Make Your Own Homemade Dish Soap in 10 Minutes

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Thought you’ve made every DIY project out there? How about Homemade Dish Soap?

Homemade Dish Soap

How Do You Make Homemade Dish Soap?

In our efforts to learn how to make everything from scratch, it’s time to turn to Homemade Dish Soap. I’m not sure why I haven’t explored making this before. I guess since we’ve been able to buy a few different kinds that we’ve enjoyed using so far. But it’s still good to know how to make it ourselves in-case we ever need to or if we run out of the store bought stuff. So thus the need for this tutorial!

You can make your own dish soap with just a few ingredients like castile soap and about 10 minutes of your time.

Can You Buy Natural Dish Soap In Bulk?

If you want to buy your dish soap and you are looking for something natural that actually works, I recommend  Biokleen Free and Clear Dish Soap. It works well and is a true, non-toxic all natural product. You can buy it by the gallon so you can use less plastic when you refill your soap dispenser.

Amazon also carries Ginger Lily Dish Soap in a one gallon jug. This soap is also a natural, fragrance free, plant based dish soap.

But back on track…making our own homemade Dish Soap. It’s really not as difficult as you think it might be! It turns out that you really need a few ingredients and you can create homemade dish soap at any time. Let’s get started!

Homemade Dish Soap

Ingredients in the DIY Dish Soap Recipe

  • Hot Water. You can use filtered or distilled water if you are concerned about bacteria being in your dish soap.
  • Castile Soap. This needs to be a liquid castile soap. We like the Dr. Jacobs brand because it’s a little bit less expensive but you can get Dr. Bronner’s as well.
  • Baking Soda. I get my baking soda in bulk from Sam’s Club.
  • Bar Soap. You can use another castile soap in a bar form or you can use your favorite bar soap.

Details on Ingredients in Homemade Dish Soap

You can use any scent of castile soap. We prefer the Unscented Castile Soap from Dr. Jacobs since it’s unscented. Dr. Bronner’s makes an unscented castile soap as well.

Baking Soda can be picked up from just about anywhere, any kind will do. Washing soda is not a replacement for baking soda in this recipe.

And for the bar soap you can use any kind you have on hand or that you can pick up from the store (or even Homemade Hand Soap). Remember that if you use a scented bar soap, your homemade Dish Soap will also be scented. You might be able to use soap flakes in place of grated bar soap but be sure and check the ingredients first.

Do not add coconut oil or olive oil to your dish soap. It’s not necessary for cleaning and can clog up your sink.

Baking Soda

What Can Be Used in Instead of Dish Soap?

If you don’t have any dish soap and don’t have the ingredients to make it, you can use baking soda in place of dish soap. Baking Soda will remove grease and stuck on food from dishes. Just wet your dishes, sprinkle on baking soda, scrub off food, and rinse well before drying.

This really is a great frugal alternative to dish soap.

Can I Use Hand Soap If I Run Out of Dish Soap?

Yes, you can use hand soap if you run out of dish soap. Hand soap tends to be more expensive than dish soup, though, so I wouldn’t use it regularly if you can help it.

Organizing Essential Oils

Essential Oils for Dish Soap

You can add some essential oils to this mixture if you want to add more scent if you prefer. Here are some good ones to add and what they add to your mixture:

Tea Tree Essential Oil – Antibacterial
Grapefruit Essential Oil – Antibacterial and Antifungal
Peppermint Essential Oil – Antibacterial and Antiseptic
Ginger Essential Oil – Antibacterial and Antiseptic

Other Good Essential Oils to Add

Avoid most citrus oils (like lime and lemon essential oil) in your homemade dish soap as they can be phototoxic.

Homemade Dish Soap

Instructions for Making Homemade Liquid Dish Soap

In a large bowl (I have a special one that I save specifically for soap making so our regular dishes don’t taste like soap!), add the castile soap, baking soda, grated bar soap, and a few drops of essential oil (if desired).

On the stovetop in a saucepan, heat the water until it comes to a boil.

