If you are like me, one of the reasons I switched to soap and shampoo bars was to get rid of plastic bottles and useless packaging. I reduced my plastic footprint but it left me with quite a few miscellaneous leftovers. I hate to throw anything out and they cannot be composted. My alternative? I decided to upcycle these leftovers into liquid soap.
It ends up being really easy to transform soap bar leftovers into liquid hand soap. Just set them aside when they get too small to use. When you have enough, you can turn the bars into a nice liquid soap to use next to your sink. It takes just a couple of minutes. To show you how easy it is, I made a quick video for you to watch (a little further down this post).
A Little Experimentation
Before we get to the video, let me mention the research I conducted. It did not need extensive research because all of the on-line methods boiled down to 3 simple steps: chopping up the
Since that first try, I have started adding vinegar and tweaking the amount of water. I am still working on perfecting the process, but I figured it was good enough to share. Certainly, the fact that I have not purchased liquid hand soap in over a year has saved many plastic bottles from the landfill. If I can just get a few people to follow along, we could save hundreds of bottles per year.
3:24 to Less Plastic
If you are watching this video, I hope you are the kind of person to just mess around with things to see how they turn out. Let’s be honest, this is not science so it’s fine to just play around with the ingredients until you get something you can use. Currently, I am able to turn all my old bars of soap into enough liquid soap to supply all of my sinks. That’s good enough for me (my wife, on the other hand, may feel a bit differently).
After the first couple of batches, I started adding my homemade vinegar to the mix. The acidity breaks down the soap better to keep the mixture liquified. Plus, the acetic acid in the vinegar is a terrific astringent and degreaser. Lemon or lime juice serves a similar function and would be a solid substitute for the vinegar.
Here’s the summary:
- Round up your soap bar leftovers
- Chop up or grate the soap into a bowl
- Add water to the bowl at a ratio of 4-5 parts water to 1 part soap
- Add a couple of ounces lemon/lime juice or any vinegar (you can add both if you like)
- Let it sit overnight or for several hours (you may want to agitate it a couple of times)
- Stick blend it until completely smooth (you may think it’s too watery, but it will thicken. Let it sit 15+ minutes)
- Pour into soap containers and start using it
The Quadfecta of Leftovers
Is it perfect? No. Is it like the stuff you buy in the store? Not exactly. What it does do, however, is fix a couple of issues for FREE! Here are all of the good things you achieve by making your own liquid soap. No more:
- Gluing tiny pieces of soap together in your shower
- Throwing out soap leftovers
- Buying liquid soap at the store
- Throwing out liquid soap plastic bottles (or trying to recycle them)
It’s amazing how long you can use “disposable” plastic containers. Before, I used them once and threw them out. I have actually been reusing the plastic dispensers we bought at the store over a year ago. One of them has the pump piece break, but the other 4 or 5 have had a lengthy existence. I probably would have gone through at least 20 bottles in the past year if I was still doing the use once and toss strategy. Every little bit helps.
If you have any other leftover body wash, shampoo, or other soap designed for skin in your drawers or closets (like we do here), you can mix this in over time as well. Be careful if it smells really strong. You may just need to throw that away if you are not going to use it because it would likely carry throughout your entire house. This very thing happened with my Lemon Basil leftovers. It did not go over well with
I really hope you will give this a try. If you do, let me know how it goes. If you have little kids, this makes a fun “science” experiment. Getting clean would be the worst thing that could happen. Enjoy!