Making Environ Friendly Natural Soap

Younger generations are always looking for new and inventive ways to be more eco friendly and cost saving. One of the best ways to do this is to make your own natural soaps at home. By doing this, you will need some supplies but you also get to choose what fragrance, if desired, and what quantity you would like to produce.

By making your own natural soaps at home you can help to keep chemical exposures down on you and your family and also it helps your piece of mind knowing all of the ingredients are natural and healthy and not harmful.

Soap making is a lengthy process but the quantities you make in one sitting could be beneficial to your skin and your pocketbook. All soaps are started from some type of oil. Normally a palm oil, olive oil or even coconut oil is mixed together with water and lye. The lye and water would be heated separately from the chosen oil and then when the final temperature is met by both they are combined together. You would want to stir or whisk this mixture until you are able to see stir lines on the top.

This is a similar process as making a pancake batter and the batter forms a raised line on top when a spoon is drugged across it. That is the thing you are looking for. Once this consistency is fulfilled you may want to add the natural ingredients you intend to mix up to make the soap your own. For instance, you can add beeswax to make it smooth or even cocoa butter to soften the skin. To make a successful natural soap though, be sure to use only natural ingredients.

Once you have instilled the additives that you selected then you would want to pour the soap mixture into pre-greased molds. Normally the molds are brick shaped or tubular and you would want to make sure that they are greased with a vegetable oil to make sure when removed from the molds that they slide out easily without breaking. The soap mixture needs to be left in the molds to form for about 24 to 4 hours.

By this time the soap making procedure will go through many changes, for example, it may darken in color or even begin to bubble and might get warm. These changes are natural when the lye/water/oil mixture is set to rest after being emulsified together. This setting period of time neutralizes the soap and makes it fit to set into the chosen mold. Once again, it is absolutely important to remember that the molds should be made oily otherwise you will not be able to remove the soap from the molds easily to continue the process.

You must have a cool, dry place ready beforehand to let your soap place after you get it out from the mold. The soaps then can be pieced into any desired shapes and then needs to be placed on wire racks, lined with most preferably wax paper, and then have to be set in the dry, cool, dark place for the curing procedure.

The entire curing process might take from 3 to 8 weeks. But once this curing process is done and the soap has dried out the moisture that was left, then you will have a finished product. Most people are relaxed knowing that the soaps they are cleaning their bodies and faces with are healthy and not harmful to the community. This lesson can be passed to our next generations to come and is really a precious one.

Jen Hopkins has worked in the skin care industry for years. She maintains websites about how to make soap, and make your own soap. If you want to contact her, you can use the contact form at one of her sites.

- Jen Hopkins