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Easy homemade soap
Use this simple recipe and you'll be lathering up with your own soap in no time.

By

Ruben Anderson
Mon, Dec 10 2012 at 1:49 PM
 34

Related Topics:

DIY

Photo: Subbotina Anna/Shutterstock

As the last generations of Depression-era children or back-to-the-landers take their leave of this world, their DIY skills go with them. When we try to learn from scratch, we soon discover that recipes in books don't tell half the story.
 
DIY soap making and other skills slipping away
I have never figured out why this knowledge started slipping away from us, but I am trying to re-learn some of the basics. I now make my own soap, hand lotion, yogurt and bread. I am trying to figure out toothpaste, but it is hard to find good information about abrasion damage. I also found a great cheese site, which has a recipe for labneh, a cheese I can make from my homemade yogurt, and I plan to make other cheeses with my friends, who write about the Hundred Mile Diet.
 
My soap recipe is customized to use full bottles of most of the oils, so you don't have a lot of inventory lying around, and you don't have to do a lot of measuring. Normally, making soap requires a lot of finicky weighing, since measuring by volume isn't considered accurate enough. So far I have had no problems, and, for those without a scale, I give both weight and volume in this recipe.
 
Making homemade soap can be dangerous
Before we begin, let me stress that soap-making can be dangerous. Although it is easy to become comfortable with the process, you should only make soap when you fully understand the safety procedures.
 
Here is some general homemade soap information
Soap is made in two parts, lye and water, plus a mixture of oils. The two don't combine easily, so they must be brought to similar temperatures. Lye and water get very hot when mixed, so the mixture must cool before being added to the oils.
 
The oils must be gently heated. The oil is nowhere near hot enough to cook with, but still, please do not start any fires. Every oil has a different saponification index, which is a measure of how much lye is required to turn that oil into soap. This means, if you run out of coconut oil, don't go replacing it with olive oil.
 
Lye is VERY caustic, so don't get any on your skin. It also gives off nasty fumes, so use goggles and very good ventilation or a respirator. Check out the Materials Safety Data Sheet on lye.
 
You will also need a mold. You could use a 9 x 13 cake pan and line it with wax paper. I bought a used Rubbermaid bread box that is about 14" x 6" x 5". This makes a big block of soap that is not safe to cut with a knife. I cut it with a guitar string wrapped around a couple of chopstick handles.
 
Homemade soap: The hardest step
The hardest thing about soap is knowing when it is done. This is judged by a state called "trace." This is when a dribble of soap kind of stays on the surface instead of sinking into the pot. Think honey on a counter top as it slowly flattens out.
 
The book that I used to work out this recipe is called "The Soapmaker's Companion" by Susan Miller Cavitch. This is also where I found recipes for hand lotion.
 
Homemade Soap Recipe
  • Lye — Mix in large pyrex measuring cup, stir with a chopstick saved from order-in Chinese food. Again, do not breathe the fumes. Wear goggles.
  • 700 milliliters purified water
  • 270 grams or 9 1/4 ounces lye (one small container)
  • Oils (Mix in a big pot.)
  • Olive oil 955 grams or 4 1/2 cups (Use the cheap pomace olive oil; virgin doesn't work as well.)
  • Coconut oil 390 grams 500 milliliters 2 cups
  • Grapeseed oil 515 grams 500 milliliters 2 cups
 
Let lye mixture cool to 110 degrees F. Warm oils to 110 degrees F. When both are at the same temperature, slowly pour lye mixture into oils. Mix with a stick blender until trace, periodically scraping sides and bottom of pan with a spatula. I mix with short pulses of the blender, and it only takes about three minutes.
 
The first time I made soap I used a whisk and my spatula, which I washed carefully later. Next time I used my Braun stick blender. Once I felt sure that I was going to make soap regularly, I bought a used stick blender at Value Village for $5 and dedicated it to soap making. If you use a whisk, you can look forward to hours of stirring. I also have a couple of thrift-shop thermometers, one for the lye and one for the oils. I have also heard of people making soap by feel. When the containers of lye and oils feel similarly warm to the touch, you are good to go.
 
At trace, add 10 milliliters cinnamon oil. Mix as little as possible, just enough to combine. Theoretically, the soap can harden very quickly at this stage, trapping your spatula inside a giant bar. I have never had a problem with this recipe, though.
 
