Pump (soap) it up!

So as you’ll hear, I have a small addiction to gathering knowledge.  This has been amplified 100x by the most wonderful creation of Pinterest.  With this visual shmorgishborg, I decided to start making some of my own household cleaners.

Enter the foam soap.

We love foam soap.  It’s easy for the kids to pump and wash their hands thoroughly, it doesn’t leave gummy drips on the sink’s edge and I just like it.  We shop at Meijer for most of our food and household supplies.  The Meijer brand is usually pretty good and cheaper (unless you coupon) than the brand names.  The Meijer foam soap was no exception.  It’s great and smells just as nice.  After seeing a pin on Pinterest, I thought I’d try making it myself.  Being the good Dutch girl that I am, I saved the bottles and used up all the liquid handsoap before giving this a try.

Following the pinned recipe mostly, I got great results!  The bottle they used was with the long narrow bottles from Bath and Body Works and mine was short and stout.  They suggested an inch of liquid hand soap at the bottom and filled the rest with warm water but wasn’t sure that was what I needed.  Here’s my version along with tweaks for next time:

Christie’s Foam Soap:

Ingredients:

One bottle hand soap (the clear kind, not cream)

Warm water

Empty pump soap bottle

Directions:

– Pump liquid hand soap into clean foam soap bottle – about 13 pumps.

– Add in slowly, warm tap water.

– Swirl water and soap together until it’s all off the bottom.

– Pump and wash!

Tweaks for next time:

– The Gar said it works great but is a little thin compared to the store purchased soap.  Next time I will do 15-20 pumps of hand soap and we should find a happy medium.  I probably could do that now but this works just fine.  I filled 4 bottles this way so it may be awhile till I get to test out the tweak.  But I’ll update then!

– Would love to have all bottle free of stickers and sticker gunk and add my own label to jazz it up a bit!

Cost & Verdict:

– Bottles = free

– Water = free

– Full bottle of liquid hand soap (Meijer Brand, not on sale): $1.06

Total:  With an estimate of 16 refills, about $0.06 a bottle!

Verdict:  This will be on my forever to make on my own list.

This is it!

Hey there!  Glad you found me!  I’m hoping to make this a place for me to chat about parenting, crafting, trying to make my own whatever, loving the Gar, money…. Ok, you get the idea.  Whatever comes to mind.

A bit about me.  I grew up in a small Dutch town on the south side of Chicago until I made the leap to college and moved myself (and stayed) to Michigan.  There I became a bachelors degree holder in graphic design, a wife to my best friend and mommy (mommers, mama, etc) to my smart as a whip, conniving, stinkin’ cute little girls which are both going to be big sisters come this July.  I worked for nine years in the large format printing world as a graphic designer/creative director but this past summer brought some change of heart to my changing heart.

We decided that I needed to resign from my job and become a stay at home mom and freelance graphic designer.  And I’ve never looked back!  Yeah, it’s hard going from two incomes to one, but at the end of every day, I love where I’m at and where our family is headed!

So with that very short bio (which I’m sure will be elaborated on over time), I’m excited to share my findings, my ideas and my stories with you!