Back in early May, Lisa and I made soap. I had been itching for quite awhile to try making soap with lye, but didn't have a. lye, b. the space, or c. the time. I did find a great recipe in a book called 'Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living' by Annie Berthold Bond, and decided I'd better stop making excuses and just set a soap-making date. Lis liked the idea of the project, and readily agreed to share her yard, garage, and kitchen implements (of doom, MUAHAHAHAHA). I spent the week before the date feverishly searching for lye. I called every hardware store in a 20 mile radius. No one carries it anymore. After resolving to order from Amazon and move the date back, I FINALLY found some at this little tiny mom 'n pop hardware store here in Porter.
Please ignore the Sonic cup in the background. I'm well aware that this sends a message of lye=Route 44 vanilla coke with extra vanilla goodness, but this simply isn't so.So we followed the directions from the book. This involved a lot of mixing and measuring. We had to mix the lye outside and be very careful because it supposedly would cause a big caustic fumey Chernobyl-like mess when it hit the water.
This is Lisa (rt) and me (lft), using our shirts to dispel the potential stank of lye and water. Bottoms up!We had to wait FOREVER for the water-lye mix to cool down enough to mix with the melted oils (shortening, olive oil, coconut oil). After about a zillion hours, everything came to temperature, and we mixed oil and water. We were supposed to stir it for about ten minutes until it began to trace, but it took our soap a good hour or so before we reached barely trace. Meh. Need an immersion blender for next time....
So we poured our concoction into a 9X13 cake pan, covered with wax paper and towels, and then played the waiting game. FOR THREE. WHOLE. WEEKS. If you know me personally, you know that I don't play the waiting game very well. After the soap took FOREVER to cure, Lisa scored it into bars and broke it.
And voila! Old fashioned lye soap, like my Great Grandma Schoppe used to make.
Cost breakdown: Lye, $5.99 for 2.5 batches worth
Olive oil, $3.49 for one batch worth
Coconut oil, $8.00 for four batches worth
Shortening, $2.47 for 2.5 batches worth
If my calculations are correct, then it works out to about $0.47 per bar. Still cheaper to buy soap, especially on sale. However, when you figure in add-ins (explored in depth in another entry, soon to come), you get fancier soap for still relatively cheap. For people with problem skin, definitely worth a try. I also have several recipes for all purpose cleaner and laundry detergent that call for castille soap (olive oil lye soap, which is what we made). The soap therefore becomes more valuable, and more cost effective. The verdict? If you can't live without store bought all purpose cleaners and laundry detergent, store bought plain ole Ivory will be cheaper. If you want to save money by making your own cleaners, then lye soap becomes a little more worth it. Either way, it's still fun.
Some notes on the lye- It's so hard to find! Like I said, I almost had to resort to Amazon. I shop Amazon a lot, but I was hesitant to order a caustic chemical from them. Under no circumstance should you use anything other than 100% pure lye. If the label says anything else under ingredients, for the love of all things good and proper, don't use it in your soap! You don't want that on your skin! The fat and lye chemically react, and the lye is no longer caustic, but any other chemicals won't do that. Who wants plumbing chemical burns? I have read many articles about making lye at home. Seems pretty easy, evidently you collect rainwater and pour it over ashes. Let the mix sit for a bit, and it reacts to form lye. I don't really think that my apartment complex would approve of an open barrel of homebrew lye on the porch, so I'll let that one go for now.
The book also suggests recipe add-ins, I will try those next time. Guess what everyone's getting in their stockings this year?!?!?!
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