Saving Money ~ Making Soap

I am a bit of a freak when it comes to germs.  Truth.  But when there are 6 people in your house, the last thing I want is for one of us to get sick. One gets sick, we're all sick and then continue to re-pass the cold on and on and on... It's aggravating.  So, I make the kiddos wash their hands the second they come in the door from school.  The grocery store?  Freaks me out, yuck.  Wash your hands. Wash your hands.  WASH YOUR HANDS!  And our son, mysteriously always has dirty hands.  I scrub them, he soaks them in the sink, he walks out of the bathroom and 10 minutes later, he's dirty again.  Where is this coming from??! We are going through a ton of soap around here.  I've been wanting to try this for awhile, so #2 daughter and I made some last night after the little ones were in bed.
Here's what you need:

A bar of soap.  Any bar, something you enjoy, this is going to make a LOT of liquid soap.  I got this bar at the natural food store for $4.95, expensive but it smells amazing!

2 Tablespoons Glycerin  This bottle was about $7 at Target.  It was behind the counter, I had to ask the pharmacist for it.

A cheese grater

1 gallon of water

First, grate the soap, or get one of your older kids to do it:

You end up with a nice bowl of shavings.  Don't worry, I didn't make her grate the whole bar.  In fact, she started complaining her arm hurt the second I put my camera down.

Add the water and the soap shaving to a big pot, turn heat on medium.  Add glycerin and stir gently until the soap flakes dissolve into the water.

Here's what you get:  A big pot of soapy water.





Remove from heat and let the pot sit for 10-12 hours.  We did this in the evening, so we just let it sit overnight.  The mixture should start to cloud up in about 3-4 hours.

The next morning our soap looked like this:



It was thick and kind of gloppy.  Gloppy, very technical soap making word.  I used my hand mixer to blend it all up.  You could use an egg beater too, or a whisk if you are feeling especially grouchy and need to take some frustration out on your soap.  It still felt a little thick to me so I added just a little water (maybe 1/2 cup) while I was blending. 
VOILA!

It filled a gallon and the 18oz empty container of hand soap.  The kids happen to love the foaming hand soap, so I tried adding just enough soap to fill about an inch at the bottom of the container, and filled the rest with water:

Worked great!
Here's the cost breakdown:
Bar Soap $5
Glycerin $7
146 ounces Liquid Hand Soap $12
Next time it will be just the cost of the soap because I have plenty of Glycerin left for several more batches.

See?  Cool huh?

I've made enough soap to fill my 18oz bottle a little over 8 times.  The original cost? $5  For a total cost of $40. 

The foam container is a 7.5 ounce bottle that costs about $2.  If I add (let me be generous, but I don't think I added that much) 1 ounce of liquid soap each time..I've made 146 refills!  That's $292!!  I think I deserve a new purse.  Thoughts?

I did want to mention I found a bunch of different "recipes" online but I did find this one that I followed to make my liquid soap.  Thanks to The Farmer's Nest for making this so easy for me to share!

Thanks for stopping by:)