31 Days: Day 16 - Scruba-Dub-Dub

If this is your first visit I welcome you to my little corner of the world! You might want to start at the introduction of this series. It explains what 31 Days of Change is, and has links to each day's post as they occur. Just click on the 31 Days to Slash Your Budget Painlessly button at the top of my sidebar on the right.

First I want to apologize for not having a post on Sunday (again).  My daughter was home from college this weekend.  We hadn't seen her in two months, so I spent the time with her.  I will try to do a double post at some point or just tack a day on at the end.  

Yesterday evening, after Jamie had left to return to college,  I made my own liquid hand soap.  It was really easy.  I found the recipe on Pinterest.

All you need is 1 cup of grated soap (pressed down), 1 tablespoon of glycerine (available at drugstores), and 10 cups of hot water.

I just added the glycerine and water to the bowl that I shaved the soap in and microwaved it, rather than heated it on the stove, so I'd have less dishes to wash. 

I did some other things a bit differently.  Sera used Mrs. Meyers soap; I used what I had on hand, which was Ivory.  Like she recommended, I used the blender, but I found it made it super foamy.  I left it on the counter overnight and it got so thick I thought it was ruined, but when I stirred it, it became liquid again. The foam had dried, so I gently stirred it back into the liquid.  I don't think the blending was necessary. 

I did not double the glycerine and soap like she did. My bar of soap was the smaller 3.1 oz size that made about 1 1/4 cup of soap, so I just used it all and it turned out fine.  It made about 10 1/3 cups of soap.  My son loves Arnold lemon tea, so his girlfriend got him this huge gallon jug of it.  The empty container was perfect to store the soap in.

I usually buy Great Value refill soap in the 64 oz size.  It runs $3.68 and lasts us about a month.  This recipe made about 83 ounces for about $1.00 or $0.77 cents for the equivalent amount of my store bought soap.  Ounce for ounce my savings will be $2.91 a month or $34.92 a year.  Not huge, but it's all the little things that really add up.

If you are benefiting from this series, I’d love it if you would grab my button from the top of my sidebar. I will be back with another money saving tip tomorrow. I will keep up a running tally of my savings at the bottom of each new post. Just scroll down to the bottom to see. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll be back!

My tally so far:

$1726.77/year
$143.91/month