Pour into mold. Wrap with heavy blankets for 24 hours to keep the heat in and help the chemical reaction.
 
The next day, when soap has set, cut it into bars and store, separated nicely, on brown paper in cool place. Turn over after two weeks. Use after one month.
 

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Comments: 34
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anonymous
Sue from Chicago Dec 11 2012 at 1:14 PM
My grandmother used to make her own laundry soap in the 1960's. I remember Mom keeping a coffee can that we'd put cooking fat in and then give it to Grandma when we visited. It was pretty rough soap but her clothes were as clean as ours. She'd grate it into her wringer washer - I don't think she had an automatic washer until 1980. Personally I spin my own yarn but I wouldn't make my own laundry soap. Nice hand soap maybe if I had more time. --Susan Miller Cavatch, and the online soap forums, have
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recipes for lausndry soap, among other things. There are recipes for shaving soap, liquid soaps, shampoo bars, and just about anything else you would like to clean. And, it doesn't take very long, but you get to enjoy it for months.
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anonymous
ritastrangcass Dec 11 2012 at 1:15 PM
Laundry soap is the easiest one to make! Some 20 Mule Team Borax, Washing powder, and I use oxygen laundry boost in mine. You can add shaved soap or liquid castile too, or vinegar. But mostly I dont. I also use felted wool dryer balls instead of vinegar in the rinse now, it cuts static and drying time and softens the clothes really nicely! There are all sorts of online recipes for laundry soap, some are liquid that are more time consuming, but I dont mind the powder at all, it all disolves really
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nicely and our clothes are cleaner, brighter, and fresher than Tide with Downey ever thought of! And my machines are cleaner, no residues or coatings on my lint filter as dryer sheets or softeners cause. I have also just learned to make soap. I have done my first batches of melt & pour (becareful of the bases 90% contain SLS) and hot process. I will be making a couple more batches of Hot process todaym yay! Its really fun! I also am searching for sources of raw milk to use in soap. Check out my website if you'd like. I also will be selling soaps, bath bombs & salts, and other HBC items as I perfect recipes after personal testing.
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anonymous
Paul Keegan Feb 22 2013 at 6:52 PM

Great stuff, Doing Milk to soon )

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anonymous
eric Dec 11 2012 at 1:09 PM

can u use plant oils besides the ones you used in this soap, like oils from sage and stuff?

--You should be able to use any oil to make soap. The key part is knowing the saponification index, so you know the lye to oil ratio.Search online forums for the index of more esoteric oils.

If the oil is very fragrant, like I imagine sage oil might be, then you only need a little of it to scent your soap. Add it at trace and you don't need to worry about the saponification index.

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anonymous
Brian Dec 11 2012 at 1:07 PM

