DIY Ingredients - Castile Soap

I have a lot of different posts planned for different cleaning supplies and things that I make at home. First, I think it is more important to post on the source of ingredients for those homemade items, rather than the items themselves. When it comes to making certain cleaning supplies, as you saw with the homemade laundry detergent, it is usually just a matter of mixing a few things together in a bucket and saying "Done!". It is more difficult to find where to buy the ingredients and even harder to find them without packaging.

Castile soap is a very useful item for several different reasons. Although I didn't post about it yet, I recently used some Dr. Bronner's unscented castile soap to make dog shampoo when our dog needed a bath. It is also key to making bathtub scrub and dish soap.

I did some shopping around on the best place to buy myself a gallon of Dr. Bronner's, and eventually settled on Sunnyside Market, where I put one on order. For the record, you can also pick them up off the shelf at Community Natural Foods. I happened to be ordering some other items from Sunnyside, so did it all together.

Sorry for the photo quality, my camera charger is currently MIA so this was taken with my iPod.



For the record, YES, the Dr. Bronner's came in a plastic jug. I have yet to find a place where you can buy soap directly into your own containers. Also, as I mentioned in my post about my bag of rice, some packaging exists in the background whether we take it home with us or not. If I had Sunnyside pour soap from a Dr. Bronner's jug into my own jar, does that mean it's packaging free? Not really. But the quantity of plastic I'm cutting down on by making my own end-products is worth the packaging of the ingredients, in my opinion. Besides which, I believe that a large gallon jug will be easier on the recycling process than a million smaller cleaning product containers. That being said, if you find packaging free soap, let me know!

What do you use castile soap for? Leave a comment!

Comments

  1. You can buy it in bulk from Community Natural Foods! I think the brand is Mountain Sky though!

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    1. Cool, I will have to check that out next time I'm there. I haven't seen it before.

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  2. Where did you buy this big jug? I am also in Calgary.

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    1. I bought this at Sunnyside Market in Kensington by special order, but you can also get it off the shelf at Community Natural Foods.

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  3. Thank you. Can you let me know how much it cost at both places? Or at least how much it cost at sunnyside?

    Thank you
    Sharan

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    1. I think at Community it is about $55, last time I checked. The price at Sunnyside was about the same, I think, but I would check with them when you're ordering. It could be a bit more

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  5. How does this react with Calgary's hard water? Does it form scum like bar soaps? Do you use it for body wash? If yes, how do you deal with soap scum on your skin? Thanks in advance.

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    1. I haven't noticed any soap scum on the sink or my skin. We usually use bar soap in the shower; the castile soap we mostly only use for making bathtub scrub and for washing the dog. The only place I ever have issues with soap scum is in the dishwasher, which is why my homemade dishwasher detergents didn't work out.

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  6. I’ve had success making dish soap and liquid hand soap using a bar of castile soap. You have to modify the “recipes” a little but it’s FAR more economical (one $6 bar has made 2 batches of each product), and comes with zero packaging other than the recycleable paper wrapper ����

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  7. We were using castile soap products i made from Dr. B and the scum build up on our tub and sink was so fast! With two littles, I stopped using it. Any suggestions?

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