Smelling great !!! – DIY Shower gel / Handsoap

Hi all 🙂

Do you ever use a solid bar of soap in the bathtub, shower or in the kitchen ? Then you know that it can be a pain in the ass. The soap slips into the water, is stored in a wet soap dish and just gets smaller and smaller without you using it. Your favorite soap just washed through the drain that way and that is a shame. I have a bunch of soaps that I would like to put in my shower, but I don’t like to waste a good soap like that.

I found a recipe to make showergel / liquid handsoap from a solid bar of soap. To be honest I was pretty skeptical about it. Knowing me, I had to give it a try ^^ I went trough my soapstash and found a suitable piece of wonderful smelling soap 🙂

You don’t need a lot to make the liquid soap.

* A piece if soap (can be scraps of different soaps as well)

* Cheese grater

* A whisk

* An electric mixer / eggbeater

* Mixing container that can hold boiling water

* Water boiler

* A measuring cup with a spout or a funnel

* Bottles or containers to store the soap

I had two pieces of soap that I wanted to use. The triangular piece is a sampler of some peachy milk soap and the bumblebee is a piece of Fortune Cookie Soap. That’s My Jam! from the Sun in the Fun mini collection. It smells heavenly of vanilla, berries and coconut. Together they weight in at about 60 grams in total.

Take your mixing container and grate the soap. I took the biggest grater wholes. To me this looked like frozen yogurt shavings. Mmm !!! Let your water boil. To know the exact quantity of water you need you take the weight of the soap in grams  and multiply it by 16.75. That will give you the quantity of water in ml. For me that translated into 1 liter of water.

Pour the boiling water onto the grated soap. Take the whisk to make the soap dissolve. Whisk about 2-3 minutes or longer if the soap doesn’t dissolve that fast. Be careful, the water and the container will be hot ! Put the mixture aside for 8 to 24 hours to set. I checked mine after 5 hours and it was set already, but left it for another 3 hours to be sure 🙂

This is the result after 8 hours. A soft jelly like consistency frothy soap.

Take the whisk again and break up the jelly. Then take the electric mixer / eggbeater and mix the solution back to a semi liquid state. It will be like liquid gel. Let that sit a little while to let the bubbles go down a little.

I poured my soap into a measuring beaker with a spout, but you can use a funnel as well. I took some empty containers I had lying around the house for storage. My measuring beaker was filled up to the 1 liter mark and I still had 1/4 of a liter of soap in the mixing container. I thinks that’s because the mixture is pretty frothy. 😉

I managed to pour 900 ml into the containers I already have, but found the need for another container. So I took an empty soda bottle that I washed out very well. So I have a total of  1.25 liters of liquid soap out of 60 grams of solid soap. It will last me quite a while. ^^

I used the soap under the shower, but I wasn’t impressed with the ability to foam. Maybe it’s just not good for using with a loofah. I think I’ll try it again with a normal washcloth. What was left in the soda bottle after my shower, I poured in a handsoap dispenser. It’s next to the sink in the kitchen now.  I used quite a lot of soap in the shower, because it didn’t want to lather up like I wanted it to.  That’s the only negative I found. The soap smells great, just like the bar did. And mine had little coconut shavings in it, so it makes for a mild scrubbing showergel / handsoap. 😀

I think I’ll try this recipe again, but change the water to soap ratio. I would multiply the soap by only 10 to calculate the amount of water I need and maybe get a better concentrated showergel, that does lather up better. 😉

What do you think about turning solid soap to a liquid one ? Would you try it ? Please tell me in the comments 🙂

Be Happy !!!

Bunnie