"I just cleaned the coop" hand scrub

It seems like all I do anymore is clean these coops! The rain has been making mud everywhere and of course there's the constant supply of fresh poop that needs scraped and composted. No matter how I try I just can't keep myself as clean as I'd like to and when it comes time to wash up, I need a heavy scrub to get my hands super clean! 

Luckily I scored a great sale on a new product: Palmolive  'Soft on Hands' with Vitamin E dish liquid. Sounds perfect for making a hand scrub, right? Add Vitamin E fortified soap to a sugar scrub and it's a recipe for squeaky clean hands! Hand scrubs are one of the easiest body care products to make at home. This is the easiest recipe of them all. It uses nothing but sugar and soap, plus a cute little jar!

 First I filled my jar about 3/4 of the way with plain sugar. Next I added the Palmolive dish soap. Then I mixed it up. It was sort of runny, but when you mix the 2 ingredients it settles a bit. I added more sugar and mixed again. It was now about the right consistency. You want it thick enough that you can scoop it out, not so runny that it pours. That's it, you're done! I liked the light scent but you can add a few drops of essential oil if you prefer something different. You could also use a different scented dish soap if you want to make a more manly scrub. Dawn's original blue would be nice for men. 

I put it in a dollar store jar and tied a bit of twine around the lid. I like these jars because they come in all different sizes. I made this smaller one for my downstairs bathroom. I also added a few dyed Guinea feathers for decoration, but dried flowers would be pretty too.

You'll notice that I didn't give exact amounts for the recipe. It's about a 4:1 ratio. You might like it thinner or thicker then I do, but more then that if I tell you 4 cups sugar to 1 cup soap....you'll going to have a LOT of scrub to jar up! If you're making gifts, that would be great, but for home use I prefer to just mix it up 1 jar at a time. 

I've been dabbling in homemade beauty products for probably a dozen years now. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Lush...but I'm cheap remember? So while I love the smell of loveliness that high end beauty products have, I know I can make it much cheaper (and healthier) myself. When you make your own body scrubs, lotions, lip balms, creams etc you can also control just how much chemical your body comes in contact with too. Did you know that your skin is your body's largest organ? It absorbs the stuff we put on it and I'm just not comfortable putting tons of chemicals on my skin on a regular basis. 

I make several different types of scrubs, admittedly this one has the highest chemical content of them all (since it uses pre-made soap) I also only use this for the times when my hands are the dirtiest....like after gardening all day! You'd be surprised how well this will scrub the ground in dirt right off your hands. Give it try, I think you'll love it!

~L

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