Slowly pour the very hot water over the ingredients in the bowl. Mixing as you pour. (You may need a helper for this!)

Stir until all the ingredients are dissolved, and it’s the right consistency. Leave the mixture set on the counter until it’s cool. Stir or shake as needed if you find some parts haven’t completely dissolved.

Add to a container. I’ve put together my cute liquid soap dispenser using an old ball jar and one of these Mason Jar Soap Pump Kits.

A few notes on Homemade Dish Soap….

I created this recipe back in 2013 and while it DOES have great cleaning power, it will not function like a soap you buy from the store. It does not have any sudsing agents so if you need your soap to have suds for you to think it’s working, this isn’t going to be the soap for you.

Need to print this Homemade Dish Soap Recipe for your Recipe Binder? Grab it below!

 

Homemade Dish Soap

How to make your own homemade dish soap!

Prep Time 10 minutes
Creator Merissa

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 cups hot Water
  • 1/2 cup Castile Soap
  • 1 tablespoon Baking Soda
  • 1 tablespoon grated Bar Soap

Instructions

  1. You can use any scent of castile soap. We prefer the Unscented Castile Soap from Dr. Jacobs since it's unscented. Baking Soda can be picked up from just about anywhere, any kind will do. And for the bar soap you can use any kind you have on hand or that you can pick up from the store (or even Homemade Hand Soap). Remember that if you pick a scented bar soap your homemade Dish Soap will also be scented.
  2. In a large bowl (I have a special one that I save specifically for soap making so our regular dishes don't taste like soap!), add the castile soap, baking soda, grated bar soap, and a few drops of essential oil (if desired). Slowly pour the very hot water over the ingredients in the bowl. Mixing as you pour. (You may need a helper for this!)
  3. Stir until all the ingredients are dissolved. Leave the mixture sit on the counter until it's cool. Stir as needed if you find some parts haven't completely dissolved. Add to a container. I've put together this cute liquid soap dispenser using an old ball jar and one of these Mason Jar Soap Pump Kits.

Recipe Notes

You can also add some essential oils to this mixture if you want to add a little more scent. Here are some good ones to add and what they add to your mixture:

Tea Tree Essential Oil - Antibacterial
Grapefruit Essential Oil - Antibacterial and Antifungal
Peppermint Essential Oil - Antibacterial and Antiseptic
Ginger Essential Oil - Antibacterial and Antiseptic


bookcoversmallerLove this recipe and want to find more projects just like this one? You would love my book, Little House Living: The Make Your own Guide to a Frugal, Simple, and Self-Sufficient Life! It has over 130 DIY recipes for household, beauty, kids, and so much more. You can get your own copy here.


soap

More Homemade Soap Tutorials

Have you ever made your own homemade Dish Soap? Or any other kinds of soaps?

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Me and KadyMerissa has been blogging about and living the simple life since 2009 and has internationally published 2 books on the topic. You can read about Merissa’s journey from penniless to the 100-acre farm and ministry on the About Page. You can send her a message any time from the Contact Page.


This blog post on Homemade Dish Soap was originally published on Little House Living in December 2013. It has been updated as of February 2023.

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78 Comments

  1. YES! I can’t wait to try this…we had to go back to the Trader Joe’s dishsoap because the last recipe we tried was kind of a fail…it was castile, water, and lemon juice…you had to use a LOT, and it left the dishes looking dirtier than when we started.

  2. This is awesome! I think I’d add a little rosemary essential oil since its antibacterial like tea tree, and I just LOVE the way it smells. 🙂

  3. I guess I never really thought about making my own dish soap. Not sure why though. I am going to give it a try – I love Bonners

  4. I’ve had nothing but fails with homemade dish soap.. want to try this though. How does it work with hard water?

    1. It suds up a pretty normal amount, maybe not as much as a conventional dish soap but those have sodium laurel sulfate in them. It depends on how often you do dishes! We go through about 32 ounces of dish soap (double this recipe) in a few months.

