How to Make Hand Sanitizer at Home with Active and Natural Ingredients

How to make hand sanitizer? First, the making of sanitizer is not a substitute for proper handwashing. BUT it can help because of the active and natural antiviral ingredients. Do you want to know what are the ingredients and simple steps on how to make it?

How to make hand sanitizer using the ingredients ready at home? You can make a different version of it; however, it always needs to contain alcohol. Why alcohol?

The alcohol can be found in hand sanitizer is the main ingredient why, because it can be used to kill germs and virus-like the novel COVID-19. Without vaccines available, it is the first option for many while away, and there is still limited supply.

To kill the virus, health experts recommend hand sanitizer should not be less than 60% alcohol content. But the good news about making it at home is that you can choose other ingredients you can mix with alcohol. Now, this is what we are talking about!

I am feeling like a chemist, and safety is my top priority on how to make it at home. Before the killer virus is roaming around us, it has been taken for granted. Even using alcohol and handwashing has been forgotten before the onset of the dangerous strain of flu. But now, a little bit of exposure outside is hazardous, so I decided to make my own sanitizer. 

But making hand sanitizer is not an excuse to forget proper handwashing with regular soap and warm water. It was only a resort when I touched some surface, which I am not sure if it is clean. For example, at the grocery store, I cannot be sure that the shopping carts are fresh, so I am using it in spray to make sure that all the surface is free from viruses and germs.

What is a homemade hand sanitizer?

Homemade hand sanitizer is made of all-natural ingredients. Of course, it should never miss the alcohol for antiviral and antibacterial properties. It will be enough for your hand sanitizer safe to use and will surely kill the bacteria without lab testing.

How to Make It

Essential Oils

Let us begin with the ingredients to be used to make hand sanitizer. One of the components for homemade sanitizer is essential oils. My favorite essential oils are lemon, orange, and tea tree.

These three essential oils have natural disinfectants aside from they smell nice and clean. Tea tree oil has been tagged to be a natural anti-inflammatory and proven that it can kill viruses, bacteria, mold, and fungi.

Just take note of the lemon and orange oils, which can make your skin more sensitive to sun exposure. It is called photosensitivity. So the best way to prevent this is to dilute these oils. Why I chose these oils? Well, these oils have high antiseptic properties. There are other oils, but I have seen more advantages using lemon, orange, and tea tree essential oils.

If you have some issues with pure essential oils, you can try the preblended oils. 

Alcohol

When we say alcohol, I am not only pertaining to isopropyl alcohol. There are many substitute liquids with alcohol content. Alcohol is the main ingredient of the homemade sanitizer. My top choices for my alcohol for making hand sanitizer at home are the following:

My first choice of alcohol is those with the least amount of anti-microbial properties. Meaning, I am considering not less than 60 – 80 % alcohol. This percentage of alcohol has nourishing properties to our hands. But it can still be used as a germ-fighting hand sanitizer.

Less than 60% alcohol can be used to make homemade hand sanitizer. The vodka, for instance, can be used because of the anti-microbial properties in this liquid. Most vodka contains around 40-45% alcohol, which is enough when diluted to make sanitizer at home. However, using vodka for hand sanitizer can cause a slight drying of hands.

Using more than 80% alcohol in hand sanitizer is known as a high grain hand sanitizer. This type of sanitizer can dry your hands, so using it often is not advisable.

The Gel Hand Sanitizer

The ingredients for this are alcohol, aloe vera gel, and tea tree oil. To make this, mix three parts of alcohol and 1 piece of aloe vera gel. Then add a few drops of tea tree oil as you like for fragrance. You will gradually see the change in the texture until it reached a gel-like formula.

The Spray Hand Sanitizer

If you found the gel hand sanitizer sticky to your hands, you need to know how to make it. The ingredients you will need are alcohol, glycerol or glycerin, hydrogen peroxide, distilled water, and a spray bottle. For this, I opt to use an aloe mixture to lessen the sticky texture of the hand sanitizer.

There are various ways to mix these ingredients for the spray sanitizer. 

Mix the 12 ounces of alcohol with 2 teaspoons of glycerol. Glycerol is needed for it to keep the sanitizer from drying out your hands. But no worries if you do not have glycerol. You can use moisture after applying it to keep your hands hydrated.

Then mix one tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide to 3 fluid ounces of distilled or boiled then cooled water. You can adjust the alcohol at least ¾ if you want a lower concentration solution. 

After making the mixing, you can put it into spray bottles. Then you can add some essential oil for more scent.

Sharing My Thoughts

In making homemade sanitizers, alcohol is the main ingredient of the solution. You can choose aloe vera gel to protect your hands against its drying effects. Aloe vera has humectant properties that can lock the moisture in your hands. For substitute to aloe vera, you can use hand lotion after using the hand sanitizer.

Adding essential oils to your hand sanitizer can tone down the effect of alcohol. It will disinfect your hands, and at the same time, it adds scent to it. Make sure that it has at least 60% alcohol for an antiviral solution. 

It would be helpful to apply moisturizer after hand sanitizer to keep your hands in top shape, even using hand sanitizer. It will also prevent irritations because of the higher concentration of alcohol. Remember that your hands are delicate as well, so you should not take for granted to take care of it.