You always want to take care of anything you have that you have invested time or money, or both, in. Handmade soap is no exception. Finding the right bar to suit your exact needs can take time and a lot of trial and error. Here are a few things you can do to help make your bar soap last longer…
How to Care for Handmade Soap
- Keep your soap dry with a self-draining soap holder that has ridges or raised nubs for the soap to fully drain on.
- Apply the soap bar to a washcloth or loofa and use that to lather yourself.
- Once used, make sure it gets air. Just coming and going from the bathroom will naturally circulate air.
- Before use, store your soap in a cool, dry, preferably dark area. Avoid direct light, excessive heat, and humidity.
- Store scented soap in a container, such as a carboard soap box.
- Use your soap within three months of purchase is if it is heavily superfatted (has a lot of extra, unsaponified fats and oils used for skin).
How to Make Soap Last Longer
Dry Soap Lasts Longer: When soap sits in water it breaks down and liquifies to a gel or thick liquid state. Using a good soap holder that keeps the soap elevated will help a great deal. If possible, use a self-draining sap rack or dich that does not retain a pool of standing water. Even when the soap bar is half an inch above the water, the glycerin (cleaning agent) of the bar can draw in nearby moisture a bit.
Washcloths Improve Lather: A cotton or terrycloth washcloth or a bathing sponge will typically require only half the soap to raise as much lather as using the bar directly on your skin. It’s the lather that collects and raises the dirt from your skin and allows the water to wash it away. That is how soap works to clean you. By using a washcloth, you can more evenly distribute the soap lather with almost no waste.
Proper Storage Preserves Soap: Glycerin is the cleaning agent in soap. It is natural and what is often removed from commercial soap to be replaced with artificial detergents. This is because glycerin is extremely valuable, and they sell it off at a high profit while giving you cheap chemicals as a replacement. The glycerin in your handcrafted soap is a wonderful thing that attracts moisture and helps pull dirt form the pores of your skin. The fact that it attracts water means it can pull it right from the air and keep your soap less dry than you’d like.
Fragrances Fade: Keeping your scented soaps in an enclosed area, such as a box, will help retain natural and artificial fragrances. As a rule, most essential oil scents will fade before artificial fragrances – but all will eventually weaken and dissipate with time.
Freshness Counts: Raw fats and oils can go rancid and cause orange spots of weird odors in all-natural handmade soap. Only those fats and oils that undergo the “saponification” process turn to soap. This is when the lye reacts with a liquid (lye + liquid = lye solution) and the oil/fat and converts it into what we call soap. Any fats that have not reacted with the lye solution can turn rancid. This does not normally mean the soap cannot be used. It just might get orange spots and develop an odor.
What’s Next
Now that you know how to best care for your homemade soap, why not take a minute to see exactly how soap works? We have an article on this site that will walk you through how soap gets you clean.