      1. I wash dishes everyday, but on weekends sometimes twice. I don’t have a dishwasher, I am the dishwasher..lol.

  5. I did not realize they made Mason Jar Pump kits. I will have to look into those more as I have a lot of jars. I know due to the craziness of my schedule, I probably wont get around to making my own dish soap, but happy to know that you have the recipe if I ever have the chance.

  6. I like a dishsoap that cuts the grease,living in a small town sometines you get what is on sale,like the idea, mainly stuff you have on handanxious to try

  7. The only issue is cost of the castile soap… Currently just over $16 at Amazon which makes each batch for recipe above about $2 for just over 1 1/2 cup… Just not really cost effective but great to know how to make it at home just in case 🙂

    1. You can get a 32 oz bottle of peppermint Dr. Bronner’s from Trader Joe’s for $9.99. That’s the only flavor they carry though.

      1. I have made laundry soap and love it. So cheap to make! Can’t wait to try this. I use a decorative wine bottle with a liquor pour spout for my dish soap and get many compliments on it. You can find those at Hobby Lobby in the vase area. I have been looking for Dr. Bronner’s castile soap but put off by the price. Thanks Amy for sharing the low cost at Trader Joe’s. I will check there next time I visit my Mom. Have been wanting to try homemade body wash and shampoo too.

  8. I am for making your own dish soap but I wanted to let you know about a great nontoxic, biodegradable dish soap that is so so concentrated that my hubby and I add water to it and a little drop still goes a long way. I also started using it very watered down as in our hand pump dispensers in our bathrooms to wash our hands. It is gentle on the hands and yet great on washing your dishes!
    There are other products that are also concentrated that are for putting in spray bottles to clean everything from counters to sinks to floors and windows. I am talking about Shaklee Hand Dish Liquid Concentrate and Basic H Concentrate.
    I have used these for years. You can contact me about getting some as I do sell it to help with our family income(as you can also). Of course they have many other products but these are the main ones I use.
    Oh, I almost forgot the great cherry pit scrub for cleaning off stoves, black marks on the floor or any other tough spots you have to clean.
    And the wonderful water filter that filters out giardia(sp?), all kinds of bugs and sediment to make your cooking and drinking water taste wonderful.
    I first got this filter when I lived in an area where I became ill from drinking the
    tap water. It had giardia in it. We bought the filter and have taken it with us to
    all of our houses as we have lived in since.

  9. reCap at masonjars.com just came out with another wonder–the pump for Mason jars. I already have their reCaps, as well as Cuppow’s drinking lids for Mason jars. Anyway, the pump with them is only $7 and it just came out so I ordered one to see if it is good.

    I am thrilled to get this recipe–I am hoping that it works well in our horribly hard water. I have all the ingredients, so as soon as I get the pump, I will make this! I have to confess that even though my BRAIN knows that suds don’t clean dishes, my eyes feel like lack of suds=poor cleaning quality, so as long as the dishes FEEL clean afterwards, I will survive low suds.

    Should I also note that I am one of the weirdos that still “washes my dishes before I wash my dishes” (in the dishwasher)? Sigh. Old habits die hard with me!

  10. another great recipe….I just downloaded it to my collection and will make some as soon as I go shopping. thanks.

  11. I just sent myself this recipe in an email. I am looking forward to trying this recipe as I use a lot of dish detergent daily and I usually use Dawn.
    Hope this recipe works as well, or even better than it does so I won’t have to pay the price for it again.
    Looking forward to seeing more of these recipes in your blog/fb page.
    Thanks for sharing them.

  12. i am so glad to have found your site i will be trying your recipe for soap i too use dawn hope it woks as well

  13. i am so glad to have found your site i will be trying your recipe for soap i too use dawn hope it woks as well

  14. Is it possible to make the liquid Castille soap from a bar of it? I found a recipe for homemade liquid Castille soap online, it involves lye, seems dangerous and way more trouble than it’s worth……

  15. I’ve been making my own Laundry soap for a few years now. I love it.
    Equal parts of: washing soda, baking soda, borax and grated Dr Bronners bar soap (peppermint smells nice). I’ll never go back to commercial soap powder, those toxic fragrances give me headaches!

