I have been slowly trying to become more environmentally conscious. Internet searches have been mostly telling me similar things. How to make laundry detergent from scratch, how to reduce toxins from your home, how to reduce waste, etc. But are these suggestions really helping?
I have been making my own homemade soap, with lye and oil, for a couple years now. It started because my boyfriend is sensitive to some strange things: petroleum-based dyes (especially red 40), potassium sorbate, sorbic acid, sodium benzoate, benzoic acid, propylene glycol, and a couple of others that are potential but haven't been tested. On top of that, he has sensitive skin that likes to dry out. I flirted around with the idea of making soap for a year or so before that but he gave me a good reason to start.
I started out with a basic Castile recipe, which is 100% olive oil (I have read other people refer to Castile soap as just 100% plant oils). I then made some soap with a bit of coconut oil, ground oats, and honey. I stuck to those two recipes for a year or so. I expanded a bit more but not much until about 6 months ago. I got into a soap making kick. There was way more information online about making soap from lye then there was when I first started. I made coffee soap, pine tar soap, chamomile soap, salt soap, etc. I learned how to infuse things in oil and that I could use other liquids than water. I expended to using a variety of oils and added clay, charcoal, or other ingredients to the soap at trace. The possibilities are endless to what one can make. One thing I want to sick to is using natural ingredients, organic and food grade if possible.
The soap that has really helped my boyfriend's skin issues is the oatmeal chamomile soap. I used chamomile tea as the liquid for the lye solution, used mostly olive oil for my oils, and added colloidal oats at trace. I did not add any fragrances or essential oils to keep it as simple as possible. The soap mildly smells like chamomile, very pleasant.
Within the past couple of weeks I have started making liquid soap (which is NOT the same as grating a bar and diluting it in water). It involves using a different kind of lye. People typically use sodium hydroxide as their lye for soap making, but this kind of lye does not like to stay suspended in water. Potassium hydroxide is the ideal lye for liquid soap. I have only found ways to make this using the hot process method and it takes about 4 hours to cook after it has gone through the hardening phase. One site suggested that it only needs to cook for about 30 minutes for it to be usable but that it will not be translucent. This does not bother me, but if I were to sell it I would probably cook it. When you are done cooking the soap it is called soap paste and needs to be diluted before using.
Different oils that are used in the soap have different dilution levels. There will still be solid soap if you try to dilute it less than that level. Pure olive oil soap dilutes at about 20% and pure coconut oil soap dilutes at about 40%. The properties of the liquid soap are similar to the hard soap if the same oils are used.
What I have had trouble finding online is how to use this soap paste or the diluted soap for things around the house. The shampoo recipe did not turn out well. The laundry detergent recipe is being tested. I want to make a dish soap recipe. I want to make a liquid soap for bathing pets. Are there other things I can use it for? Do I have to dilute it for everything? How do I thicken it with natural, harmless ingredients or methods?
