Making Soap & Home Cleaners

Another Pinterest inspired project for ya today. I have a ton of bar soap and, being stubborn like I am, don’t like using it. Instead of buying more liquid hand and body soap I’ve started converting bar soap into liquid soap.

I started by gathering supplies, jars for the soap, an empty hand pump, lots of bar soap, glycerin and a grater.

There is still a lot of commercial hand soap in case I run out but it’s going to be a long time before that happens and here’s why:

The Recipe

• 1-cup grated soap flakes
• 10-cups water
• 1-tbs glycerin

Each bar of soap yields about 4 cups of soap flakes which means each of those 20 bars of soap will make about 40 cups of liquid soap. Over 800 cups total if I never buy another bar of soap again.

Here I’ve set up the jars for the liquid soap with a funnel which makes it much easier to pour.

The instructions are simple:

1. Shave the soap bars, collect in a jar
2. Melt 1 cup of soap flakes into 10 cups of water
3. Stir in 1 tbs glycerin
4. Let flakes dissolve, stirring the pot on low heat
5. When soap is cool pour it into containers

It’s that simple. And since you just made soap you’ll need to just rinse out the pot really well and that’s it.

As you can see one cup makes quite a lot of soap. I found this empty soap pump at Wal-Mart for a few dollars but you can easily save the ones you have and refill.

Some people get fancy and spray paint theirs but I’m low tech here. When I empty my last jar I’ll start thinking about doing another batch and while it cooled this time I shaved another bar of soap so I’ll be able to skip that step next time.

Then I decided to make my own cleaners for surfaces around the house.

I’m almost done using the commercial cleaners that I inherited from Grandma’s house when she moved to assisted living (which was summer 2007) – 4 years without buying much in the way of cleaning supplies isn’t too bad!

Today I picked up these spray bottles from Wal-Mart for $1 each and picked up my natural cleaning ingredients:

• white vinegar
• baking soda
• rubbing alcohol
• ammonia
• bleach

I made both a window spray and a general cleaning spray, I’ve got wood polish already.

Since my drains have been slow to, well, drain, I also used the baking soda, vinegar, boiling water trick to clear them out. All of the recipes came from my friend Melissa who is known as the fount of all knowledge and posts her recipes and secrets on her site here.

I’ve got dozens of rags too so I rarely have to spend money on cleaning supplies. It’s not so much the money (although some of those cleaners are ridiculously expensive) but actually realizing I’m out of something, going to the store, buying it and dragging it home. Such a hassle, that shopping.

The ammonia, bleach, baking soda and rubbing alcohol will last me for quite awhile. I do need to pick up more vinegar but couldn’t find it in a gallon container today. It’s going on the shopping list for next time.

Pretty easy to make and will last quite awhile so this project won’t need to be repeated for many months – just the type of thing I like to do to feel accomplished!

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