    1. Sandi,
      How much of the bar soap do you use with this recipe ?
      I make my own using Fels naphtha soap but
      Would like to try yours. Thanks 🙂

  16. I make my own dishwasher detergent. It works better than store-bought name brands. Super simple recipe: I stir together 2 cups Washing Soda, 2 cups Borax. I add 25 drops of Grapefruit essential oil for its antibacterial properties. I put this in a gallon size ziplock Baggie. I use a couple teaspoons per load. I always fill the rinse cup thingy with white vinegar. This works really well with our hard, hard water here on Whidbey Island.

  17. I make my own laundry detergent and LOVE it. My question with this is, you show a bar of Dove soap, (which I have to use because of my sensitive skin), but it has moisturizer in it, won’t that stay on your dishes??? Just wandering, I started making my own laundry detergent to save us some money, we are a family of 7, & went thru a LARGE box of Gain in less than a week, in 3 days if my mom gets in there before me, so I had to do something and it works great. I did not however, save money on the homemade Downey, nor did I like the recipe I had for it. I kept cutting it with vinegar cause it made the clothes sticky, like you put too much downy in it. If anyone has a recipe for fabric softner please let me know, willing to try anything to make it easier on my household. 🙂

    1. Use vinegar in a Downey ball as fabric softener. You could also make your own fabric softener crystals using Epsom Salts and essential oils.

  18. I think this recipe sounds great. Can you please tell me how much you have to use in a typical load of dishes

      1. Dollar Tree has a lot of cheap glycerin soaps. My favorite is a lemon verbena bar by Venezia Soapworks or sometimes called Sugar Soapworks. I use their bars for my homemade dish soap and my bodywashes. At a dollar a bar and their 7oz bars you get a good deal.

  19. There are several dangerous chemicals used in cleaning products so becoming educated would be extremely helpful. Thanks for sharing this wonderful post 🙂

  20. Sorry to say this dish soap failed like all the others. No suds, no grease cutting power (Used Dr B’s citrus bar soap, added tea tree & lemon eos). It looked like I was washing dishes in a sink full of dirty water. After trying 4 different recipes for dish soap, I conceded defeat and bought a large bottle of Dawn.

    1. That’s not good, I’m sorry it didn’t work! Most homemade dish soaps (or any homemade soap) won’t produce suds because they don’t have the sulfates in them that generally do that. It should have definitely had some cleaning power though!

    2. If you want suds, you would need to add vegetable glycerin. You can get it at any health food store or online.

    3. I, too, felt the same, but the dishes DID get clean, and they were NOT greasy. You (and almost every other woman on the face of the earth, including me), have been ‘brainwashed’ into believing that the way commercial dishsoaps (like dawn, etc.) look, feel and suds, is the ONLY way ANY dishsoap should look, feel and suds! NOT TRUE!!
      Suds are made buy using toxic and harmful ingredients like sodium lauryl sulfate. This is not only harmful to the environment, but to health as well. Believe me, this homemade version is MUCH healthier and it really DOES work! You (and all of us) just need to get past the feel and look of the water and see that dishes do get clean.
      Please, don’t give up on making your own!

    4. After a half dozen or so failed dish soap recipes, I just grabbed a bar of the harsh soap I make for doing laundry (0% super fat, meaning no extra oils left in the bar after the lye conversation the fat into soap) and scrubbed it with a scrub brush under running water to add soap to my sink water. No homemade soap is going to suds very much. Add some salt to the dish water if you have hard water and rinse in really hot water. This works for us, and I make my laundry soap myself, a batch that makes a dozen bars costs about $4 to make.

  21. Hi! I tried out your homemade dish soap and I really liked it, but it seemed to be a little thin (almost too watery). Have you found that to be the same for you? It made me nervous that it wasn’t cleaning the way it should be.

    1. I haven’t found that it reduces the effectiveness but if you are wanting a bit more of a concentrated product you can reduce the water by 1/4 – 1/2 cup.

