Every little bit helps.

Cut the soap with 25 - 50% water. You use less. Less glops go straight down the drain, and it spreads out on your hands easier.

Or better, but the soap foamers. They are cut 10% soap to 90% water, and they cover your hands with soap great!

I agree about cutting liquid soap with water. I also cut my shampoo and rinse with water--about 25%. Works just as well and really stretches them!

Be careful about cutting with water. When doing that the PH changes and you can get accelerated bacterial and fungal growth.

We have a two-stage water filter & I use the water from that to cut the soap. Regardless, I would think you could safely dilute the soap without any bacterial growth using "distilled" water?

Distilled is NOT sterile.

But I have always diluted my shampoo about 50/50 with tap water and have had no problems with mold.

I don't understand cutting the shampoo or drying bars of soap to save money. It takes only a pea-size blob of thick shampoo, which you mix with water as you rub it into your hair, to get lots of lather without the bother of cutting it and storing the other bottle. If you have kids, it's much easier for them to control the thick shampoo than it is the thin stuff. Slop a little thin stuff and you've lost your savings.

Same with drying bars of soap. You have to rub them with a certain amount of water to get any lather, so what's the point of drying it in the first place?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a cheapskate. I just think things have to serve a purpose to justify doing them. Otherwise, it's just going through the motions. Besides, how much money do you think you save? Are there statistics about this, or sites where I can go to have my thinking adjusted?

I get mine for free..Dial regularly puts out coupons for 50 cents off of any Dial soap..I save these coupons. Our local store usually runs dial hand soap for $1. This store doubles all coupons up to .60. When this happens I stock up!
The most I have paid for liquid hand soap is 30 cents..and that's only because I found some coupons that were 35 cents off.

I am known to be frugal. I never throw out food, I do like my grandmother did and throw leftovers in a soup pot on Friday. I reuse tin foil pie plates. tin foil and plastic bags. I buy meat in bulk and cut it up myself and only when there is a good sale on it. We grow a big garden and I can, store and freeze most of our winter veggies and some fruit.

One thing I would never do however is cut my soap with water. To me the thicker the better. I realized years ago that I use less shampoo when I use a thick one. A nickel sized drop on my hand gives me a good shampoo. The purpose of my using a liquid hand soap is to avoid the bacteria on bar soap, and rid my hands of the same. I don't want to cut that cleaning power, but I have long used the refills instead of buying new bottles every time. My DIL buys that foaming soap and I hate it.

You see being frugal is all in how you look at things and what you consider important enough spend a bit extra on. We all have our ways of doing things--I'll stick with mine.

Rather than cutting the soup with water, how about putting a rubber band on the pump?

Commercial soap companies design those pumps to give you way more than you need. This way, they sell more units.

If you limit the amount you get with each use, you'll find you use significantly less and it works just fine. The rubber band is meant to limit the pump from depressing fully.

Erin