Making soap

When we reached the point in our journey as a family where we wanted to reduce and hopefully eliminate the chemicals in our house, making soap (in particular liquid soap) seemed like a good place to start.

We were the family with a squirty bottle of Carex soap on every sink. That was my target. Liquid soap I felt was good enough to replace something mainstream, and that guests would hopefully not question.

Having learned the amazing benefits of coconut oil, I decided to go straight for a pure coconut oil soap and see what happened. I have made olive oil liquid soap as well and it was nice, but I much prefer the feel of the coconut oil based one - it has a great lather, and a squeaky clean feel at the end.

You’ll find the recipe and method in the Household section of the site. It does take some time and a bit of effort, but the benefits are that we have a base for making:

• liquid soap for hand washing
• washing up liquid
• shower gel/foam
• bubble bath

So this is why I wanted to tackle it early on - because I knew it would be a base component for the rest.

Getting the thickness right was the only issue I had. Olive oil based soap seemed to respond well to having essential oils added, thickening it as I mixed. But the same wasn’t true of the coconut oil soap.

I then realised one of my favourite soaps was a foam, so sought out some foaming pump bottles.

This changed everything. After tweaking the ratio of water to soap base (much more dilute than trying to thicken it), we now had a perfect foam in a classy looking bottle on every sink.

The same mixture (just some different oils) and pump bottle is what we all use in the shower now as well.

I made bubble bath for my daughter with fragrances she wanted, and now make custom bottles for friends who want to sample.

When a friend’s pre-school daughter came out of our bathroom saying much she loved our soap, I knew we were on the right track!