Just curious but is it possible to make "Fight Club" soap? haha

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anonymous
Vexxarr Dec 11 2012 at 1:00 PM
Be careful when you throw around terms such as “loss of knowledge’. Most of your quandaries regarding soup, toothpaste and cheese are pinned to an understanding of basic chemistry. All civilizations had different skill sets that were germane to their local economies and specific technological sophistication. Could homesteaders of the 1800’s make flint tools or cast simple weapons from the copper oxides found in top soil? Can you, for example, hone your own cylinder heads, make a life cast of
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a human head, build a computer, build a working ‘waldo’ exo-skelton, weld, measure and mix self-catalyzing expansive casting elements, load a 35mm motion picture film magazine, repack rifle cartridges, cast a concrete foundation, ferment biodesiel? Not only do I not expect most of my peers to do these things - but as much as I find these skills useful, I don’t expect my children to know how to do any of them. These skills are just as relevant to my day-to-day life as soap making was to my great, great ancestors. And just as with soap making, I expect them to fade from the skill sets of my descendants. Yet so long as such knowledge is recorded and cataloged, I can relearn any action that any human has once performed. I’ve had to do so quite often in my short professional experience. While I find your desire to preserve these skills admirable, I would respectfully suggest that the information you can add to this knowledge base is more important than your actual mastery of the skills in question.
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anonymous
ruben Anderson Dec 11 2012 at 1:01 PM
Wow, this comment really strikes to why I do what I do. Thank you for your suggestion that my intellectual additions are important, but I would argue that subtracting from our knowledge base is much more important. Obviously, I do not want to purge knowledge, just stop using it. For example, I think we should stop using our knowledge about cosmetic botox injections, missile design, industrial agriculture, stock market trading, oil drilling, crowd control, eavesdropping, marketing and advertizing.
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I'm sure you get my drift, so I won't go on. This is a problem of fundamental difference in vision. History has taught us that material technology will not save us, while intellectual technology makes our lives much better. As an obviously arguable example, antibiotics are creating superbugs, while hand-washing makes us safer. Of course we do not want to abandon antibiotics, though that is effectively what we are doing through overuse. Industrial agriculture has poisoned more land and water than we can imagine, rendering it unusable, or on its way to unusable. Is it smart of us to degrade our farmlands like this. We have all heard of Peak Oil, how about Peak Soil? I think that 95% of our life is very basic. Shelter, food and water. Basic utensils and amusements made from wood, metal and fabric. I think that technology is increasingly unable to overcome the problems that it creates. I think that we need to return to a greater level of self-sufficiency. I believe that inefficiency is generally better (read Cradle to Cradle). I think a more regional and communal life will be richer than the one we now live, though it admittedly will feature fewer disposable knick-knacks. I think that we can satisfy much of that 95% of life in a highly pleasurable way, through little things like cooking with our friends, using things we make with our own hands, and growing some of our own food. Thanks for reading, Ruben.
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anonymous
funkhausen Dec 11 2012 at 1:02 PM
I don't see how people get to "stop using" knowledge without force. Once splitting the atom was discovered it was inevitable that it would be used for weaponry, I'm afraid human beings are just not grown up enough to not use such technology in such a way. With regards to the basic 95%, while I agree people can survive with that, and I also agree that our highly atomised technological society is not producing fulfilling life, it's so hard to stop. For example, in your society with the wooden toys
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etc, how would we stop the fact that at some point, someone would make a cleverer toy, say a clockwork one, and then something more complex and so on. Would there be some comittee that decides "this toy is not wholesome". What we end up with is some kind of puritanical centralised control to try and make this all work. Always seems to boil down to some kind of communism, which has failed again and again. Regarding agriculture, again, I tend to agree with you, but the reality is, that is what is feeding our huge human population. That's another thing the utopians forget - there utopia only works if you culled the existing planet down to say 1 billion, then we might all be able to eat organic. Right now organic is a feel-good factor for the better off. So we live in an over-populated, technology obsessed, unsustainable hell hole, I agree, but I bet that just about any "solution" you have would be unworkable, require top down control, and/or a lot less people on the planet.
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anonymous
Sondra Carr Dec 11 2012 at 1:04 PM
Actually, that's something you're assigning to this. No top down necessary - this is a bottom up movement. All you have to do is start DOing things differently yourself. And then convince people through modeling your own contentment with the results that it's a better way. Your arguments are kind of funny - saying that "organic is a feel good factor for the better off" - I am far from 'better off" and I have a lovely organic garden in my little city backyard - my neighbors have chickens and roosters.
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You can grow enough to feed a family in your own yard and often, when done right, growing organically ensures that you get less pest issues - the plants aren't all lined up in neat rows of all the same thing as they are on farms. The bugs have to work at their job - not have it handed to them. You're thinking with the mind that has been brainwashed into thinking "yeah this is bad but it's all we've got" - no, it isn't. Tomorrow, you can buy seeds, start bartering instead of buying, decide to only buy used stuff at thrift stores - you can go ask your neighbors if they'd like to make your neighborhood into a real community that helps each other out. You can get off your computer and away from your TV and you can go outside and run, hike, or walk around and meet people. You can gather like-minded people to make things - all sorts of things - useful things, funny things, music, art, performances - and you can do all these things with NO ONE'S APPROVAL at all and no one pushing you to do so. In fact, I won't even push you - I'll just let you in on a little secret - you know all those feelings of angst like something is just not right even though you're doing everything they tell you? Guess what - if you stop watching and stop buying and instead you make and build stuff with people you really like, that will go away. And you'll be happy. But far be it from me or anyone else to tell you that you have to be happy - just, you know, when you think maybe you want to be - remember what I said above - OK?
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