Awhile back I wrote about making your own soaps, and how much fun that can be even though it’s a lot of work. Besides, who are we dedicated homesteaders if we’re not people who actually enjoy working around our homesteads and doing for ourselves? It’s officially late October now, which means I’ve got a different soap job to do at my homestead.

I do this soap job every spring and fall, mostly just because I can. Besides, it saves my hard-strapped household of four adult-sized humans about $120 every six months on a single necessary household item, even after the not too high costs of ingredients and processing. Since some of the ingredients are also used to make bathroom and kitchen scouring powders, good ant and mouse repellants, and insect sting/burn/rash treatment, I figure the savings to the homestead overall for a year is pretty close to $300.00. That’s nothing to sneeze at, even though my labor is donated free!

This soap job is all about getting our clothes clean. Yes, I do way too much laundry – I still think my daughter and grandson pull clothes out of the drawers or off the shelves and toss them into the dirty clothes hamper if it’s not what they want to wear today instead of refolding and putting them back where they belong. They were gone out of state all of August and September and I didn’t wash more than three loads a week for just hubby and I. But I can’t seem to catch them at it, so I just do the washing (and the drying, and the folding, and the putting away…). It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it!

I don’t make laundry soap from scratch – we use way too much of it and let’s face it… do our tee shirts, socks and underwear really need the same kind of delicate cleansing as our faces? Instead, I use pre-made soaps. Keep a bowl down in the bathroom for the dregs of bar soaps that get too small to use, for this specific purpose. I also have family and friends who travel for their jobs quite a bit, and who pick up those little motel soaps for me. I keep them in a basket in the bathroom closet, they come in faster than I can finish off with a project like this.

What I do is turn all these soap bars and leftovers into liquid soap. That means putting a big soup pot on ‘low’ on the stove (or on top of the wood stove if it’s cold enough to be heating the house), and breaking or carving the bars and leavings into small pieces to dissolve in the hot water. I have found that the smaller the pieces (flakes and shavings are best), the faster they fully dissolve. Keep stirring and adding more until I’ve got a good gallon of thick liquid. All in all, it ends up being maybe 20 little bars and the bathroom dregs.

At this point I pour the hot liquid soap into my container, which is a clean 5-gallon plastic bucket (with lid), and add another 3 gallons of hot water while stirring to thin it down a bit. To this I add 2 cups of regular baking soda and 4 cups of dry borax powder. While the soap is still warm, slowly and while stirring well. I buy the soda and borax – cheap generic brands – in the biggest boxes I can get at the grocery, once a year. Mixed in equal parts these make a handy scouring powder for sinks, toilets, tubs, counters, etc. all year long.

The mixture will cool into a gel. I use a plastic soup ladle to dip it out, about a cup for a standard washer load. My washing machine (a heavy-duty basic 1-size floor model I got a great deal on when our last one died) only takes a ‘medium’ load. I start the fill, get the soap and add it while the water’s filling before putting the clothes in. Then load in the clothes and let ‘er wash! I leave the top up if I’m doing whites so the main wash water won’t drain, then turn it back to start for a second agitation (with the same soapy water) when I add bleach.

The clothes come out as clean as any expensive laundry soap I’ve ever used (and I’ve probably tried them all). They come out smelling great from the various scent ingredients in the commercial soap bars, and they’re also very soft without using any fabric softener at all in the wash or sheets in the dryer due to the various lotions also included in those commercial soap bars. The soda and borax enhances the de-greasing and basic cleaning ability of the soap.

Now, people don’t think about making their own anything anymore, but this way of recycling bar soaps is environmentally sound as well as very satisfying personally. As the grocery bill goes up and up and up every week, it’s really nice not to have to pay $5 or more on a regular basis for laundry soap. If you’re going to be a committed homesteader (I always say), you should at least learn how to do as many things for yourself as you can. So I do.

Once upon a time things like laundry soap, dishwashing soap, handwashing soap and ever-so gentle complexion soap was all nearly as cheap as potatoes, cornmeal and all-purpose flour. Nothing anybody thought about ever making for themselves, because what would be the point?

