I’ve been wanting to make my own liquid soap for a long while now. I see posts about it all over Pinterest. And I know it can’t be hard, as I have successfully made my own laundry detergent in the past.

But there’s one thing that has stood in my way.

GLYCERIN.

It seems to be an ingredient in most every liquid soap recipe. And I don’t know what the heck it is! Or where to find it! So those liquid soap pins just sit in my DIY board on Pinterest, mocking me.

But then, two weeks ago, we started to run out of soap. And my frugal self would not be satisfied by simply buying some more! Oh no, I was going to make my own soap, gosh darn it!

So I did a little internet sleuthing to figure out just how important this glycerin stuff really is.

I’ll save you some research, if you don’t mind. The long and short of it is that glycerin is a moisturizer. It’s a very good thing to have in your liquid soap, but it most definitely isn’t necessary.

SWEET!

So here’s how I made liquid soap without any glycerin:

First, gather your ingredients. I opted for Ivory soap (since it already contains moisturizers…good choice, right?). You also need a grater and something to hold your soap shards. I went with a pie plate.

After you have grated your soap, take a moment to let your kid play with the soap shards. They feel really neat and make for a good sensory activity. Make sure they don’t eat it, though! But again, this is Ivory, so if they do eat it, it will just taste gross, but isn’t going to cause major problems.

Add your soap flakes from one bar of soap to water on the stove. Based on other recipes I have seen, I used 10 cups of water for one bar of soap. Keep the heat on medium-low (no need to boil this! In fact, you’ll probably have a real mess on your hands if you do!).

Once all the flakes have dissolved, take the pot off the heat and let the mixture cool completely. I actually let mine sit for close to 24 hours. After sitting for about 6 hours, my mixture was really dense, which concerned me. But after several more hours sitting, the consistency improved. So give the mix PLENTY of time to rest. My end product had the consistency seen above.

I then used a funnel to get the mix into a hand soap pump. The one pictured was a gift but you a similar one is found here. Pouring straight from the pot might result in a bit of a mess, so if you go that route, take extra care, and maybe have someone else on hand to help.

While the final product is a bit runnier than traditional liquid soap, you can see from this picture that the lather is still pretty decent. One bar of soap made enough liquid soap to fill my soap dispenser probably 6 times. What a bargain!

So if glycerin is standing in between you and some homemade liquid soap, cast your cares aside and just go for it!

And by the way, I’ve since learned where you can find glycerin. Check the first aid section of whatever store you frequent. You will likely find it there!

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