Bar of Soap to Liquid Soap

Turn A Bar of Soap Into Liquid Hand Soap

I have a confession to make. I don’t like bar soap. It gets dirty and takes a long time to use up, so I usually get fed up with it and throw it in the trash.
Despite this, people seem to like to give me bar soap, which I feel guilty not using. So I have been buying liquid hand soap at $3 a bottle and putting the bar soap in a box with the intention of somehow finding a use for it.
Then it occurred to me that I might be able to convert the bar soap into liquid hand soap. Why didn’t I think of it before? I did some research and found out that it is easy to do. All it takes is melting the soap with water, adding a little vegetable glycerin, and voilà, you have made liquid hand soap.

So I tried it and was thrilled to find that it works great! From one bar of soap, I made close to 2 liters of hand soap, which will last a long time. The only thing I purchased for this project was a $2 bottle of glycerin at my local drug store:

Glycerin is made from plant oils and is commonly used in soaps, shampoos, moisturizers, etc. Since bar soap already has glycerin in it, I tried this experiment both ways, with and without the added glycerin. I found that the below recipe worked fine without the glycerin, except that the soap tended to clump and didn’t have as smooth a texture. It made enough of a difference that I would recommend adding the glycerin, but you can also try the recipe without it, if you wish.

How To Turn A Bar of Soap Into Liquid Hand Soap
Ingredients:

1 c soap flakes
10 c water
1 Tbs glycerin

Equipment:

Cheese grater
A large pot
Measuring cup and spoons
A spatula for stirring
A soap container with a hand pump
A container to hold excess soap
Funnel

Directions:
First, grate the soap. Get out your cheese grater, grab the soap, and get grating. I found this to be surprisingly easy, although the soap particles tend to float in the air as you grate. You can wear a mask to avoid breathing it in. When you’re done, the soap flakes look like grated Parmesan:

One bar of soap yielded a little over 1.5 cups of flakes. The recipe only uses one cup of soap flakes, so I put the remaining soap in a jar for later use.
In a large pot, combine 1 cup soap flakes, 10 cups water, and 1 Tbs glycerin. Turn on medium-low heat and stir until the soap dissolves. This happens fast, about a minute or two.
Let the soap cool completely, then pour into the containers using the funnel. That’s all there is to it!

As I mentioned, this recipe makes a lot of soap, about 6 bottles worth. I put the excess in a large bottle and am storing it under the sink. When I run out, I will simply pull out the big bottle and funnel some more into the smaller bottle.
You can also use this soap as body wash. To make it smell nice, add a drop or two of essential oil to the mix.
As I mentioned, the only thing I bought for this experiment was the glycerin. I reused the bottles and the soap was a gift. (Alternately, I could have saved soap slivers and made the hand soap that way.)
In the end, I used about $.40 worth of glycerin to make the equivalent of 6 bottles of hand soap. That’s a savings $17.60, well worth the half hour of my time it took to make the soap.

UPDATE: I tried this with Dove Sensitive Skin Soap too. If you want to turn a bar of DOVE soap into liquid soap, click here for the recipe.

ETA: The kind of soap you use may be a bit of a wild card, since every soap will have different ingredients in it. I got the best results with a bar of Yardley soap, which did not even need the glycerin to become hand soap. In general, a higher quality soap will probably yield better liquid hand soap.
Dove Sensitive Skin Beauty Bar seems to be more difficult to turn into hand soap, which I would guess has something to do with the “sensitive” formula.
ETA II: I’m happy so many of you are finding this recipe helpful. If you are having trouble, such as thin or watery soap or “snot-like” (?) soap, I encourage you to read through the comments. Lots of people have reported back with their experiences with the recipe. It seems that sometimes letting the soap sit to thicken in the pot or hacking it with a hand blender to loosen it does the trick.
ETA III: For a solution on getting the soap to lather, try a foaming soap dispenser.

Tips and Tricks!!

I've been working on this post for awhile now, as I find these neat tips and tricks I wanted to keep them all together and be able to share them with all of you!

  

1. To clean the grease off of the burners on the stove- put them in a zip lock baggie with about 1/4 cup of ammonia and seal the bag. Then let it sit overnight (outside is best, in case the bag breaks and you can avoid the stink!) and the fumes will take off the burned on grease and you can wipe it away with a sponge in the morning.

2. To get the built up residue off of your shower head, tie a baggy of vinegar around a shower head. Leave it there over night, and it will clean everything off with no work!

3. To keep spaghetti sauce from staining your plastic ware, spray the inside of the storage container with a little bit of non-stick cooking spray. It will prevent the red from soaking into the plastic. If they still smell like sauce after you've washed them, place a cut up lemon inside and zap it in the microwave for a minute. 

4. If you frost a cake and are going to store it in the fridge, wet a piece of newspaper and set it on a plate. All of the fridge odors will go into the newspaper and not the cake. A great hint for if you have a fridge full of food for a party.

5. The sun is a great bleaching agent. You can place wet fabrics or plastic ware into the sun and it will bleach the stains out for you.

