Cleaning Up

 I have some very talented and creative friends.  

One of my friends has been making soap.  She has become very passionate about it and very good at it.  In fact, she has become such a talented soap-maker that she no longer buys soap.  My favorite of her recent soap-making related quips was to quote her son, who lamented the fact that his mom no longer buys "normal" soap.  Hers is better.  So, why spend the money?  I will admit my admiration of her.  She's pretty amazing, actually.

She learned to make both a bar and a liquid soap, and even better than just keeping her family washed, the liquid soap can also be used for the dishes and the laundry.

I have made my own soap using lye and lard (I included a recipe in my book, Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs: the Thrivalist's Guide to Life Without Oil*), but I never learned to make it into a liquid for laundry and dishes.  I guess I knew that my soap could be used for whatever (grated bar soap can be dissolved in water and mixed with borax and washing powder for liquid laundry soap), but it just never occurred to me to take it beyond washing my body.  

Soap can be expensive, and while there are definitely cheaper options than the one we use, as I've aged, I have developed some pretty significant sensitivities.  If I don't want to end up an itchy mess, I have to be very careful about what I smear on my skin.  

For personal hygiene, I have been buying Dr. Bonner's bar soap through their website.  I buy 10 bars at a time at a cost of about $5.05/bar including shipping.  It takes a week and a half to get here.  

Buying it locally doesn't save me much more.  The bars are around $4 each at places like Rite Aid, but I can't always get the flavor I want.  Since Dr. Bonner's isn't a brand that flies off the shelves, most places have a very limited selection of scents and only stock the most popular scents.  I can almost always find peppermint.  I almost never find almond, which is my favorite, especially during the winter. 

We use about five bars of soap per month for four people, two of whom use it full-body, including hair.  It works out to about $26.45/month for soap (buying it online). 

My friend is also making the liquid soap, which can be used like the Dr. Bonner's concentrated liquid.  According to their website, "Dr. Bronner’s 18-in-1 Pure-Castile Soaps are good for just about any cleaning task. Face, body, hair & dishes, laundry, mopping, pets" - basically everywhere in the house.  And it's diluted for most uses, which means a 32 oz bottle should last a while.  Thirty-two ounces of Dr. Bonner's concentrated liquid soap is $18.49 from their website (not including shipping).  It's about the same at the grocery store. 

I have never used Dr. Bonner's exclusively for the above listed tasks, because it's expensive, compared to other cleaners, even diluted.  According to this dilution cheat sheet on the Dr. Bonner's website, one would use 1/2c of Dr. Bonner's per load of laundry, which works out to eight loads of laundry per 32 oz bottle.  I mean, that doesn't sound right, to me, and, at over $18/bottle, it certainly isn't cost effective as a laundry soap, if those figures are accurate.  

I reckoned that making my own soap could save us some pretty pennies.  So, I asked my friend to teach me to make her soap.  She was delighted to help me, and we set a date.

She stopped by for a few hours the other day with some soap making supplies: a whisk, a dedicated plastic container for mixing lye, some potassium hydroxide (a.k.a. potash (KOH) for making liquid soap), and some molds for the bar soap.  I had purchased coconut oil and lye (Sodium Hydroxide, NaOH), and I always have a good supply of essential oils, which are optional and can be omitted, if the soap maker prefers.

The process was so simple.  Basically, melt the coconut.  CAREFULLY, mix the lye or potash with water (it gets hot, so great caution is necessary!).  Blend the two, and stir, and stir, and stir ....

After much stirring (my friend uses a stand mixer, which she sets and leaves so that she can do other stuff while the soap is processing), the liquid soap compound takes the consistency of marshmallow fluff.  It is, then, transferred to a container (I reused a polypropylene container that had originally been used for mixed nuts) and sequestered (my friend's word, which she said means just putting it out of the way for a bit).  Overnight, the mixture thickens from a fluff consistency to a mashed potato consistency, and according to my friend, it's done!

My friend advised diluting 3:1 (water/soap) for a liquid soap that can be used for whatever purpose.  If wanted, essential oils are added at this last stage, just before use.  It actually smells like soap - clean and fresh.  I think I like it without any essential oils, just the way it is.  

The bar soap was pretty much the same steps.  Melt the coconut oil.  Mix the lye with water (again, carefully, because it does get hot).  Allow to cool.  Mix lye water with coconut oil and stir.  When it thickens to the consistency of pancake batter, add essential oils and pour into molds.  We used a silicone bunny-shaped mold, and I was able to remove the soap from the mold the next morning.  It will have to "cure" for another two weeks or so before we use it. 

The recipe my friend used measures in grams.  I used a handy-dandy internet converter.  It's, basically, 30 oz (840g) of coconut oil (I found 15 oz bottles of coconut oil for $3 each at the dollar store); 1/4lb (114g) of lye (Amazon lists a pound container for lye for $11.99); and 234g of water (about 0.99 cups).

The bar soap recipe makes around 12 standard-sized bars, which (excluding the cost of the essential oils), works out to $0.75/bar.

By teaching me to make this soap, my friend has saved us around $255/year on bar soap.

I won't know how much she saved us on laundry and dish soap until I get a good sense of how quickly we go through that container, but every little bit helps, right?

Being a real housewife is not a TV drama.  It's also not "just" about doing laundry and making dinner.  We, "Real" Housewives, are economists, whose the goal is finding ways to be financial savvy in our home care.  

Where I live the average hourly wage earner makes $18/hour.  One has to work for 20 minutes to buy one bar of Dr. Bonner's soap.  That's a third of an hour, just to buy a single bar of soap.  

While it is true that I spent more than 20 minutes making my soap, I was also able to do other tasks while the soap was setting up (i.e. it doesn't require 100% of my attention for the whole process).  After measuring and mixing the ingredients, for instance, I could take a couple of minutes to put the clothes on the line, or go out in the garden and harvest cabbage for dinner, or go out in the farmyard and collect eggs.  All of those tasks also save us money.  

Contrary to what some may believe, Housewifery** is an incredibly skill-based "profession", and like so many industries that are hurting for skilled and talented workers, there are very few of us left who are knowledgeable in the true art of keeping a house.  When we lose our homemakers, we will all be dependent on other people to do the task of taking care of us, which means longer work hours and, ultimately, a lower quality of life.

The further we, as a society, get from being able to do such simple things as making soap, the more time we will spend trying to make money to compensate for our lack of skill.  

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*This is not an affiliate link, but if you purchase a new copy of this book from the publisher's link, I do receive a residual.  

**This is NOT an affiliate link. I am not affiliated with Amazon and make no money if you choose to purchase this book.