Adventures In Soap Making

So as I was doing a bit of housework the other day, I noticed that various hand soap dispensers needed refilling.

I go out to the laundry room to grab my big one-gallon container of Liquid Softsoap.  Oh no! My big container will also soon need refilling.

I had enough to do the job at hand. But I added it to the shopping list.

But then I thought about it.  A gallon of Softsoap at Sam’s Club is $11.44.  Woo! Soap is soap is soap right?  My money-saving radar was picking up a money saving opportunity.

First of all, there’s going directly to the bar soap route.  After all, that’s what we did in the old days.  There sat the slimy bar of soap on sinks throughout the house.  Sometimes it dried up and got weird cracks in it.  But it was ok - it worked fine.

In this house I have four bathrooms, 1 kitchen, and 1 dog tub.  So seven possible bar soap stations.  I just bought 20 bars of Irish Spring bathsoap for $7.88 at Sam’s Club, which is .39/bar.  So that works out to a total of $2.73 to supply my hands with soap throughout the house, probably monthly. But that also would leave me with only 13 bars for the bathtub.  Hmmm.

Now, $2.73 is way better then $11.44.  But that gallon of liquid soap lasts me over 6 months.  6 months of barsoap is $16.38.  Whoa…maybe “cheap” bar soap isn’t so cheap after all!

But I’m not going to let that stop me.  There has to be another way.

Back to the soap is soap is soap idea.  Maybe I can make my own liquid soap.

So I tried that instead.  This is what I did.  I grated one bar of my more expensive Oil of Olay soap (.84/bar) (I’m willing to splurge on this a bit, because I don’t want green Irish Spring liquid soap).  I put it in the 1 gallon Soft Soap Container.  I put about a cup of almost boiling water, and then added hot tap water up to the top of the container.  I gave it a good shake.

When I went to look at it a few hours later, it was pretty watery.  I usually water down my liquid soap anyway, so not such a big deal.  Still, I would like it to be thicker. How can I do this? Well, I check the Internet, of course.

It looks like I could add honey and glycerin.  I have honey, so I add it. But glycerin!?! Whoa! Wait a minute!  Isn’t that the stuff that is so unstable, it will EXPLODE if you shake it (according to ’70’s TV drama).  Of course I don’t have any glycerin on hand, and don’t know where to get it.

This makes me think that this is maybe why men don’t like to wash their hands after they use the bathroom.  They know all about things that go Boom, so maybe they’re afraid they will blow their hands off if they wash them.

Hmmmm.

So after I add the honey, I go back to check on it a couple of days later, and it does seem a bit thicker.  But only to nonfat milk consistency.  But it’s nice and soapy alright. So I go around the house and pick up all the little slivers of soap that are never going to be used, and stick them directly in my homemade gallon.

So maybe scary glycerin is the key thickening ingredient.  Or maybe I need to add two bars of grated soap to my gallon of water. Or maybe I need to not be lazy, and boil the goop on my stove until it thickens up. Or maybe I can be lazy and cook it up in my slowcooker for 10 hours.

By the way, suggestions gratefully accepted.

Well, I’ll keep experimenting.  But I think I don’t need to buy liquid soap anymore.  Yay!