How to Make Homemade Liquid Dish Soap

The Easy Way to Make Eco-Friendly Liquid Dish Soap

2 April 2022 by Sarah Lipoff

Have you ever noticed there isn't an actual list of ingredients on your dish soap? Instead of tossing down the cash to pick up the top grease-fighting brand, try making your own eco-friendly liquid soap at home. You can personalize your soap with your favourite scent, meaning not only will your dishes smell good, but so will your kitchen! And the best part is this DIY soap is safe for the environment, since it's nontoxic. Pro tip: repurpose an old container for a fun and cute sink-side cleaning companion.

What You'll Need:

15ml borax
125ml liquid castile soap
15ml washing soda
10 drops essential oil (optional)
30ml white distilled vinegar
Mixing bowl
Measuring cups
Whisk
Measuring spoons
Glass container

Directions:

Gather the ingredients needed for making the liquid dish soap. Both of the main ingredients, borax and washing soda, can be found in the laundry aisle of your local supermarket. Borax is a powerhouse that will leave your dishes seriously clean, and washing soda gives this liquid dish soap extra grease-fighting power.
Measure and add the borax and washing soda to the mixing bowl along with the liquid castile soap and white vinegar. You can find pure castile soap at your local health-food store, and it comes in a variety of scents. We used lavender, which gave our dishwashing liquid a light floral scent. Vinegar helps clean dishes and is a natural antibacterial.
Boil the water and then slowly add in the ingredients, using a whisk to gently stir in. You can also add a few drops of your favourite essential oil at this time to personalize the scent of the liquid dish soap.
Let the soap come to room temperature before adding to your container. It will thicken as it cools.
Now you are ready to tackle the dishes! This eco-friendly liquid dish soap does a great job at cleaning baked-on pans and leaves glasses spotless. It doesn't suds a ton and isn't harsh on hands.

Looking for other DIY cleaning products? Take a peek at our budget-friendly list:

—Additional reporting by Lauren Harano