Reforming Soap from Old Soap Scraps

Wanting a break from your baking marathon this lockdown? How about making your own soap…from soap, old soap scraps that is.

Before going through the process, I will note that to make soap from scratch you’ll need a whole bunch of ingredients you may not be able to source in lockdown: coconut oil, olive oil, distilled water, 100% pure lye and essential oils. If you DO have these in your pantry/garage cupboards – bonus! You can find the recipe on Healthline.com. Note though, lye is a highly corrosive substance that can irritate the skin, eyes, and respiratory system so you’ll need a bunch of safety equipment.

This blog however needs no particular ingredients except old soap slithers…you know, the ones that are abandoned in the soap dish and thrown in the bin, eventually.

I collect soap scraps which are too small and scraggly for use, and throw them in a bowl in the laundry instead. Once the bowl is full and the scraps have dried, I make soap…well I reform old soap into new soap!

New soap, particularly the supermarket multipacks, aren’t particularly expense, but some specialty soaps are. Scraps of these specialty soaps are PERFECT for adding scent into your homemade batch so be sure to keep those!

The process is not too mysterious, but gosh, you can make a whole lot of soap from all those odds and ends!  Needless to say, I’m not in a hurry to actually buy soap for a long while why I get through this last batch.

Reforming Soap from Old Soap Scraps

1. Gather your soap scraps

Household soap come in different brands, colours, scents and textures. It really doesn’t matter what goes into your new batch. Throw everything in!  If you have a favourite smelling soap you may want to include it as the essential oils will carry through into the new batch.

2. Cut soap scraps into slithers

When your old soap scraps are dry they are very easy to cut and will crumble under a knife perfectly. Cutting the soap into even sized slithers helps in the cooking process. You could grate them with a cheese grater, but the odds are the soap scraps are too small to safely grate (mind those fingers).

3. Throw them in a saucepan

Add your soap slithers to a saucepan with a little water (start with a ratio roughly of 1 cup  soap slithers = 1/2 cup water). Bring to a simmer over a medium heat, stirring regularly, adding more water if/as required until the soap turns into a dense slurry or a thick porridge consistency.  Avoid boil-over!  You’ll appreciate going to the effort of ‘slithering’ your soap at this point as you stir.

If your slurry is too wet with excess water, you can drain it through a sieve or colander to remove it.

You may at this point wish to add ‘special ingredients’ should you choose, such as textures from coffee grinds or essential oils.

4. Pour into a mould

I have lots of silicon bakeware so my go-to was a silicon loaf mould as I liked the idea of cutting my soap into chunks. You could use muffin moulds or anything you wish although keep in mind that if it is NOT silicon you’ll need to grease the sides for easy removal.

Allow to solidify overnight at room temperature.

5. Enjoy your SOS soap (salvaged old soap)

Remove the soap from its mould and slice into chunks. Keep the fresh cakes of soap in an air-tight container until you need them.