Find out who manufacturered your fixtures and go to their web site, I’m sure you’ll find a soap dispenser to match.
Dr. Bronner’s is great stuff. The peppermint is great for curing hangovers, but should be avoided on ‘pink parts’, as it is very, very invrigorating.
Mrs. Meyer’s is another great brand that is less chemical-ly.
Yeah, but they’re regular soap dispensers. I’m looking for those that foam immediately upon dispensing.
Both will work adequately for either job, but they are fundamentally designed for different purposes. If you know someone that makes their own soap, I highly doubt that they are getting into the proprietary formulations that the Proctor and Gamble’s are selling. Ultimately a soap is just a surfactant that surrounds the oily substances, wets the surface and creates micelles. Any chemical that does this will serve as a soap. You could wash your hair with toothpaste if you wanted, but it wouldn’t be good for your hair because it is too basic. Shampoo is typically somewhat more acidic so that it doesn’t break up the disulfide bonds that give your hair structure. Shampoo is also designed so that it doesn’t completely strip your hair of all it’s oils as normal soap would do.
That said, I’m sure you could adequately wash your hands with shampoo.
I’m gauche - I’ve been reusing my Dial foaming soap dispenser, with, as I said, half Suave shampoo and half water. If you want something more fancy schmancy, Amazon has a couple with pretty low ratings.
Perfect start! All my Google-fu up to this point has led me to institutional suppliers. Wow! I hadn’t imagined there was an off-the-shelf, Dial solution. Thanks, WhyNot. Err… does your home made refill foam?
Yep, very foamy! It foams because of a special pump, not special soap. Regular liquid soap or shampoo is too just thick for foaming soap dispensers to get through the foaming pump - it splats, instead. Just thin it out with water, shake it, and you’re good to go.
I’ve found that every body wash I’ve tried leaves a slippery film on my skin that takes a lot of rubbing to get rid of, while bar soap rinses off clean. Why is that?
It’s probably the fatty acids found in body washes (and conditioners).
Because bar soap is a soap, and liquid bodywash is a detergent. Soaps leave a film of soap behind that most people think feels “clean”. It’s not, it’s just the soap film you’re used to. And, as **PunditLisa **points out, most bodywashes have added emollients.
I read the article, and I’d love to be enlightened that I’m wrong, but I believe that antibiotics and anti-bacterial things work in different ways. From what I can tell, systemic antibiotics target something particular about the bacteria, but things like topical anti-bacterial soaps and things do harsher things like destroying the cell membrane that you can’t build up a resistance to. Kind of like how humans can develop a tolerance for arsenic, but throw them in a 1000 degree furnace, and no one’s making it out alive.
This is true. They don’t make anti-bacterial soap by adding antibiotics to soap. It is virtually impossible for bacteria to build up a resistance to an antibacterial soap. Wiki
I’m pretty sure Arsenic slowly accumulates in your body and becomes increasingly toxic. I’ve never heard of resistance to Arsenic.
I just got back from Dollar General, and they have foaming hand soaps for a buck now!
I’m sorry, whaaa?
So how does the Triclosan get in there then?
This is true - the reason over reliance on anti-bacterial soaps is a bad thing is due to your immune system never getting the chance to “keep in shape”, so to speak.
Triclosan is not an antibiotic, it is an antiseptic.
I couldn’t think of any deadly thing that humans face that they can have hereditary resistance to. Maybe if a worldwide outbreak of malaria hit, all of the people with sickle-cell anemia would be left?
If you want to do it the economical (‘cheap’) way, save the little slivers of soap that are left when your bar of bath soap is almost worn away, and put them in a container. Then add water and let them sit until they get to the liquidity you want. That works fine in a liquid soap dispenser, and preserves environmental resources, too.
Oh, I’m all about frugality. I let the soap slivers soften a bit, then weld them to the new bar.
I got some nice smelling cheapo shampoo yesterday – it seems to be working fine. My hands don’t have a single split end and no frizz! 
Wonderful! I’ve been looking for something to tame these hairy palms of mine!