same time.
As a sidenote: This issue does not apply to combiningSal Suds with vinegar. Sal Suds, as a synthetic detergent, has a completely different chemical makeup and does not react with the vinegar in the same way. Vinegar would even add more degreasing power to the mixture.
**** laundry soap! Mimi knows that Theives Essential Oil works great in this!***
Natural homemade laundry detergent powder
For a long time now I’ve been wanting to swap out store-bought laundry detergents and make my own all-natural washing powder, as part of a gradual shift toward making my home totally chemical-free. I just kept putting it off because I thought it would be difficult, both to find a good recipe and then to make it.
Turns out I was wrong on both counts.
A few weeks back I fiiiiiinally bit the bullet and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I’ve tested this particular powder with all types of fabrics and colours and everything has emerged in perfect condition and squeaky clean.
What’s more, the powder is unbelievably easy to make and the ingredients are so cheap.
A quick word on the Borax debate
Now, a lot of natural laundry products use Borax and, though it’s wholly natural, there is some debate over just how healthy and safe it is to use. I still haven’t made up my own mind about this so I opted for a powder sans Borax for now.
Instead, I followed this genius recipe by TJ of Measuring Flower. I’d recommend clicking on over to learn more about why each ingredient is needed, plus a few tips on all-natural stain removers and fabric softeners.
The main ingredient of TJ’s recipe is Castile soap so step number one for me was to find out what the heck that actually is! Turns out it’s just a soap made from olive oil or vegetable oil and lye, which is pretty widely available in stores and online.
How a sweet Spanish grannie helped make my powder
Interestingly, Castile soap actually originates from here in Spain, in the southern olive growing region of Castile.
After a little asking around, I discovered that a friend’s abuela (grandmother) actually grew up in that very region — and she was happy to teach me her traditional soap making technique. So much coolness! Head here for my guide to making traditional homemade Castile soap.
But naturally, you can buy the soap pre-made, too.
This homemade laundry detergent recipe makes a lot of powder and you only need to use one tablespoon per load of washing, so it lasts absolutely ages. (I wish I’d thought to keep count of the loads for you guys.)
My version turned out quite coarse because I don’t have a food processor at the moment so I chopped up my Castile soap by hand, which did take a bit of work. But hey, it’s good exercise! The powder works just fine even when coarse like this.
What goes in:
400g Castile soap (tip: make your own Castile soap the traditional Spanish way)
1/4 cup of baking soda
1/2 cup of washing soda (tip: make your own from baking soda – all you need is an oven)
1/4 cup of sea salt
How you do it:
If you have a food processor: finely shred the Castile soap then add the washing soda, baking soda and sea salt and pulse everything together until you have a fine powder.
If you’re making it by hand: finely grate or chop the Castile soap then mix together with the washing soda, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.
Keep your laundry powder in an airtight reusable container. Add one tablespoon to each regular load of washing.
There are so many ways to ditch chemical cleaning products in favour of green alternatives. In fact, I reckon you’d be hard pressed to find something you can’t clean with natural products. If you’re after some ideas, check this giant list of 52 DIY cleaners we put together for Money Saving Mom.
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