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Feb 22, 2025

How to Make Foaming Hand Soap

Make your own solution at home with castile soap, jojoba oil, and essential oils. Homemade foaming hand soap is not only fun to use, it's a step in the right direction towards a more sustainable home.

Make your own solution at home with castile soap, jojoba oil, and essential oils.

Homemade foaming hand soap is not only fun to use, it's a step in the right direction towards a more sustainable home. By investing in one foaming soap pump and the necessary ingredients, you can significantly decrease your contribution of soap bottles headed for the landfill. Foaming soap is also lighter and requires less water to rinse—so you're also conserving water when you use it.

This how-to comes from one of our very own writers Ashley Poskin. "This particular soap is especially important in our household because we have a 4-year-old who is very, ​very​ enthusiastic about washing her hands," she says. "While we're happy about keeping germs at bay, we found ourselves having to refill the soap dish about once a week. Now, one pump fills her little hand with a huge swirl of foam and cuts down on the amount going down the drain."

The measurement of ingredients below are for a 13-ounce bottle, like the one pictured here. Tea tree, peppermint, lemon, and eucalyptus oils are antibacterial and antimicrobial, and make great choices for hand soap.

To the bottle, add 3 tablespoons castile soap, 2 teaspoons jojoba oil, and 40 to 50 drops of essential oil.

After combining the ingredients, fill the rest of the bottle with water, screw on the pump and gently shake until all the ingredients are combined.

Use one pump to soap your hands; then scrub for 20 seconds (about as long as it takes to sing "Happy Birthday"), and rinse. If you see the oils separate, just give the bottle a gentle shake to recombine.