Liquid Soap Fail – What am I doin’ wrong?
This is a 1000 gram block of olive oil soap I bought from Body Time (a shop in my neighborhood) a while back. It was completely unpackaged. I thought I would use it to make liquid soap — to replace the Dr. Bronner’s we have been using for dishwashing once it’s gone. I figured all I’d need to do is dissolve the bar in a pot of water and voila! Liquid soap. Did I check any recipes or instructions? No way, man. It just seemed way too obvious.
So, I put the entire block of soap in a stock pot on the stove, filled it up with water, and started stirring. And stirring. And stirring. Thinking I’d save time, I didn’t bother grating the soap beforehand. So yes, this process took hours. Hours of gas stove energy. Hours of occasional stirring.
After the whole thing was dissolved, I let the pot cool. When I checked it the next day, I found a huge stock pot of solid soap!
Okay, I guess an entire kilogram of soap (2.2 pounds) requires more water. So I dug out half of it, added water to the pot, and started the process again. And ended up with… more solid soap.
I actually spent several days dissolving smaller and smaller portions of soap in larger quantities of water and I finally had a solution that seemed liquid enough. Check out this picture:
The soap in the pot is pourable. The soap in the bowl, totally solid.
The problem with the soap in the pot is that it’s all full of little white crystalized bits that don’t seem to dissolve. Why is this? I have no idea. So I first try pouring it through a metal strainer. That gets out the bigger bits. But there are still some left.
So next I pour it through cheese cloth. Yes, this is taking way, way longer than it should and is a ridiculous mess. But hey, it’s a learning experience, right? And kind of fun in a surreal, “I am a total idiot” sort of way. So okay, most of the white bits have been removed. This is what I ended up with:
From a 1 kilogram block of soap I have a full Dr. Bronner’s bottle of soap, plus some extra in a ceramic container, and the rest — nearly solid — in a metal bowl. And here is the question that keeps me up at night: is all this soap just going to go rancid (from the olive oil) before I have time to use it all???
Okay, laugh. It’s funny, right? And then tell me what I should have done.
This is the closest thing I have found to what I have been looking for, for quite sometime. Is there a way to “melt down” bar soap scraps and then put them in a mold to make a new bar.
Microwave! I’ve done it before with a solid bar
Lol had a great laugh, have had similar problems… Don’t stress about olive oil going rancid, I buy 10 litre cans of it to refil my olive oil bottle and keep them in the cupboard for years. Olive oil doesn’t go bad quickly…
Hi,m I can believe what Michelle is saying about the wrong alkali. I made homemade liquid soap from 4 ounces of leftover bar soap using a recipe found at clark.com and it seems like a loaves and fishes thing from the Bible, just keeps on thickening no matter how much I dilute it. I’m on my second round of dilution and waiting for the massive amount to cool once again, having transferred up to a canning kettle from my largest regular cooking pot and waiting to see if once cooled, it’s still going to be too thicky and glorpy. I had wanted to use this in foaming hand soap dispenser and would settle for using in a regular hand soap dispenser if I could just get it to stop thickening up to such a gelatinous blob state.
please note that these plastic- bags that came with the oranges etc. are might toxic. i heard something about that the other day.
So, what I’m gathering from these comments is kind of what I thought.
1) Bar soap does not make great liquid soap, acksully.
2) If you are going to make liquid soap out of bar soap, grate a small amount and dissolve it in a lot of water.
3) Using the blender and adding some aloe vera gel could be a good idea.
Clif — speechless is okay. But are you smiling or rolling your eyes? Or a combination of both?
Hillary — you win! I wondered if anyone would notice Arya’s little yellow eyes in the corner of the last photo.
Jen –Regarding Vulva Balm: I think you should go back to Rainbow and test it out to see if it really works. I’m not interesting in wasting any more time. Take Mark and Axelle with you. And be sure and wear a dress.