How to Make Hand Sanitizer With Ingredients You Have at Home

Making Hand Sanitizer at home in two minutes with ingredients that you have in the house may become a new household chore. The continued spread of the H1N1 Flu has sparked the public to be diligent with their flu prevention behavior. While this immediate and important response from the public is to be commended, it has left the shelf bare in the local grocery store and has emptied the inventories of the online drugstores. This article will walk through the steps of making cheap, fast hand sanitizer.

While this article will show you how to produce your own hand sanitizer, please remember that hand washing with lots of hand soap and hot water is the best way to control germs, bacteria or viruses that you have picked up from door knobs, escalator buttons, grocery store carts or any number of a variety of places. Thank goodness for portable hand sanitizer for when you have been on the subway holding the germ covered hand rails that have been handled by thousands of people all day. Before you carry all of these germs into your car, use a little hand sanitizer to keep these germs out of your life and off of your steering wheel and radio. In situations such as this when washing your hands is impractical, hand sanitizer is your best bet to leave those germs outside of your personal space.

Additionally, if you are able to find hand sanitizer in the store - buy it and use it. Why, you ask, would an article that shows the reader how to make their own hand sanitizer recommend the store bought variety? It is simple, the retail varieties of hand sanitizer have been researched and tested. They are known to be effective, to have an acceptable 'shelf life', and they have been formulated with skin softeners so that they will not overly dry your skin. This article is intended for those who are staring at the empty shelf where hand sanitizers used to be well stocked!

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Isopropyl Alcohol
• Hair Gel
• Zip top bag
• Measure
• Container for hand sanitizer

1. 
   Assemble Ingredients

   First, assemble the ingredients.
   
   The primary ingredient is alcohol. While lots of internet recipes recommend types of alcohol mixes that have very high alcohol contents, this article focuses on what we have in our own medicine cabinet. Commonly found on other internet recipes is the use of grain alcohol! In this job market, probably not a good idea to smell like grain alcohol all day! This recipe sticks to traditional hygiene supplies. So open your medicine cabinet and take out the 70% Isopropyl Alcohol. This is the first ingredient. The next ingredient needs to be a thickening agent, which will be hair gel. There are two reasons why hair gel is the second ingredient 1. it already has alcohol so we know it will not curdle when mixed with alcohol 2. it will mix homogeneously with alcohol and thicken the Isopropyl Alcohol to a gel consistency. So, while you are in the medicine cabinet, pull out your second ingredient, hair gel.

2. Second, assemble the mixing materials.
   
   You will need a zip-top sandwich bag (use quart or gallon only if you are making large quantities). You will need a unit of measure, this can be a measuring cup or a shot glass or, as in the pictures shown here, a glass bowl.

3. 
   Add the Hair Gel to the Isopropyl Alcohol

   Third, mix the ingredients.
   
   Hand Sanitizers are most effective when the alcohol content is at approximately 60%. Therefore you want to add as little of the thickening agent (hair gel) as you can to make the Isopropyl Alcohol thicken. For this recipe mix two parts (one small bowl shown in picture) of Isopropyl Alcohol to 1 part (1/2 of the small bowl shown in picture) of Hair Gel. Pour out the Isopropyl Alcohol, place in the sandwich bag (you may want to put it in a bowl or mug to keep it upright). Cap the Isopropyl Alcohol. Then fill the bowl half way full with hair gel and place this into the zip-top bag. Squeeze air out of the bag as you seal the zip-top. Lay this flat and use your hand to mix the two ingredients until you see the mixture thicken. This should only take 30 seconds.

4. 
   Turn the ziplock bag into a pastry bag

   Fourth, gather your dispensing containers.
   
   Use a permanent marker to indicate that this is the home made hand sanitizer so that when you are able to buy more hand sanitizer from the store you can put the homemade sanitizer away until you need it again. If you do not have empty hand sanitizer containers use an empty hand soap dispenser or other container. To fill the containers clip off a small corner of the bottom of the ziploc bag with scissors.

5. 
   Fill your containers

   Fifth, fill your empty hand sanitizer containers.
   
   Hold the bag like a pastry bag and fill.

6. 
   Storing additional content

   Last step - store unused hand sanitizer.
   
   When the container is full, and if you still have hand sanitizer in the bag, pinch the open hole and use two fingers to squeeze the contents further into the bag, away from the hole. Use a tie for a loaf of bread to close the corner until you need it again.

Tips & Warnings

• Soap and Water is always Best!
• Use store bought hand sanitizer if you can find it.
• Go www.cdc.gov for official information on how to prevent the flu

[rushaun]

on 11/16/2009 thankz very much for all that inportant info

[ucheihejirika]

on 11/15/2009 Beautiful idea. Thanks for the info

[jaxicat]

on 11/11/2009 Very good idea and very thorough directions on how
to make the hand sanitizer. Had no idea you could even make your own! Thanks for posting! The directions
were simple enough for even me to do them!!!! :)

[tessieann]

on 10/27/2009 Never thought about making our own! 5*

[DiscountTickets]

on 10/17/2009 Yeah, I do something similar like this.