6. Aspirin can not only prevent heart attacks but also remove sweat stains, take the green out of blonde hair in the summer, treat pimples and get rid of dandruff.  To remove sweat stains crush up enough pills to make a paste with water to cover the stain. Let set and then wash as usual. To remove the green from the pool from your hair, dissolve 6-8 tabs in water and let soak onto hair for 10 minutes. For problem acne, make a paste and apply directly to the pimple. For Dandruff- crush two aspirins and mix it into your normal amount of shampoo (regular shampoo, not the dandruff kind!) you use in the shower.  Let sit on hair for a few minutes and rinse away the flakes!

7. Tossing a few pennies in your garden to make your hydrangeas blue. (My grandma also swears it prevents slugs, but I dont have slugs in my garden so I dont know if this is true or not!)

8. Store your sheets in a pillowcase. Keeps everything together and it makes for easy, compact storage.

9. Once you open the brown sugar, toss a few marshmallows in to keep it soft.

10. To remove stains from nails after wearing a dark polish, scrub nails with a whitening toothpaste and a nail brush.

11. To make your own matte nail polish, make a little pile of eyeshadow (great idea for the broken shadows we all have lying around!) and mix in a little clear nail polish. No more paying $8 a bottle for the matte stuff!

12. When you cut up an apple keep it from turning brown by using a rubber band to hold it together in its original apple shape.

13. A bounce sheet in your back pocket will repel mosquitoes. Place them around your house to repel mice as well.

14. To get the water spots off of chrome faucets, after cleaning rub them with a piece of waxed paper- it will keep the water spots and fingerprints from sticking to the clean metal. You can also use a piece of waxed paper on your swifter sweeper. Just rip off a piece the size of the sweeper, attach, and wipe away. The dirt sticks to the paper- so much cheaper than buying the refill kits.

15. If you get a water mark on a wooden table, rub the stain with Petroleum Jelly and let sit for 24 hours. Then wipe off the excess and polish as usual.

16. Cornstarch will untangle all kinds of knots. Rub some into the knot in shoelaces, chains, string etc and watch as it comes apart.

17.  When painting, wrap a rubber band around the can over the opening. Then you can dip in the brush and wipe the excess paint off onto the rubber band, rather than the edge of the can.

18. You can make your own ice packs by filling a zip lock baggie with dish soap, then placing into a second baggie to seal in leaks. The soap wont freeze totally, allowing you to mold it to your body. Bonus, you can get a few packs out of a $1 bottle of soap from the dollar store.

19. To make perfectly shredded chicken, simply toss hot/warm cooked chicken into the mixer with the cookie paddle attachment. Turn it on speed 5 and in about 30 seconds it will have done all the work for you.

20. When you take down Christmas lights, wrap them around a square of cardboard for storage. A good use for all of the shirt boxes that get ripped open Christmas morning. Keeps them untangled and easy to put away.

21. When hammering in a nail, use a clothes pin to hold the nail in place. No more hammering your fingers!

22. You can make your own magic erasers for cleaning by simply buying some melamine foam. You can buy 30 of them on Amazon for $15. No more paying $4.69 for four!

23. Baby powder will remove sand from skin. Perfect for keeping feet clean!

24. Soak old paint brushes in HOT vinegar for 30 minutes and then wash. The old paint will come out and they will be as good as new.

25. Chalk will remove grease stains from clothes. Simply rub the stain with chalk, then toss in the wash as normal. I learned this when I was student teaching :)

26. Add some Velcro to a dish towel to keep it secure on the handle of the oven.

27. When a sweater gets pilly from being in the dryer, run a cheap disposable razor over the fabric to shave off the fuzz! They used to make little machines that were basically mens razors for this back in the 90's.

28. From Martha- save cabinet space in the kitchen, hang a tension rod and use S hooks to hang pots and pans. Then a magazine rack attached to the door will hold lids in place.  Also, tension rods turned vertical will sort cookie sheets and pans so you don't have to move a bunch of stuff to get the pan you want.

29. To clean a cast iron skillet, toss about 1/2 cup coarse salt into the pan and rub with a soft sponge. The salt removes excess oils and takes off the bits of food without messing with the seasoning of the pan.

30. Strawberries can be hulled using a regular drinking straw. Thank you Williams and Sonoma for charging me $8 for a strawberry huller for nothing...

31. Iron a little baby powder into the under arms of your white shirts. It will keep oil from seeping into the threads, thus keeping them white.

32. Bed Skirts can be really costly. Get an extra fitted sheet and cover the box spring. You can get the plain ones for around $7 from target.

33. When painting something, use a few push pins in the back of the object to lift it off of the table. No more sticking to whatever its painted on!

34.  Tired of having your shoes bang around in the dryer? Check this guy out.

35. Keep the stove top clean by applying a thin layer of car wax, then wipe it off. It keeps food from sticking. Anything that sticks easily wipes away with a magic eraser!

That's all for now, if you have any tips please feel free to pass them on!