With some home-grown and home-preserved foods, a gardener/homesteader will of course do it anyway despite the fact that these things can be purchased from the grocery store from mass production companies for a lot less than it takes to grow, harvest and process at home. That’s done for taste, nutritional content and pride in self-sufficiency. But soap, a very much basic part of our general upkeep of cleanliness all around the homestead, has until recently been practically a lost art form.

Now it’s coming back, in favor of specialty soaps that go for a pretty penny at natural food and product stores, but sell fast. Part of it is the ever-rising cost of mass produced soaps, some of it is the trend toward avoidance of animal products, and some of it is an increasing number of serious allergic reactions to chemical ingredients in mass produced soaps.

So I thought I’d write about home soap-making just to highlight how really not-difficult it is, and how a committed homesteader can produce a year’s worth of soap (plus some for gifts) in a single week of work and a one-time investment in ingredients and supplies. Your skin will thank you, your loved ones will smell great, and your friends will be so greedy for their special gift-soaps that they may lock their bars away in secret hiding places to keep it away from unauthorized users!

There are some things absolutely required for soap-making, only some of which you’ll have to purchase again every year along with the ingredients. Making soap requires that you handle good amounts of straight Lye. Lye is nasty stuff – it’s corrosive, gives off choking fumes until it’s dissolved, and it can seriously burn your skin on contact. This means you need some stout rubber gloves (Platex Living will work), and these will have to be replaced every session. You’ll also need plastic safety goggles, stainless steel or non-chipped enamel pots, and molds to shape your bars. If you’re handy in the woodshop, molds are easy enough to make. If you’re handy in the woodshop, you no doubt already have a good pair of safety goggles. Most of us homesteaders already have big enamel canning pots, and if the project is carried out over the propane grill on the back deck, ventilation isn’t a problem at all. The only things you’ll need to purchase every time you make soap are the lye, the oil(s), the additive ingredients and the rubber gloves.

Most of the standard and traditional soap recipes use tallow (beef fat) or lard (pig fat) as the lipid ingredient. Since it’s important to have the proper ratio of lye to lipid – and different lipids will require different ratios of lye – a basic Lye to Fat Ratio Table is handy. Bookmark this one or print it out and keep it with your soap recipes. It will prove important.

This table will allow the soap maker to substitute vegetable fats for standard animal fats. Soaps made with olive oil, palm oil, sunflower oil or coconut oil are particularly good as facial soaps, and are gentle on the skin. Yet even if you have an aversion to rendered animal fats, the lanolin that comes from scouring wool doesn’t require the death of the sheep and makes a really good whole body soap. Beeswax is another animal product that isn’t death-dealing but makes a great soap additive. This will of course be a matter of choice and taste, as well as what makes the best added ingredient combos – aloe, oatmeal, ground flax seed, pumice or clay, etc.

Then there are the scent ingredients, which are best as essential oils. A face soap can smell like rich lavender, but it might be more refreshing if it smelled strongly of peppermint. A body soap that smells like lavender will be nice for Mom and the girls, but that’s way too sweet for a guy-guy. How about a refreshing pine scent?

Almost anything can be a soap mold, so long as it’s not made of aluminum. Plastic ice trays can make nice little guest-soap bars. Those plastic segmented trays for tackle boxes or craft bead supplies make slightly larger bars. Wooden molds of 2×4s with a paneling bottom and divisions works well. Anything with a top opening no smaller than its body will work, including scallop shells!

Below I’ve linked some excellent sources for instructions and recipes, useful hints, and great ideas. If you’d like to make your own soaps these will be useful. For liquid soaps and laundry soaps, once you’ve got the basic ideas down these are quite easily produced as well (and may be the most sensible thing to do with cheap genetically engineered cooking oils you’d never want to use in real cooking). Ace hardware is always a good place to get bulk ingredients such as lye, and some of them also have molds and other soapmaking supplies – or can order them for you.

So get busy making soap, and please share any cool recipes you come up with! Don’t forget to make some nice printed wrappers or stickers (to seal tissue-wrapped soaps) that creatively announce that it’s YOUR homestead that produces these soaps. You may find your local natural foods store is eager to buy them for resale to their own customers. Why… it might be a business!

Links:

The Joys of Making Soap

Muller Lane Farm: Making Cold Process Soaps

Back to Basic Living: Soap

The Olde Cron’s Bewitching Bath Soap

Walton Feed: Lye to Fat Ratio Table