Common household cleaners can be pricey and full of potentially harmful chemicals and toxins. What's more, they are almost always in plastic bottles.
Want a solution to all three of these problems? Try making your own nontoxic cleaning supplies with ingredients already in your home.
The scoop
In a TikTok video from Taylor (@tstarch), viewers get a great demonstration of how to make an effective hand and dish soap with cheap and safe ingredients.
@tstarch Non-toxic dish soap that you can make at home 🧼✨ #nontoxic #soap #allnatural #allnaturalsoap #nontoxicliving ♬ original sound - Taylor + 4 dogs 👩🏼🐶🐶🐶🐶
Taylor explains that her recipe was inspired by another recipe from the TikTok account The Natural Home (@thenaturalhome). Start by combining 1 cup of boiling water and 1½ tablespoons of salt, and stir until the salt has dissolved. Then, add ⅓ cup of lemon juice and 1½ cups of Sal Suds, and mix it until it thickens.
You can then pour it into reusable glass soap jars. This soap effectively cleans dishes and hands without leaving any type of residue.
How it's working
This nontoxic hand and dish soap has numerous benefits. For starters, it is an alternative to common soap brands that often contain ingredients that can irritate the skin.
Many hand soaps contain chemicals used for fragrance or categorized as formaldehyde, per Medical News Today. They can cause skin irritation, rashes, and other allergic reactions.
Additionally, making your own hand soap and using glass bottles reduces your overall use of single-use plastic. (Sal Suds does come in a plastic bottle, but this hack extends the value of it, and you can also buy it a gallon at a time.) Although it may take longer to go through plastic bottles of hand soap than infamously wasteful plastic water bottles, both are intended for one-time use.
Today, humans create about 441 million tons of plastic every year, according to the UN Environmental Programme. About 60% of that total ends up in our landfills and natural environments rather than being recycled. This is why making changes to the products we usually buy in plastic containers is so important.
Finally, the ingredients for this recipe are relatively cheap, and you also probably have most of them in your home. Sal Suds costs about $10 to try for 16 ounces but will be enough for multiple bottles of soap using this hack. And as noted above, you can buy it a gallon (128 ounces) at a time for $47.
In comparison, individual pump bottles of quality natural soap without harmful chemicals can cost around $10 for just one 16-ounce bottle, so buying larger refill bottles (or an add-water option such as powder or tablets) makes both environmental and economical sense. Especially when you can follow hacks like the one above and stretch that refill into even more.
What people are saying
Other users were very interested in making this homemade hand soap recipe.
"I can't wait to try this," commented one.
"Is it good for grease? Does it break down grease?" asked another, to which Taylor responded that it does indeed.
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