Adventures in Soap Making

This morning we made a batch of laundry soap and a batch of dish washing soap. The Fels-Naptha used for the laundry soap grated into a beautiful creamy yellow consistency. Similar to macaroni and cheese, but not as tempting to eat! Did you know that Fels-Naptha has its roots in Yanceyville, North Carolina?!

Grated Fels-Naptha

When we started to heat up the water with the Fels-Naptha it created mesmerizing clouds in the bottom of the pan.

Melting Fels-Naptha

For not being a sudsy soap, it did make suds while adding the borax and the washing soda. Hopefully this will not cause any problems for our final product.

Mixing the ingredients and created some suds

Pouring the ingredients and additional water into a bucket for the final step in the laundry soap

We also made dish washing liquid soap from a recipe found online.  One of the most fascinating occurrences was when we put white vinegar into the mixture of castile soap and water. It turned milky white and congealed!

Congealing dish soap after adding vinegar

After we finished & calculated our costs we realized the use of castile soap in our recipe for the dish washing soap increased the cost so we did not really save a whole lot of money with this recipe. Perhaps if we find a recipe without castile soap in it, there might be a chance of it being a money saver. The laundry soap is certainly a money saver, and for the little amount of time it takes to put it all together, it is worth it!