When I first decided to make my own personal care and household cleaning products I didn’t realise just how many products I would have to make. However, I also had no idea about how simple the process would be for most products and how simple the ingredients could be. One product that was a bit tricky was body wash. We take our body wash or shower gel for granted don’t we? Over the years the manufacturers have perfected the silky soft, creamy soaps that smell good enough to eat. But they incorporate a whole lot of ingredients that we don’t want to use. So the questions is, can we make a product that is just as sweet smelling and appealing and that does the job?

* Before I go on I just want to let you know that I have added some links to my doTERRA webpage throughout this post so you can check out any of the oils I mention.

Over the past 12 months I have tried 3 different recipes and each one has its positives and negatives. I thought it might be helpful to tell you about each one, include a review of each one and then let you decide.

So here goes…..

Foaming Body Wash

I will let you in on a little secret, the recipe posted a few months ago for Foaming Hand Wash can also be used as your Foaming Body wash. This is really easy and requires only a small amount of Castile Soap (1 tablespoon) in your foaming soap container along with water, a carrier oil and Essential Oils. So this is quite a cheap recipe to make. However, I found that it doesn’t go very far when you try to wash yourself in the shower. It was quite frustrating having to keep pumping out more of the foam onto my shower puff because the lather was not long lasting.

Positives: Quick and easy to make and quite cheap.

Negatives: Doesn’t lather up well and you need to keep pumping!

Creamy Body Wash

I have used this recipe for Creamy Body Wash for about a year. It is from Krissy Ballinger’s The Inspired Little Pot Recipe Page. This product is creamy and looks a bit like the commercial shower gels (although it is just plain white). My family were reasonably happy with it and we used it for over a year.

One of the issues I have with this recipe is the thickness of the final product. It is thickened with Xanthan gum and is very gummy and difficult to pour.  I purchased some wide mouth pump jars and that eased the pouring problem but I found that the product was variable from batch to batch because of the difficulty in dispersing the Xanthan gum throughout the mixture. I make it in my Thermomix which makes it easy to mix it all up but there was always a lot of the gum left in the bottom around the blades, regardless of how careful I was during the process.

I also found that I wasted quite a bit of the mix when in the shower. This is because it slips off the shower puff quite easily. My family used it very quickly too, going through one of the tubs you see above in a week or so. There are three bathrooms in my house and until recently they were all in use every day so I had to make quite a lot of this mixture i.e. I had to make it every week.

I believe that this is quite an expensive product to make, not just because I had to make it so often but because of the ingredients. I usually made double the quantity of the recipe you see on Krissy’s page and that was enough for my three pump pots. That meant that I was using 400 ml of Castile Soap and 10 grams of Xanthan Gum each week. The end result was probably only a little cheaper than the commercial mixes.Whilst cost is not everything, and not my reason for making my own product, I recognise that for some people it could be prohibitive.

One more thing about this mix – I don’t like the smell of Castile Soap and because there is so much of it in this recipe it was difficult to mask the smell with Essential Oils. I found that the only way I could so this was with Lavender and Peppermint. I wanted to make some citrus mixes but the aroma did not come through very well in the final product.

Positives: Similar consistency to commercial shower gels, quite effective lather and coverage.

Negatives: A bit too thick, smelly and expensive, quick to make but a bit messy to clean up.

Moisturising Body Wash

I found this recipe on Pinterest and it comes from One Essential Community 

We have been using this recipe for about two months now and I have to say it is the best one I have tried so far. It is easy to make and includes simple ingredients. The secret ingredient is coconut milk!!  This is what helps with the foaming of the body wash when you use it in the shower. It does include Castile Soap too as well as a carrier oil and Essential Oils. The recipe includes vegetable glycerin but I find that it works just as well without this ingredient.

This product also lasts quite a long time. If I fill one on my wide mouth pots with this product it lasts in my shower for about two weeks. This is about twice as long as the Creamy Body Wash. You can choose your oils – I personally find that to mask the Castile soap smell I need to use a mint of some kind – Spearmint and Lime makes a nice mix. Peppermint, Lavender and protective blend are also options if you don’t like Spearmint.

Positives: Quick to make, effective, lasts well, simple ingredients.

Negatives: It is quite runny so be careful that you don’t lose it down the drain. Use a good shower puff so you can lather up well. I would not keep this in the shower for more than a few weeks. There is a risk that something will start growing in it. Between the milk and the Castile soap you are providing lots of ingredients for microorganisms to grow on!!

Which one will you choose to make?

I suggest that you try each of these products and decide for yourself which one you prefer. If your family is a bit fussy they may take a bit of convincing. Andrew was keen to try my products and has been happy with all of them. Other family members complained that they missed the strong smells from commercial products. I encourage you to stay strong on your quest for a healthier household and give these new ideas a chance.

What Next?

If you are ready to enter the world of essential oils and you decide to go the doTERRA way, I would love to help you get started and support you if you want some help. Here is how you can do this: go to my doTERRA website to find out about the range of oil and oil based products available for purchase. You can also sign up to become a member on this site. Once signed up you can purchase oils for wholesale prices! But if you would like some more information click on the Contact Me on the doTERRA website and I will respond to your questions.

We hope you will join us at Helpful By Nature by subscribing to our email list. We would love to hear from you, take your questions and provide answers if we are able.

 

Until next time,

Gillian (and Andrew)