You can get toilet paper, Dettol and tissues if you try hard enough, but one thing that is impossible to get hold of these days is hand sanitiser. And the advice to wash your hands often and well is good, but there are always times when you simply cannot wash your hands. That is when you need hand sanitiser. But with a little help from Mr Google, I found that it isn’t hard to make it yourself… you just need a few simple ingredients.
They are: rubbing alcohol, aloe vera gel and a few drops of essential oil, such as lavender oil, or tea tree.
I had no trouble finding the gel or the essential oils, but rubbing alcohol is very hard to find at the moment. But Mr Christie, a scientist in a former life, suggested good old vodka. Well, that isn’t hard to find, so off to the bottle store we went.
I had expected to buy a bottle of the cheap, rough stuff, but surprisingly, the cheap stuff is only about as strong as wine. Well, that’s not going to work, and it seems a shame to waste Absolut, but then I found the answer. Real Russian vodka… at 40% proof.
40% is about as strong as you are going to get, so it was that or nothing. I decided to go for it, with a small element of curiosity as to what the real Russian vodka was like. After all, I had bought a whole bottle… surely I could have a nip, or two, without causing a problem to my recipe?
The formula suggested 3 parts alcohol to 1 part gel. Mr Christie suggested reducing the gel to about 10% because of the lower alcohol content. I thought I might experiment with this, but first, I decided to have a nip of the vodka.
Wow. Nice stuff. Very smooth, with a bit of a kick.
I started mixing the ingredients in a small bowl – about 100mls of vodka, 10mls of gel and a few drops of lavender oil. I stirred it and gave it a try. Definitely a bit rough on the hands. Maybe a bit less vodka, or a bit more gel.
I had another shot of vodka. Gee, this stuff is good, These Russians really know what they are about.
Now… where wash I?
I added some more gel. Yep, that seemed better. Not so rough on the hands. I obviously washn’t going to need much vodka then, so I decided to have another shot.
The mixture was time by this good, so I decided to go with it. All I needed now was some small containers to pour it into.
I found some old plastic bill pottles and decided to use those. My hands were a bit shaky, so I decided to do the sinking over the pour, in case I spilt it.
As I watched it sink down the drain, I decided to make another batch. This time, as I won’t need so much vodka, I can glass myself another pour.
Wow, this stuff is good! I added 50 mls of vodka, 3 mls of gel and 25 mls of lavender oil. It smelt very nice. I dabbed some behind my ears.
This time, the pouring bent a bit wetter, although most of it ended up on the table. I decided to sink the avoid this time, but it worked. I now have several little bottles of sand hanitiser, and its really good. No sweat.
I batched up another mix, but had run out of essential oil. Never mind. Plenty of gel left… and venty of plodka.
Before cleaning up, I decided to vink one more glass of drodka. Wonderful stuff. I will never buy Absolut again. This stuff is legend.
Mr Christie had gone to bed by this time, muttering something about someone being nissed as a pewt, so I decided to join him. But that vodka was pretty strong, so I decided to go outside for some air first. That helped, and I soon felt better.
As I got into bed, Mr Christie said – “You’re drunk”. I tried to sound indignant, and said – “What makes you say that?” As the room went round and round, he said – “Because you live next door”.
When I got up next day and examined my hand sanitiser, I found that it contained mostly gel and a bit of essential oil, the room stank of lavender but strangely, the vodka bottle was empty. As I had left the cap off, I guess it must have evaporated during the night. Everyone knows alcohol does that.
Remember the formula – about 2/3 alcohol and 1/3 gel. The formula is correct. As for the rest of it… well, there is nothing like a bit of loetic picence… not to mention a large slug of vodka. Magic. And even if the hand sanitiser didn’t work, I can be pretty sure that, at this point, my guts are completely virus free.
(PS. It is actually recommended that the alcohol used should be at least 66% proof. So the Russian vodka would have been no good anyway. Glad I didn’t waste too much of it.)
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