Hey y'all. It's still flu season, and I'm still a germophobe, so hand washing is a pretty important part of my daily life, and questions about whether it's been done, and to what level of satisfaction, make up approximately 50% of my conversations with Lou.

Simple hand soap you can make yourself. Sort of.

Let's start with the soap.

We switched to "homemade" soap - you'll see the need for the quotes in a sec - a while ago, and we've never looked back. I really don't miss buying plastic bottles or storing big bags of refill, or really any of it, except Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Geranium scent. That I do miss.

The reason I hesitate to really call this stuff "homemade" is because it's not so much made as switched - from glycerin-heavy soap made specifically for hands to just general castille soap, which you can (and I do) use on pretty much everything. We use Dr. Bronner's, but there are lots of castille soaps out there. Here's how you can can make the switch.

1. The Really, Really Easy Way. Pour about a 1:3 ratio of liquid castille soap and water into a soap dispenser (see empty Mrs. Meyer's, above). Wash hands.

This works. It's soapy and cleans your hands. But, after a lifetime of conditioning by supermarket stuff, you might find it lacks the slipperiness of store-bought, and it won't be satisfying to you. In that case, here's option two, for a delightfully slimy, sudsy experience.

Homemade hand soap. Just as slimy and foamy as store-bought.

2. The Really Easy Way.

For this, you do need some special equipment: a foaming soap dispenser. I got mine at the local discount store for less than $10. You can also reuse one you've got. With a foaming dispenser, you work with a 1:5 soap to water ratio (so even more cost effective over the long run - you'll make up the cost of the dispenser). My soap dispenser happens to be pretty large, so I had about 2 cups of total liquid.
To that, I added about a teaspoon of glycerin. If your dispenser is smaller, add less - more like a half teaspoon, and work your way up from there, to your desired level sliminess. You can get glycerin at any drug store - and it much small quantities that you typically have to purchase it online. I got the tiny bottle of it for $2, and I've still got lots left, after making soap and our failed snow globe experiment.
To this, if you like, you can add several drops of essential oil. I used lavender castille soap and lemon essential oil, just like I use in my all purpose cleaner, because I just love the combination. But you should use any combo you like.

So which should you do? Well, we honestly didn't find that the regular, slimeless, castile + water was lacking. In fact, I often find regular stuff to be too slimy now - Soft Soap and its ilk. But it may be that guests to our home were seriously underwhelmed by our soap, and I just don't know. I personally wouldn't have switched to the foaming dispenser for texture alone, but when I decided to switch our soap dispenser for aesthetic reasons - which are not silly - I figured I'd give a foaming one a try. I added in glycerin and essential oils to make the whole experience more luxurious. And it is, in fact, more luxurious. We all like it. So if you're into small luxuries, I say go for the big guns on this. If you take more of a puritan approach to hand washing, just mix some castille and water.

But it's not just about the soap y'all.

If the nicer smelling, smoother hand soap is the carrot to the hand washing equation, the threat of extinction by zombie is the stick. I wouldn't call this "art," - I whipped this up in about 20 minutes, relied on someone else's talent and didn't so much as use a special font - but it's decor, let's say.

I've seen versions of this floating around. If you're interested in one, for sure do an Etsy search - you can have printable versions for only a couple bucks and printed versions for under $20. I really like this one, this one and this one.

But you know what? I really like mine, too. I didn't draw that hand - instead, I am using this image from DragoArt.com, a really cool site that shows you how to draw stuff. I plopped it into Publisher (the only computer program I can even pretend to use - and even that's pretty laughable) and added the text. Like I say, I didn't even use any special fonts. These are all readily available on your computer, so if you want to make one of these, it'd be super easy. But if you'd like, I'm also happy to send anyone the jPEG or Publisher file - as long as you don't use it for commercial use, and instead use it as a way to add some much needed oomph to your admonishments to not be gross germ-covered mini humans. Shoot me an email (onceandfuturehome@gmail).

It's pretty fitting in our house: Bret and I never met a post-apocalyptic book, movie, tv series or theory we weren't interested in, no matter how bad the acting.

So that's the post for today! May you be inspired to wash your hands, or give a veeeeery disapproving look to someone in the bathroom who doesn't. Thanks for reading, holla if you want a copy of the "art," and I'll see you tomorrow.