How to Make Homemade Dish Soap Like Dawn

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Learn how to make homemade dish soap like Dawn, or in my personal opinion, better than regular Dawn dish soap! This soap is safe for any type of dish and will clean off grease and grime from tough surfaces like stainless steel. Once you learn how to make your homemade dish soap, you will never go back to commercial dish soap!

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• Coco Glucoside
• Vegetable Glycerin
• Citric Acid
• Essential Oils

When I switched to non-toxic cleaning products, dish soap was the last thing to get rid of because I couldn’t find a soap that worked. Most soaps wouldn’t cut grease and would leave my dishes with a residue on them. I also didn’t like that most natural soaps didn’t produce suds.

I know suds aren’t necessary to clean your dishes, but I don’t like to see into my dishwater, and I didn’t feel like my dishes were getting clean without them. After lots of research on ingredients in soap and what each ingredient’s function is, I think I finally found a perfect homemade dish soap recipe!

What’s Wrong With Store-Bought Dish Soap?

Dish soap is something that we use every single day, sometimes multiple times per day. Commercial dish soaps are full of chemicals and toxins that are horrible for our bodies. Let’s take a look at some of them from the famous blue dish soap we all know and love:

Phenoxyethanol, Propylene Glycol, and PHENOXY-ISOPROPANOL

These are solvents that are in dish soap, laundry soap, hand soap, and beauty products. This ingredient is a known carcinogen and has even been advised to not be around children under three!

Many, many products in our world contain these ingredients. These ingredients have also been shown to deplete Central nervous system activity in infants… hello, red flag, anyone? Read this article for more information on these ingredients and how bad they are for children!

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate

This ingredient is a surfactant. This is a cleaning agent and sudsing agent in most soaps. However, it is in some of our food products and self-care products.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to read your ingredient labels! This ingredient is carcinogenic and has shown to be a hormone disruptor.

The good news is not all surfactants are bad. There are plant-based surfactants that are safe for us! Do thorough research on a surfactant to make sure it is plant-based!

Colorants

While most of us know that food coloring is bad for us if ingested, it is easy to argue we are most likely not eating dish soap. Even so, the toxins can remain on your dishes and you are eating off of them. I avoid artificial coloring at all costs if possible.

Fragrance

Don’t be fooled to think that the fresh scent smell is natural in any way. Artificial fragrance is a huge hormone disruptor, a carcinogen, and has been shown to cause issues like asthma.

It is found in tons of products on the market. Fragrance is a generic term for over 3,000 chemicals that we don’t even know specifically what they are! If any product you own has fragrance in it, throw it out and use products that use natural scents, typically from good quality essential oils.

This ingredient is common in so many greenwashed products today. Some brands that claim all-natural (Hello, Mrs. Meyers) are loaded with artificial fragrances.

Needless to say, store-bought dish soap is not healthy for us at all. Conventional dish soaps are loaded with toxic chemicals and carcinogens. For something used so frequently, ditch it for all-natural!

Why Homemade Liquid Soap?

At first, I was buying soaps with natural ingredients in them, but they were expensive and I also never seemed to have clean dishes. Many people are deterred from natural products because they don’t seem to work as well as conventional products.

In fact, I started making homemade cleaning products to save money for our family and it has helped us save quite a bit!

My biggest problem was that the soap never became sudsy. It felt like I was pouring water and essential oils into my sink.

When I finally found a dish soap I liked, I was paying roughly $16 for a quart-sized bottle. This came out to roughly 50 cents per fluid ounce and that was getting pretty expensive. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and see if I could make homemade dish soap for less… and I did!

There are also options to make homemade bar soap with sodium hydroxide (lye solution), but I prefer the liquid form for my personal use.

What makes this soap different than other homemade dish soap recipes?

Most of the homemade dish soap recipes I had found online and tried seemed to have the same problems I had when I bought natural soaps online. The natural ones I did find that happened to work had ingredients in them that weren’t any better than using Dawn.

I wasn’t going to make homemade dish soap if the ingredients were not any different than store-bought dish soap. For example, Fel Naptha has artificial fragrances, therefore I didn’t want to use that. Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds has sodium lauryl sulfate in it and we don’t want that either. 

I needed cleaning agents that were all natural and did the job. My homemade dish soap recipe has a plant-based, natural surfactant in it which makes the solution sudsy and has strong cleaning power!

What is in this DIY dish soap recipe?

 A Natural, plant-based surfactant like coco glucoside

 Surfactants are used to reduce surface tension which helps lift and wash away grease and other items off of surfaces. Some surfactants are better than others. For example, sodium lauryl sulfate is commonly found in detergents and other products and it is a harsh ingredient.

However, some surfactants, like coco glucoside, are plant-based and called a “non-ionic surfactant” meaning that it is not harsh on the skin while still able to clean. Coco glucoside is made from sugar and coconuts, making it environmentally safe and also non-toxic.

