It’s been a wild week here in Southern California, the lines and crowds at Costco have been unlike
any I’ve ever seen (and I’ve been a “regular” for about a decade now)!
As of Wednesday, pretty much every store in the South Bay, near L.A., was completely sold out of hand sanitizer, which has lots of people pretty shook.
Another eye opening first, Amazon is sold out too.
Now, this is not a huge ordeal in our household, we don’t normally purchase hand sanitizer and if I do carry it (park days, museums etc) it’s homemade tea tree oil spray. We are very fortunate and no one here has a compromised immune system or is under a year old or elderly - but we know and love people in all three of those categories, so stopping the spread of germs is important to us.
Here’s what I know... ((this is my disclaimer before you get your mixing bowls and wee bottles out)):
Nothing is better than a good soap and warm water hand washing, so remember:
WASH YOUR HANDS, properly and often.
If you are gonna use hand sanitizer, the CDC recommends hand sanitizer have an isopropyl alcohol content of 60% or more, some sources say 70% or more.
The typical ratio in the classic “alcohol/ aloe” homemade sanitizer is 60/40.
Again, for anyone in the back that didn't hear me.....HAND SANITIZER IS NOT A REPLACEMENT FOR PROPER HAND WASHING.
CNet recently published THIS article about why making your own alcohol-based hand sani is NOT a good idea- so in transparency and fairness I linked it, there are some valid, accurate points covered in the article so please read it and decide for yourself.
Keep in mind we did not go overboard to create perfectly sterile conditions etc, but we did discuss the importance of that while we work.
Keep in mind, I am not a doctor or a public health expert, I’m a homeschool mom conducting a curiosity experiment and invite you to come along and learn with us!
We set out to make two different hand sanitizers, 1 isopropyl alcohol based and 1 with no alcohol (witch hazel based).
The plan:
Make both sanitizers
Test/use on hands and record personal opinion data (alternating types)
Record what we like/dislike, what would we do differently next time.
Swab an item...computer key board or cell phone and swipe into 2 petri dishes- put one of each hand sanitizer types on the samples, label, incubate, record results
Here are the recipes we used.
Alcohol Based Hand Sanitizer:
1 cup Isopropyl Alcohol the higher the % the better (91-99% recommended for maximum sanitizing)
⅔ cup pure aloe vera
1 tablespoon vitamin e oil
20 drops lavender essential oil
*the alcohol is PUNGENT A F guys- you can do this with kids but I would not recommend doing it with really wee ones, for me this is not a preschool friendly mixture. I’d do it outside and would not recommend inhaling it (like don’t take a huge whiff of it for any reason). It’s also poisonous if you swallow it, so be sure your kids know that- lots of opportunities for discussion and learning here!
Alcohol- free hand sanitizer:
1 cup witch hazel
1 tablespoon FCT (Fractionated coconut oil)
1 teaspoon vitamin e oil
20 drops of tea tree oil
10 drops of immunity blend or clean/purifying oil blend
*this one is a much more kid-friendly recipe, both gave us opportunities to measure, and discuss ratio and how to adjust recipes when necessary! This one smells WAY better too!!
Ok! We’ve got em mixed up and ready for the next parts of our home-based experimenting!
Our petri dishes got misplaced so we had to re-order them last minute- this is life as two mom’s homeschooling 4 kids with 3 dogs running all around….we know they are SOMEWHERE but we can’t find them so have a bottle of each type shelved and no one is touching it so we can use those when the new dishes arrive to conduct our “which is more effective at killing germs” experiment!
Stay tuned for PART 2, next week, where we see which one works best!
Before you go, I wanted to share this insight on the two bases we used and the research we conducted prior to attempting our DIY hand sani.
I remember when my son was young someone (or the internet) told me hand sanitizer was toxic, and contained a neuro-toxin, specifically, which is SUPER upsetting to a first time mom with an infant...again, for the third or fourth time let me say- proper hand washing reigns supreme, but that isn’t always an option! We visit many public places, parks etc that don’t have facilities with warm water and soap- or any water or any soap, period. So when the best option isn’t an option, it’s great to have hand sanitizer as a back up!
Here’s what I found out- about 7 years ago there was non-alcohol hand sanitizer that contained an ingredient called triclosan, which is now banned by the FDA. At the time, in an article written by Bob Barnett of upwave.com, Bob states “Research has shown that triclosan can disrupt the endocrine system, amplifying testosterone. In animal studies, it reduced muscle strength. It may also harm the immune system.”
Isopropyl and Witch Hazel are both ranked at a 2 on the EWG ingredient checker and are both “SAFE” base alternatives for hand sanitizer.
Additional resource, WHO recipes.