The 1st experiments: liquid dish soap

In our house, we don't have a dishwasher...yes, it totally sucks, even more than not having a dryer (nope, don't have one of those either, thanks Korea). So every single dish is washed by hand...and my hubby, amazing cook that he is, just can't seem to make a meal without using EVERY DISH IN THE HOUSE! So we go through a lot of liquid dish soap!

Hence the second thing I made this weekend was liquid dish soap! Again, it was so easy, and took no time at all. I used this recipe from "The Humbled Homemaker". The ingredients called for were:

• 1/2 cup liquid castille soap 
• 1/8 cup water
• 4 drops EO
• 1 tsp all purpose citrus cleaner (1 tsp vinegar can be substituted)

For the castille soap, I used Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps Baby Mild unscented. In my online sleuthing, this brand was by far the most recommended, and luckily it was available here in Korea. You can use any kind you like though...I am not a brand whore! LOL! I like this one because I can use it for a variety of different things, and I can add whatever smell I like. Also, it works well for my daughter, as she has sensitive skin and scents irritate it. 

For the EO scent, I chose lemon. I like my dishes lemony fresh...reminds me of growing up! I chose to use 6 drops as I really liked the scent, and also, I didn't have the original poster's all purpose citrus cleaner (yet), so needed a bit extra oomph!

As to the all purpose cleaner, I am going to be making that soon, but for now, I just substituted with the distilled white vinegar. It seemed to work great.

I combined all of the ingredients in a shaker then funneled them into a re-purposed juice bottle. 

The final results were a lot more watery than our normal liquid soap, and at first my hubby (who was so sweet as to give it a go whilst he did the dishes) said he used too much, but then he got used to it, and said it was great. He said it got the dishes just as clean, made some suds (not as many as the commercial stuff we had been using), and smelled awesome. He also said it left his hands feeling quite soft! 

I think we will probably go through this a bit faster, as it is more watery, but as cheap as it is to make, and being so easy and quick to throw together, I think this counts as another success, and we will not be buying any more liquid dish soap in the future! Yay!

**Update**
Ok, not quite the success I thought at first. It gets the dishes really clean, and smells great, but it is so watery that we went through it insanely quickly--in less than two weeks. The same amount in the store bought would have lasted us at least 2 months. Since the store bought is only $2.50 (approx. exchange rate) here, and the homemade dish soap is made almost entirely of Castille soap (my most expensive homemade ingredient), I think we will continue to use the store bought for now.

If you are in in for health/environmental/going all natural reasons, it is a lovely soap. We are in it for the savings though, and this one just doesn't save enough.