{homemade soap}

We'd been running out of hand soap at our house for quite a few days actually...I knew I had a recipe on Pinterest for it but I couldn't find the ingredients at the stores I go to. Finally I found (basically) what I needed and I got started.

So here is how I made hand soap for our house. A whole gallon of it.

I went to a grocery store down the road where the cashier acted like she only spoke Spanish (when I gave her a Spanish tract she said, "thank you",) and bought two 4 oz bars of Kirk's soap. Then I came home and grated them all up.

This was rather tiring. Then I tried to put a gallon of distilled water in my biggest pot and failed. So I ran over to the BPS building and borrowed one. I put in the water and soap shavings.

  Then I added two tablespoons of liquid glycerin.

 I heated it up on medium heat until all the shavings melted, stirring occasionally. When they were all melted, it looked like soapy water.

 Then I let it sit overnight so that it could harden. The blog I got the recipe from says to let it sit 10-12 hours, but I didn't start on it until 2:30 or so and I didn't feel like getting up in the middle of the night to finish soap. The next morning, I went and looked in the pot and it looked like a big flat hard puddle of soap. But when I pushed my finger in it I found out it wasn't. The blog says to use a hand mixer to make it liquid-y but I don't have one so I stirred it with a wooden spoon, hard. I got out as many lumps as I could.

The lady who wrote the recipe says that the best thing she can compare the consistency to is snot, and though it's gross, it's very true. I funneled it into a gallon jug and tried not to gag, meanwhile getting soap everywhere. 

And after I was done funneling, I washed my hands with the soap that was all over them. It works! It doesn't lather very well, but it does clean. 

Here's where I got the recipe from. This lady also has other tips on making the soap. Reading the comments is helpful too. 

Now I'm ready to try all sorts of other cleaners and things I have pinned, but right now I have so many things I need to use up. I guess I'll get to try eventually...