We made soap!

Liquid hand soap that is.

It's something I have wanted to try for a while. We happened to have some bar soap scraps laying around so I finally googled a "few" how-to instructions on it so that Thing #2 & I could get to work on our own!

First we had to grate the bar soap scraps I had. I had a mixture of soap types & since I wasn't really sure if it would actually work I didn't worry too much about what kind of soap was going into the mix. Thing #2 picked out some essential oils to give it some fragrance. (I didn't micromanage her here; I think she picked grapefruit & orange for our first batch.)

The recipe I used calls for 1 Tablespoon soap shavings to 16 ounces of water. We put the shavings, the water & essential oil into a small pot on the simmer burner set to low. The shavings will eventually (be patient, it takes a bit longer than I thought it would) melt into the water creating the soap liquid. I was a little worried for a while because I felt like it was very watery for a LONG time & might never settle into a soapy texture. Well, I worried for nothing. It settled into a pretty thick liquid soap, but if needed I can add water to thin it if it becomes too thick for the dispenser.

So now you know you DO have something you can do with those annoying soap scraps you end up with when your bar soap is at the end of it's life!