Homemade Neosporin

We made our homemade Neosporin as part of our Middle Ages unit study for homeschool history, but it would also make a great homeschool science project as you talked about the properties of the different herbs involved.

{Disclosure, I received a free kit of the healing salve from my super awesome friend Amanda, and in exchange she answered my 200 questions about herbal healing, and there may be an affiliate link or two marked with an *}

 

Why make homemade Neosporin?

Okay aside from the fact that it’s super cool I can say I made it?  I mean I feel like an herbalist living on the frontier, except I made mine in an air-conditioned home.  But still, it was fun.

It’s a great way to learn more about how different plants and properties interact if you’ve got high schoolers.  It’s also a great history project, which is the other reason we made it.

Finally, if you’re interested in natural healing, then you’d rather use homemade Neosporin than store-bought Neosporin.

And did I mention it was cool to make?  I mean it comes with cute little metal tins.

 

How to make homemade Neosporin

Now Amanda included super awesome instructions on how to do all of this, so I’m not going to rehash the entire thing, just add in where I learned stuff as I did this.

You start off by cooking the included herbs in a carrier oil.  I used Coconut Oil* because I like the smell of it, and I have it in the house, but Amanda lists a couple of different oils you can use.  (I don’t have particularly good pictures because my kids were taking pictures, like the one above)

Next you strain out the spent herbs.  She includes a linen cheesecloth bag, but she also says you can use Fine Mesh Stainless Steel Strainers*, I highly recommend taking that advice if you have one because it would have been significantly less messy (the set I linked to has 3 different sizes, I’d use the smallest size).  Go ahead and strain it straight into a glass bowl (this will save you a step and be perfect for the next step).

The final step is heating the strained oil and melting in the beeswax she includes.  She gives a couple of different suggestions, but I found putting a glass bowl into a pot of water you’re bringing almost to a boil worked best for us.  Amanda told me she added extra beeswax to my kit because I live in Texas and it’s hot here.  So as you’re making it experiment with how much beeswax to add.  It’s very solid inside my house, but I know when I take it outside it’ll soften up.

 

You’ve made your homemade neosporin and then you can just pour it into the included tins.  My kids are all listening to the The Ranger’s Apprentice* (link goes to the first book) right now, and immediately absconded with the tins to make their ranger healing kit.

I’m currently requested to make 3 ranger’s cloaks, and figure out how to make the double bladed sheath they talk about in the books.  I have no clue how to do the second one.  I’ve been googling images a lot.

Does the homemade Neosporin work well?

As you all know my kids are accident prone, especially the boys.  While it’s not as bad as when they were four and I felt like I spent all of my life in ER’s, they still get a fair number of “owies.”  So, I’ve gotten several chances to try it out, and it works at least as well as store-bought Neosporin, and possibly better.  It’s hard to give an objective answer to the question.

 

Pick up your own Homemade Neosporin kit

You can pick up your own homemade Neosporin kit from Lowcountry Eclectic.  She also has a few other herbalism kits which you can make, so check them out (I’ve got a tincture kit which I’m going to make next)