Pure Imagination: DIY Liquid Soap

First off let me say...I am in no way trying to imply I am "making soap", officially. That is a HUGE undertaking that requires YEARS of practice, experimentation, & patience.

All I'm doing is showing you how to stretch a buck by taking already existing, cheaply bought, solid soap & turning it into liquid soap, therefore saving you A LOT of money.

I also want to say I get all my recipes & ideas from other blogs on the Internet. There is a buttload of information out there from very smart people that have been doing this for years, so all I am doing is coping recipes. If you can read, you can make mine or any other person's "concoctions".

That being said, let me show you my project this weekend....

DIY LEMON VERBENA LIQUID SOAP

Liquid hand soap, we all have gotten used to using it. Somewhere along the way hard, squishy, messy, bars of soap were replaced with this easy stuff. BUT I looked around my house recently, trying to assess what I spend the most amount of money on & how I could start to make it myself, cheaper & I realized liquid soap was one of the things I spend a FORTUNE on. So, I started looking for alternatives.

The recipe I used this weekend was one of the easiest, and most cost effective I've found.
I love using lemon scented soap in the kitchen, or just in general. It neutralizes a lot of stinky things I cook with & I think any citrus smell equals clean in my brain, for some reason, but that's just me. I have a bar soap I really like & it was recently on sale at the dollar store for $1 a piece. You certainly can find whole packs of soap for $1, so the TYPE of soap is not as important as the AMOUNT. Also, soaps with too high of a fat content (like Dove) are said to not work well. I do not know if that is true, since this is my first batch. I do plan on tackling a more luxuriant body wash recipe next weekend, so I'll let you know.

Also, this recipe is for a GINORMOUS amount of soap, so you can certainly cut the whole thing in half if you don't have a pot big enough.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED
16oz of soap. (I used 4 4oz bars)
cheese grater
72cups of water
21 quart stock pot
funnel
5 empty gallon jugs

This is the soap I chose. I REALLY love Yardley soap. But again, you can use whatever YOU like.

Grate.

...and grate...

And GRATE...until you end up with a nice big pile like this. This is the most time consuming & slightly tedious part of this whole process & it only takes a total of 5 min.'s TOPS..I think saving big bucks is worth 5 minutes of work.

When you have grated all your soap, put the pan on the stove & add 24cups of water.

Put the heat on medium, and just stir until all the soap pieces have dissolved.

It will look like this at this stage. Very thin liquid with froth on top.

Now you let this sit for at least 8 hours. Overnight is best. I set mine outside last night & it was cold enough to have snow flurries, so putting it in a very cool place would be your best bet to get it to solidify quickest.

I'm sorry to say, it was very early when I went out to get my now "gel like" soap mixture, and I forgot to take a picture. It will be like a harder jello consistency.

You then put the pot back on the stove and add another 24cups of water & turn it on medium heat. Start to break up the gelled soap with your fingers into the water. When you get a good amount of it broken up, add the last 24cups of water.

As you heat it back up, it will look like this. Just stir & stir until all the chunks have melted back into a liquid (I kept reaching in and squishing the chunks into smaller bits until it got too hot to do so). Turn off the heat & allow to cool. This pot is HUGE, so there is no moving it at this point. You just have to let it sit where it is, be patient & let it cool.

This is all of it, in it's glory, melting back down to a liquid in my giant 21 quart stock pot.

After it is cooled it will have a "snot like" (sorry, it's truly what it looks like) consistency. Now you can put it into any storage containers you like. My husband is a milkaholic, so I just used 5 of the BAZILLION empty milk jugs I have.

Some blogs tell you to use distilled water for this whole process, I chose not to. But for that reason, I also suggest you try to use it within a year in case of bacterial growth. I didn't get my initial soap mixture up to boiling (I don't think it's recommended, actually), but it did get down to freezing temperatures outside overnight, so I feel pretty confident it won't grow mold. Be aware this COULD happen though & take into consideration if you would prefer to not chance it & fork out the extra dough for 72cups of distilled water, OR spend the time boiling fresh water first & letting it cool to use later...Whatever you chose, is up to you. I took the easy/cheap way out this time, and have labeled & dated the jugs to ensure I rotate old to new & not let them go past a year.