We always like to give info that is practical, useful, and helps you become just a bit more self-sufficient. Today we will give you some recipes for making your own, anti-bacterial hand sanitizers. DIY hand sanitizers are fairly easy to make and inexpensive as well. You will need just a few ingredients and most are common household items. Some anti-bacterial ingredients you will know but some may surprise you with common items that you might never think of.
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The most important thing when making hand sanitizer is to be sure to use at least one ingredient that has anit-bacterial properties. Most of the hand sanitizer receipes listed below use more than one to give you that extra safety.
Each recipe below has different ingredients but all will need a container to hold your finished product. You can use just about any container you want or have on hand. Of course, the type of hand sanitizer you are making, gel or liquid, will make a difference in the container you can use. We can tell you, it is almost impossible, to spray thick gel out of a spray bottle. It can be done but there are much easier ways to waste time and hurt your fingers. So when choosing a container, keep that in mind.
We use all kinds of containers, re-cycled plastic bottles, re-using the squeeze bottle the aloe gel came in, odd and some times wacky glass bottles. The kids love to get special bottles for their personal hand sanitizers. You can use glass or plastic but metal tends to get rusty and gross. You can use, squeeze bottles, spray bottles, dropper bottles, plain old pour bottles will work, just be careful when you pour. Any size bottle will do also, depending on how big a batch of hand sanitizer you are making.
Most of the recipes below are for smaller, one container batches but you can make bigger batches as long as you calulate and keep the ratios correct.
Here are 4 ways to make DIY Anti-Bacterial Hand Sanitizer
1.
The quickest and easiest way to make your own special hand sanitizer is to use ready made hand sanitizer gel and add your own essential oils. This is how we normally make ours for home use. Strangely the hand sanitizer gel at the Dollar Tree usually has a higher alochol content than the gel you find at Wal-Mart.
You will need:
1 bottle hand sanitizer
10 to 20 drops Theives oil (has anti-bacterial properties)
10 to 20 drops peppermint oil
10 to 20 drops tea tree oil
Mix your essential oils together.
You will need to take a little gel out of the bottle to make room for the essential oils.
Add the essential oil to the gel bottle, top and shake.
The amount of essential oil drops depends on what size bottle hand sanitizer you start with. A small bottle will need 10 drops each and a large bottle will need 20 drops each.
This gives you the usual thick gel. You also end up with a cool minty scent and tingley feeling.
There is your cute, little, essential oil, hand sanitizer to carry with you where ever you go.
As with most of our essential oils, we use StarWest essential oils, as they are one of our most trusted essential oil dealers. As you can see in some of the pics, we did use different essential oils on these recipes. These oils were given to us as a gift, so we used what we had on hand.
Be sure with the next 3 versions you use the plain, aloe gel. It usually will say “after sun relief” but make sure it does not have lidocaine in the aloe gel. If you use the gel with lidocaine your hands may go numb.
2. you will need:
3/4 alcohol 99% if you can find it. You can use 70% or 91 % if you can not get 99%. But do note, the less alcohol consentration, the less effective the finished product.
1/4 aloe gel (again, plain aloe gel)
10 drops theives oil (has anti-bacterial properties)
10 drops peppermint oil
You can add other oils to your scent liking but Theives oil has anti-bacterial properties.
This recipe gives you a liquid finished product. You can put it in a sprayer bottle and spritz when needed.
Combine your alcohol and aloe gel. Mix well.
Add essential oils. Mix well.
Pour your liquid hand sanitizer into a spray bottle and you are ready to go.
3. you will need:
1 cup aloe gel (again, plain aloe gel)
1 cup vodka
20 drop Theives oils (has anti-bacterial properties)
20 drops peppermint oil
10 to 20 drops essential oil of your choice to add your prefered scent.
The vodka in this version kills germs. But Theives oil also has anit-bacterial properties.
We were surprised to find we had vodka in the house, as none of us are drinkers. But it seems you can clean gun parts with vodka, and people regularly drink this stuff, go figure.
This version makes a thiner gel when finished. We were able to pour the finished product back into the aloe gel bottle. The squeezy bottle makes for easy use.
This version does leave your hand sanitizer with an odd scent but it is not offensive. The essential oils cover up most of the vodka smell.
Combine and mix your vodka and aloe gel.
Add your essential oils. Mix well.
Pour into your container. In our case, we put the finished product back into the squeezy bottle that the aloe gel came out of. We recommend a funnel to help with this.
4. you will need:
An alcohol free version
1 cup aloe gel (again, plain aloe gel)
3 Tbs whitch hazel (kills germs)
10 drops theives oil (has anti-bacterial properties)
10 drops peppermint oil
Combine Witch Hazel and aloe gel. Mix well.
Add essential oils and mix well.
Pour into your bottle. We put ours back into the aloe gel bottle but it was a bit difficult, a different jar or wide mouth container might be easier. In truth, the kids has a great time making a mess to get the gel back into the bottle. It makes for easy use in the squeeze bottle.
You can add other oils to your scent liking but Theives oil has anti-bactirial properties.
This version make a good, thick gel when finished. It will have the nice, minty smell and tingley feeling.
If you want to get some bling on, you can add glitter to your gels also. The kids love the glitter. Be sure to use Today Glitter as it is the only environmentally safe, kid-safe, pet safe and cosmetic safe, non-plastic, bio-degradable glitter. You can add whatever color glitter you want to make a special hand gel, one per kid, as they never all want the same color or scent.
If you were of a mind to, you could make personalized hand sanitizer gels and give them as gifts. Nothing says “I Love You” more than giving someone a personal saftey item like hand sanitizer. Put some glitter in your hand sanitizer and dress up the bottle with a red ribbon or a rose and you have a practical Valentines gift. We often make hand sanitizer gel and add theives oil for the teachers at the local school. The teacher love the smell and the theives oil adds more anit-bacterial.
Today Glitter does offer a hand sanitzer that has glitter in it already for the reapply purpose. You can buy it if you like but DIY is so much more fun.
We hope this will give you some ideas for making your own personalized hand sanitizer gels or sprays. Try out several of the different versions as well as different essential oils and glitter colors. You can personalize your hand sanitizer to your exact liking. Experiment and enjoy.
In the spirit of helping you become more self-sufficient, we recently did a series on personal use items. We have given you recipes DIY for body powder, mouthwash, tooth powder, face serum, lemongrass deodorant, and liquid deodorant in case you missed any of those.
Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition on Out Standing in the Field.
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