The use of a surfactant in household products makes them easy to clean and also creates that lather that we all know and love in our products. I use this ingredient for so much like homemade body wash, homemade laundry detergent, and even for a carpet stain remover!

Vegetable Glycerin: 

Vegetable glycerin is a great natural degreaser and helps remove grease from your dishes!

Citric Acid: 

While citric acid does have some cleaning properties, it is used as a natural preservative in this recipe. 

Distilled water: 

Used to dilute the solution to a safe pH level for sensitive skin. You don’t want to use tap water because it is treated and can cause molding or will not be pure soap. I use my Berkey-filtered water, and I’ve never had an issue. 

Essential oils:

 For scent and disinfectant properties. I usually use lemon essential oil!

See My post Here For The Best Essential Oil Companies!

Does this Dish soap really work as well as Dawn?

The short answer.. yes! This soap is a simple recipe, doesn’t take long to make, and leaves your dishes clean, and grease-free, and you have the suds in there to soothe your worries!

How Well does this Dish soap handle Grease?

This natural dish soap handles dirty dishes and grease just as well as the grocery store bottle of dish soap.

Why is there not any castile soap in it?

I have never had success with Castile soap. Castile soap is a soap made from oils such as olive oil, castor oil, or even vegetable oils. I find that it reduces the suds in my soap and it doesn’t provide any extra benefit to the soap, therefore, I leave it out!

Is this Homemade Dish Soap Like Dawn Cost-Effective?

Yes! This dish soap like Dawn costs me about 21 cents per fluid ounce. For reference, Dawn Dish soap runs from 19 cents to 29 cents per fluid ounce. Natural soaps that you buy from popular brands online cost even more. So, in my opinion, this is very cost-effective for an all-natural soap!

What essential oils would work in this recipe?

You could pretty much use any essential oil that you would like in this homemade dish soap like Dawn. However, I am for essential oils that have disinfectant properties. My favorite essential oils to use are citrus oils such as lemon essential oil, orange essential oil, or a citrus blend! I also will sometimes use a “thieves” blend.

Differences between homemade dish soap and store-bought dish soap to be prepared for:

I have found that no matter what, I cannot make my soap have the same gel-like consistency as the store-bought soap. Sometimes I get just the right consistency if my water is thick enough, but I also don’t mind if it is more watered down, as long as it suds up and works!

Some tips and tricks I’ve read are adding kosher salt to your water and it will help thicken the solution. Salt also works as a good water softener. However, I have not personally tried this. If you would like to, add 2 teaspoons of salt to your final mixture.

Materials Needed To Make Homemade Dish Soap Like Dawn:

• Amber Glass Bottles
• Liquid Measuring Cups
• Measuring Spoon

How to Make Dish Soap Like Dawn

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 cup water- make sure it’s distilled
2. 1 Tablespoon Thickener- optional
3. 1 Teaspoon Citric Acid
4. 3/4 cup natural surfactant such as coco glucoside, caprylyl glucoside, or decyl glucoside. Coco Glucoside works best!
5. 3/4 cup glycerin
6. 15-20 drops of essential oils of choice

Note: You will want your surfactant to be at no more than 45% of your solution in this recipe because it will start to irritate your skin. Coco Glucoside is the best because it acts as a surfactant and solubilizer, which means it will clean well and your essential oils will also mix into your soap instead of separating.

These are all easily found on Amazon. Follow your bottle’s recommendations on percentages to use in your product and adjust as needed. 

Step 1:

Combine your surfactant and essential oils. Mix gently to avoid too much sudsing

Step 2:

Add glycerin to the mixture

Step 3:

Dissolve Citric acid in water and mix with your surfactant and glycerin mixture. Make sure to whisk gently to avoid too much sudsing.

Optional:

If you prefer to have thicker soap, heat your water on the stove slightly and dissolve 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, arrowroot powder, or xantham gum and your citric in it and whisk until thickened to a gel-like consistency. Let this cool before you add it to your other mixture. I don’t mind mine being slightly watery, it still works! 

How to Use:

You don’t need much soap in your water when washing dishes! For best results, I add about a half ounce or so to my hot water and let the kitchen sink fill before I add dishes to it.

You can also apply this to a dish brush. I will also buy a soap dispensing brush and use that to wash my dishes when I have very little to do!

I hope you love this soap recipe! If you do, leave a review and comment below! Ever since I have been making my own cleaning products, I have reduced the cost of so much in our home!

DIY cleaners and personal use products are so easy and cost-effective to make and reduce your toxin load so much!

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS, MEANING I GET A COMMISSION IF YOU DECIDE TO MAKE A PURCHASE THROUGH MY LINKS, AT NO COST TO YOU. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO

Sources:

decylg122011FRx (cir-safety.org)

What are Anionic and Nonionic Surfactants? – Safe Household Cleaning