Homemade Soap

 

For anyone who remembers the good ole Beverly Hillbillies television show, I’m sure you will remember Granny Clampett making her lye soap and stirring it in a big barrel out by the “cement pond.”  Well, that show never inspired me to want to make or use homemade lye soap.

However, several years ago, after trying out some beautiful soaps from crafters who made it themselves, I was hooked.  I wanted to use homemade soap all the time.  But they were so expensive.  That’s when the idea to make soap myself was born.  I began watching videos, reading blogs and I even bought a book on how to make all-natural soap.  But with many other things going on in my life, I was never able to find the time to gather all the equipment and supplies and make the soap.  So, I settled for making melt and pour soap.  That was okay for a while, but I determined in my mind and heart that when I retired, I would make soap from scratch.

And that’s exactly what I have started doing as the first hobby in my retirement.  I now understand why crafters have to charge $6 or more for one bar of homemade soap!  It is not a cheap hobby.  But I really enjoy making the soap and so far, everything is just experimental for me.  I have watched every soap making video I can find, and I have learned to use a soap calculator which is free and can be found online.   I have learned a lot, too. 

Here is brief summary of a few things I have learned about soap making:  soap cannot be made without lye; lye can be very dangerous, so the first step is to learn about lye safety; soap is created through a chemical reaction from mixing lye water and oils; different oils used in the process can give soap different qualities such as hardness, cleansing, conditioning, bubbly or creamy; in soap making if you are low on one of the oils in your recipe, you can’t just replace it with a different oil – you need to run everything through the soap calculator in order to get all the measurements exactly correct (soapcalc.net).

I plan to explain more about soap making next time. 

I thought it would be fun to share what t-shirt and tennis shoes I’m wearing today since the name of my blog is T-shirts & Tennis Shoes. Today I am wearing my favorite, well-worn shirt, Standing on the Corner in Winslow Arizona. I got it when we stopped in Arizona on our cross-country trip to California a few years ago.  I’m wearing my always comfortable Sketchers Go Walk slip-on navy blue shoes.