Make Your Own Laundry Soap

Here at the Farm, we have layers of plans, for many things. We have buckets of flour.  We have an electric mill and wheat seed (if the flour runs out) and we have a hand-crank mill (if the flour and the electric run out). Are we planning on that happening? No. But if it does, God willing, we’ll still be enjoying our daily bread.

But we’re not talking bread today. But something just as important: Cleanliness.

Right now, laundry soap is still sitting there nice and pretty on all the grocery store shelves. We can buy however much we want. And sometimes we do. Let’s face it, it’s easy, works okay, and makes your clothes smell kind of nice. But what if laundry soap (or hand soap, or dish soap, or shampoo) is suddenly the THING. The one thing you can’t get your hands on?

Well, at the Farm, we would move on to layer number two in the cleanliness department. Make our own. Actually, we do that right now; it’s much better than anything you can buy at the store, not to mention, you can make it smell any way you want. And it’s ridiculously easy to make.

We keep large buckets of coconut oil (organic, virgin) on the Farm, along with lye (Sodium Hydroxide). We purchased both from www.bulkapothocary.com (We do not receive any income from recommending them—we just like what they have and their service is great.)

*To make the soap: 28 oz. of the coconut oil is finely chopped and put in our Kitchen Aide Mixer (or bowl of equal size) and set aside. 10 oz. of water is measured and 5.15 oz. of lye is as well (in a separate container). Now. A word on lye. It is caustic. Very. We have literally had it eat a hole through one of our cabinets. Now, imagine what that will do to your skin. Wear gloves. Goggles wouldn’t be such a bad idea, either. So, when I say slowly pour the lye into the water, I mean that. Slowly. And don’t do it the other way around (water poured into the lye—you don’t want that stuff splashing anywhere). Now, when the lye hits the water, a chemical reaction is going to take place. It will let off a vapor. Don’t’ breath it in. Seriously. Hold your breath for the count of five. Then stir the water and lye mixture with a wooden spoon (not aluminum-lye reacts with aluminum). It will be hot; the water that is. This hot lye/water is then poured into the waiting coconut oil, where it is all stirred together, again, with the wooden spoon. The heat from the lye/water will melt the coconut oil.

If you have one, hook it up to your Kitchen Aide Mixer and let it go until it reaches trace (when you drizzle a bit of the solution on the surface and it holds its shape for a second before joining the rest). If you don’t have a mixer, you’ll have to stir it by hand. But don’t worry. It doesn’t take long. Once it reaches trace, thirty drops of your favorite essential oil(s) are stirred in and the whole mixture poured into a plastic container to rest overnight—we use those tubs the kid’s toys used to go into. The next day, it’s cut into bars.

When you need to do laundry, the bars are grated into a coffee mug—about a cups worth of grates, and a tablespoon of baking soda and a cup of hot water is added to it. It is stirred and put in the wash just as you would any other liquid detergent. Your clothes will be squeaky clean, smell great, and soft as a baby’s bottom! This batch makes enough soap to last our family of four for six weeks.

Now, for us to move on to layer number three in the cleanliness department, things would have to be pretty bad. I’m talking complete self-sufficiency bad. In that case, we’d be moving onto wood ash (when mixed with water makes Potassium Carbonate—while not lye, is close and will make a softer soap), lard or tallow, and water—if you’re interested, maybe I’ll do a post on that method at a later time. For right now though, thankfully, we’re still able to get the things we need to make our homes (and ourselves) nice and clean.

*Now, I know I make it sound kind-of scary here, and it is. If you’re not careful. So, be careful, and it’s as easy as pie.