Favorite castile soap uses and recipes

My newest favorite substance in the world, castile soap, has so many uses. Made from organic oils, it has a wide variety of cleaning uses. Here are some of my favorite uses and recipes!

Health and beauty

*Wash your face and hair. Just a drop for each. Mix with a dime-sized amount of baking soda for the greatest cleansing experience of your life!
*Use in the shower. Again just a drop for each your hair and face and a little squirt on a washcloth or poof for the rest of your body. Finish up by using it to shave your legs, a drop for each leg.
*Use in kids' bathwater. A good squirt in the bathwater, no other soap needed.
*Hand soap. Fill the hand soap bottle up with water and put a little squirt of castile soap in there. If it doesn't make enough suds for you put another squirt in.

Household

*General cleaning. A drop or two for cleaning or scrubbing anything up in the kitchen or bathroom.
*Laundry. A good squirt or two in with the wash water. Also great for washing cloth diapers!
*Dishes. A good squirt in the dishwater.
*Carpet stains. Gets those right up. A drop or two on a damp clean towel or squirt the fabulous cleaner/disinfectant spray on it.
*Cleaner/disinfectant spray: This is wonderful. I love this. Take a spray bottle and fill it about a fourth full with vinegar, just the white kind. Fill the rest of the bottle up with water. Then put in a squirt of castile soap and a few (three or four) drops of tea tree oil. Use this to clean literally everything -- counters, sinks, toilets, freshen carpets and furniture, and it even kills pesky little bugs. Vinegar naturally kills germs and so does tea tree oil, and castile soap cleans, so you have a fabulous cleaner and disinfectant just like that. What's also so wonderful about this cleaning spray is that it is perfectly natural, nontoxic, and you don't have to call poison control if your two-year-old decides he'd like to clean the carpets with it. It is not poison like commercially produced harsh chemical cleaners, which are harmful to the entire family as well as the environment.

Since you only use a drop or a squirt at most for everything, this terrific stuff lasts a long time. Coupled with the fact that you can use it all over the house, it is great for the money. You can get a 16 oz. bottle for less than $10 and it will last forever. (Unless your two-year-old, the clean freak that he seems to be although he also loves to make as many messes as possible, decides to pour out one third of a bottle straight onto the carpets.)

I have not found that I like to use it to mop the floors; it leaves a thin filmy residue on the floors at my house. Could be the cheap floor covering. And a word about an interesting science experiment, if you put straight vinegar and straight castile soap together you will get some oily globs. Make sure you have some water in there first before you put those two together. Not harmful at all, just a bit annoying.