Last night, Caylie introduced me to the term “homesteader.” Homesteading is a back-to-the-earth movement that advocates eating sustainably and being less of a consumer. In other words, total hippie thing. The reason we were talking about this? We decided to make homemade soap.
I’ve never made homemade soap before, but I make a lot of things from scratch, from food to bath products to herbal teas to cleaning supplies. (See: Simple Basic) Soap seemed like a pretty harmless concept. Caylie picked up most of the supplies, but told me to bring rubber gloves over. In retrospect, that should have been my first warning.
Turns out, soap is traditionally made with lye. This is what lye is:
That’s right. The main ingredient of soap is DRAIN CLEANER. This is what we put on our skin to get it clean. The eff? The second ingredient of soap is traditionally some type of animal fat. Caylie and I, however, used coconut oil, palm oil and olive oil.
Why I love the concept of homesteading:
There are so many products we take for granted. We buy them at a store, use them all our lives, and have zero idea what they are made out of. (See: Diet Coke) When you make things from scratch, you are confronted with their ingredients. Yikes!
Here’s what my make-stuff-at-home book says about making soap:
That top line is a lie. Making soap is terrifying. It’s terrifying because the first instruction is to add water to lye. NEVER add lye to water, though, or you will die in a horrible disfiguring chemical explosion. Be very, very careful not to splash the lye on your skin, because it will immediately burn a hole straight through to your soul. If you do accidentally splash a molecule of lye on your skin, do NOT rinse it with water, as lye and water together will cause an instant volatile reaction that will exacerbate the sear exponentially. You can instead rinse it with vinegar.
About halfway through this process, Caylie and I both basically panicked and started experiencing psychosomatic lung scorching symptoms from breathing the air in the same room as lye. We took vinegar sink-showers*. We avoided touching water, or even looking at it, for the rest of the night. We smell like vinegar now, permanently, because we are too chicken to ever touch water again.
(Keep in mind that this same lye is going to be the thing you later wash your entire body with. I don’t claim to be a scientist, but this confuses me?)
Nevertheless, we persevered, and after a minor anxiety attack about who would actually pour the boiling lye mixture into the heated oil with too-small swim goggles on, we were successful in making soap. We flavored it with pummeled rosemary from the bush in my yard and some pine essential oil.
How cute and brave is she?
Now, we have to wait 6-8 weeks for the soap to set.
On a related note, I’m going to stop using soap. But you’ll all be getting this for Christmas!
Your weekend homesteader,
Joslyn
* Speaking of vinegar, Caylie is launching a Chinese Drinking Vinegars line of products called Yum Yum Tonics. Please check it out on Facebook.