  22. Merissa – do you happen to know if castile soap has any methylchloroisothiazinoline in it? I just found out that I am allergic to it and it is in practically everything we use; hence me finding you 🙂
    I am looking forward to trying your DIY recipes.

    1. I don’t see it listed but here’s the ingredients in what I have at home (Dr Bronner’s Hemp Baby Mild Castile Soap) just in case it’s under another name: Water, Organic Coconut Oil, Potassium Hydroxide, Organic Olive Oil, Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Citric Acid, Tocopherol. I hope that helps!

  23. My hard water must be extremely hard as this was yet another fail for me. I wish I knew why & what to do about it. I got no suds, just “dirty” looking water.

  24. I just made some dish soap and mine doesn’t suds up at all…is that normal? It also leaves my dishes a little “greasy” after I wash them…is THAT normal? 🙂

    1. I’m not sure why it would leave your dishes greasy but no, it shouldn’t suds up. “Suds” is something caused usually by sodium laurel sulfate in commercial dish soap and really doesn’t have anything to do with getting dishes clean although we’ve been taught by commercial companies to think that way 🙂

  25. Just tried this, mine was completely solid! I am in the process of adding hot water to thin it out. Maybe my bar soap was too big

  26. I was going to make this and realize that the bar soap I had at home was Kirk’s (which says it is a castile soap). I wasn’t sure how that would work out. Has anyone else used it before in this recipe?

  27. Hi Melissa,
    I love all of the tricks and tips you give for making homemade everything.
    As I was checking out something on your homemade soap making page, I saw a before and after stainless steel sink homemade cleaner and a ceramic stove cleaner but, I have searched and searched and cannot find it again. Is there any way you can help me.
    Tank you for your time!!!

  28. I’m very anxious to try this. I just bought a gallon of dr. Bronners castile soap. Hoping to make my own laundry soap. Spot cleaner for laundry. Hand soap and dish soap as well with it. I’ve been using all shaklees products which are awesome I love them but looking for a cheaper natural alternative. Hoping i like this. Already accustomed to the no sudsing in the soap so that shouldn’t be an issue!

  29. I’ve read somewhere that the water has to be distilled otherwise the ingredients won’t react the same way. Is it true? And how many time it is taking from the beginning to the final product? Thanks in advance for the answers.

    1. I have not used distilled water in this recipe so I’m not sure. To make this it really only takes about 5 minutes of hands on time (slightly longer overall time while it’s cooling).

  30. I guess the point of this is kind of lost on me. It doesn’t seem like you’re making your own soap just mixing castille and bar soap together. Did i miss something?

    1. Castile Soap along will not make dish soap, bar soap alone will not make dish soap, all of the ingredients together will work great for the purpose of dish soap.

  31. Hi Merissa I got your book and it is great. I love all the make ahead mixes. Going to try some of these soon. Love the lotions. Love everything in it. Good job.

  32. How much essential oil should I add to the mixture? I was going to use a combination of Grapefruit and Peppermint Oils. And should I add this at the very end, when the mixture is cooling? Thank you!

  33. I just purchased my first bottle of castille soap. Is it supposed to be really runny? Or thicker like liquid soap?

  34. Just had a green cleaning make-and-take and used lots of your recipes! So happy I found your site since many others are primarily cost-focused rather than choosing ingredients based on health and environmental impacts! Thanks for your work to create such great recipes along with providing helpful insights. Wondering the reason you are suggesting to store the dish washing liquids above in glass bottles?

  35. Hi, I have a question. As liquid Castile soap is basicly a Castile soap bar dissolved in water why do you have to add some more grated soap to the mixture? What ingredient is missing in the Castile soap that you add with the other soap bar?

    Thanks!

  36. Your recipe mentions not adding coconut or olive oil to it because it could clog sinks. But the ingredients of the Dr Bonner pure Castile soap included coconut, palm, olive, hemp and jojoba oils. Should I be concerned the grated Castile soap will clog my sink?