Eclectic Homesteading: Soap Experiment

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Author: Fern Al'Thorn, July 2017


Making soap is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your family. It is easy and fairly cheap on the ingredient costs, and helps you save money in the long run and have awesome smelling skin to boot!

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Regardless of the title, this is not my first time making soap, just the first time recording it for posterity. I am going to share with you my experiments in soap making thus far. I have made two batches of soap using things that I had in my house, the only thing I had to go and buy to do this was some extra white bar soap. I like to use Ivory, because it is really easy on the skin, but I got extra of that to make sure I had enough to do the thing. The recipe that I used to make my own recipe out of came from the book "Natural Soapmaking" by Marie Browning. There are a lot of basic recipes in there and I tweaked it to make my own as I went along.

This is my recipe, which still needs work as I am not all together sure about the final texture of it. But over all it works, lathers and rinses well plus ... the smell!!

I started with one bar of soap, grated with a cheese grater that will from this day forth just be for soap making. It yielded roughly 3 cups of grated soap into the large glass 4 cup mixing cup.

Next I added in 3/4 cup of water,using a wooden spoon to stir (also just for soapmaking) and then adding 3 tablespoons of Calendula oil, stirring it well, then placing the mixing cup into a sauce pan with about 2 inches of water in it, setting it to a medium/high heat till boiling.

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There is a lot of stirring involved in this step and it took roughly 30 to 45 minutes to get to the final stages. During the last stage before you take it off the heat, it will pull in strings and ropes away from itself, almost like string cheese. At this point you remove the glass mixing cup from the water and add the rest of your ingredients.

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20 drops lavender essential oil
2 tablespoons of dried lavender flower buds
1/4 cup oatmeal ground after measure

I then scooped my mix into a bread pan lined with wax paper, (now I think that part of my texture problem comes from doing this so I will change tactic on the next batch) and press it to an even surface.

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Finish it out by letting it air dry which, depending on your ingredients, can take up to 6 or more hours. You can pop it in the freezer to get it to set up faster in a solid state, (#2 problem with the texture) but it will still need to air dry.

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So in conclusion, that even though it did not turn out as expected, it was a whole lot of fun and is still something that I am going to continue to experiment with.