Make a Mason Jar Foaming Soap Dispenser

My tutorial was originally published here on Crafting a Green World.

Foaming soap is so much fun to use, but store-bought foaming soap often is either made from super-shady ingredients or is ridiculously expensive. 

If you've ever experienced either of those scenarios, then you are going to be STOKED at how easy it is to make your own foaming mason jar soap dispenser, and your own totally natural, totally good-for-you foaming soap to go in it. Although I prefer Mason jars for all of the foaming soap dispensers in my house (I pick antique Mason jars out of a 1950-s era dump that the former owners of my home didn't tell me was in the back of the six-acre property--good times!), this tutorial will work just as well for any glass jar whose mouth is the right size to fit a canning jar lid. Some spaghetti sauce jars, for instance, are actually really cute, and some even have the embossing to make them identical to canning jars. 

 Here's what you'll need to make your own Mason jar soap dispenser:

Supplies And Tools

• Mason jar or any jar with the correct mouth size
• Foaming soap dispenser lids. You can buy these for either a regular mouth or wide-mouth canning jar. Before these started to be made commercially, I'd buy just the foaming soap dispenser parts and hammer an opening into a canning jar lid to fit them--what a stinking pain in the butt! This is the one case in which I am THRILLED that I don't have to DIY every part of my project.
• Dr. Bronner's liquid soap. I was obsessed with peppermint for at least a decade, but now nothing will tear me away from almond.
• Water.

Directions

1. Cut the foaming soap dispenser to size. You'll need to do this if you're using a pint jar, but not if you have a quart one. Fortunately, the plastic dispenser can be cut with kitchen scissors, so all you have to do is measure the height of your jar, then mark that same distance from the top of the foaming soap dispenser's lid. Cut the excess off of the dispenser, making sure to cut at a slant.
2. Make your foaming soap. My favorite recipe is 1 part Dr. Bronner's liquid soap to 4 parts water. For a pint jar, that means that I use 1/3 cup of Dr. Bronner's and 1 1/3 cups of water. If you want to make your foaming soap even more special, here's a recipe for an antibacterial hand soap that has only one additional ingredient.
3. Attach the foaming soap dispenser lid. All you have to do is screw it on, then pump it a few times to get the soap going.

Now with your very own mason jar soap dispenser, you have no excuses not be as clean as a whistle!