Am I a frugal genius or condemning my DC to a horrible skin disease?!

[Cantseetheforest]

Lighthearted, obvs.

We ran out of bubble bath, and my 2yo dd thinks baths without bubbles are akin to waterboarding. In desperation, I squirted our mild family-friendly hand soap into the bath. It smells of fruit salad sweets! It froths up pretty well and I've been using it ever since.... Probably won't get around to buying bubble bath again.

An acquaintance grew up using fairy liquid for bubble bath, which would probably get a lot bubblier, but is perhaps not as kind to skin.

We used to have our hair washed in Palmolive washing up liquid! And it substituted for bubble bath.... And we did the washing up with it. DF worked for Colgate Palmolive and got it free. We probably would have brushed our teeth in it too if he hadn't got Colgate too. Actually, the toothpaste he got was Ultrabrite - much harsher than Colgate was.

If your dd does not have any bad reactions to bathing in your fruit salady hand wash, then why not?

Yep, we didn't have much money growing up so it was a big bath time treat to have a squirt of fairy liquid in the bath. The bubbles were great!

No horrible skin diseases here!

I remember fairy liquid (or cheapo equivalent) in the bath too. Huge treat.

I think your family will be fine cantSee. And squeaky clean.

Surely hand wash is much more expensive per 100ml / litre than bubble bath?

I haven't done the figures, lottie, but you are likely right. I do like using this for more than one purpose, sommaybe fairy liquid will get a look in when we run out of hand soap!

That's a genius idea! As a kid I was always on the lookout for the perfect bubble bath. I should just just squirted the hand soap into the bath as it foams anyway lol.

I sometimes buy a big bottle of bubble bath and use it to fill the hand wash bottles and as bubble bath.

Some of the fairy liquid smells awesome nowadays, im secretly tempted to use that in my bath ;)

I always buy the big bottle of shop brand bubble bath and top up my posh hand wash bottles. All fur coat and no nickers, me.

It has always puzzled me while shower gel/hand wash from the same ranges have different prices when they have identical ingredients. I think it must be a marketing thing along the lines of pink 'girls' razors costing more than the blue boy razors. Keep on using the bargain bubbles. Xx

Washing up liquid is quite harsh on skin - it's formulated to cut through grease and so it'll strip the oils from skin.

It does make incredible bubbles but don't do it often and oil up after!

When we were kids Dm didn't want to 'waste' money on bubble bath so me and dsis used to use fairy liquid instead.
I used to love stopping at my DG house as she used to buy Matey bubble bath, bliss at the time.
However, when older DC were younger, if I ran out of bubble bath then I'd resort to using hand wash for bubbles and it never harmed them. Therefore YANBU

I buy Sanex shower cream and bath cream - but I suspect they are the same.

Palmolive soap? You were lucky, we had dettol baths (still love the smell!)

DD has sensitive skin so I buy the Sanex Zero for kids, but only buy it on offer so never pay more than about £1.30 for a large bottle.
Its on offer loads.

I'm in my mid 40s, and I remember my Gran (who was a nurse trained in the 30s) used to make us bath in a really hot bath with a couple of capfuls of Dettol whenever we stayed with her. She sterilised all children who were going to be sleeping on her clean sheets!

Palmolive washing up liquid Gin. And Dettol baths when we'd been in the ponds in Battersea Park.

I do the reverse. You know those smellies that every mumsnetter loves to hate eg Baylis and Harding ?
Well I put the bubble bath , and a squidge of water, in the handwash bottles as most of us shower !
See no issue with it