Microwaving bars of soap, part 2: making liquid soaps for laundry and hand soap

(For part 1 on how to microwave a bar of soap, see yesterday's post )

For liquid soap

Liquid is my preferred form of soap for laundry and hand soap. It rapidly dissolves in cold water, hopefully getting down to the business of cleaning, faster. Plus there's no chance of any undissolved soap bits remaining on clothing, ever, even in cold water washes.

To make liquid soap:

After the inflated soap lump has cooled for 5 minutes, I break it apart by hand into small pieces, about the size of shooter marbles, into a stainless steel saucepan.

I cover with hot tap water, and bring to a boil on the stove. I stir constantly, breaking up any soap lumps as it comes to a boil. Once boiling, I reduce heat, and continue to stir until melted.

This takes about 5 minutes, total, compared to hours of stove-time to melt whole bars.

Once all is melted, I partially fill a 1-gallon, wide-mouthed container with cold water, about half full. I then pour the hot, melted soap into this cold water. Wide-mouthed container is key, as this is a scoopable, not pourable, soap.

I stir, and add more water to fill to the top, and stir again. Adding this extra water makes the soap more manageable for scooping into the washing machine. As the liquid soap cools, it will thicken substantially.

Using liquid laundry soap:
I use about 2 cups (or about 1/8th of the 1-gallon container) of this liquid soap per load. It's pretty gelatinous, so a sturdy scoop works well for me. After I add the laundry to the washing machine, I scoop this soap just under where the wash water comes into the machine. It dissolves in the first minute of agitation.

**slight derail -- Some folks don't like the gloppiness of this soap. You can microwave your soap before each load. It becomes pourable with heating. But that's too much work for me. I've got better things to do with my time, so I tolerate the gloppiness. I have read of some people using a mixer to "whip" the liquid soap. I haven't tried this, but reportedly, whipped, cooled liquid soap is easier to handle/measure for laundry. Again, I just don't have that much time. Maybe some day I'll give it a try.

Alternatively, a large pump dispenser (like what hair salons use for the large containers of conditioner and shampoo, or what a restaurant uses for condiments -- we're talking 1-gallon pump dispensers) would also make adding/measuring the liquid soap more manageable. A pump dispenser works well for my liquid hand soap.--  end derail**

I buy 3-packs of Dial "Basics" at Dollar Tree for $1, or often find it on sale at the supermarket for 88 cents/3-pack. So, my cost per load is about 4 cents, for just plain soap.

Adding vinegar makes a great rinse aid in laundry

With sensitive skin, in the process of healing from eczema, I find adding vinegar to the rinse compartment to be very helpful in removing any final traces of soap from laundry. Vinegar also keeps colors brighter, softens towels and reduces mildew smell (a bonus with bath towels). I use 3 to 4 tablespoons of vinegar per load, put in the rinse dispenser, to be released during the rinse cycle. 3 tablespoons of vinegar costs me about 3-4 cents per load.

Sensitive skin laundry products vs. my homemade soap/vinegar rinse

My total cost for sensitive skin laundry care is about 7 to 8 cents per load. Compare that to Dreft Baby Liquid detergent at over 30 cents per load, or Ivory Snow Gentle Care Laundry Detergent at about 50 cents per load.

Making hand soap for pump dispensers

I use the liquid form of this soap to make my own hand soap. I add enough water to give the liquid the right viscosity to pump from the dispenser. This is a trial and error process.

After the water has be mixed in, I add about 1 part of liquid dishwashing detergent (the kind for hand washing dishes) for 6 parts of liquid soap. This added detergent helps with cutting grease and oils, especially helpful in the kitchen.

Coloring and fragrance

I add liquid soap colorant (or food coloring) until the desired color, and essential oils for fragrance. This particular batch is lemon-mint leaf, starting with lemon dish detergent, and adding lemon essential oil and spearmint essential oil. It's a fresh fragrance that just smells clean.

Including the extra ingredients, 16 ounces of my own hand soap costs about 30 cents (compared to $1 for 7.5 ounces of commercial product). There's no additional plastic waste. And even with the dish detergent added, it's better for my skin than liquid hand soaps sold in stores. I can feel the difference.


The bonus to making my own liquid laundry soap is any time I run out of hand soap for the pumps, I have the soap in liquid form already, and can make up a batch of hand soap for refills, in just 3 minutes.

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Microwaving bar soap -- what in the world?

Microwaving a bar of soap for making laundry soap in minutes, with no grating 

Do you make your own laundry soap? If you do, do you grate bar soap for this?

"Why would anyone make laundry soap?" you wonder.

For me, making my own hypo-allergenic laundry soap has drastically reduced my eczema flare-ups. But the primary motivation for most folks is saving money.

For years, I'd grated my hypo-allergenic bar soap on a small handheld grater. The fear of losing the skin on my knuckles caused me to change from grating bars of soap to melting whole bars of soap in a large pot of water.

Well . . .

I tried something fun and new a couple of weeks ago. Yes, this part was the fun part. How do you feel about kitchen experiments?

From bar to puffy blob: you gotta try this!!

Use your microwave for an easy way to get your bars of soap ready for pulverizing or melting. 
Then, you can use, as is, or blended with other ingredients, for making powdered or liquid soap for laundry and/or filling all of those hand soap dispensers, for pennies.

How I go about this

(Just an FYI -- This isn't about a particular recipe for laundry detergent. There are loads of recipes online. This is about how I get the bar soap into a form that is very user-friendly, without hand-grating.)

What I use

• 1 very fresh (new) bar of soap, 3 ounces or thereabouts, Ivory or Dial "Basics" (Ivory is the soap that is well-known for working the best in this experiment/transformation, but Dial "Basics" also works for me.)
• waxed paper
• microwave
• blender, food processor
• storage container for powdered soap
• 1-gallon, wide-mouth container to store liquid soap 

I microwave 3-oz bars of soap, one at a time. (I use Dial "Basics", but Ivory also works. I'm not sure about other brands of soap.)

The soap should be new. A new bar fluffs the best. And Ivory soap is reported to fluff up the most. But the Dial "Basics" gets enough fluffing to make it easy to pulverize in the blender.

On a large sheet of waxed paper, I place 1 unwrapped bar of soap, in the microwave. Yes, I said in the microwave, just dry, unwrapped, as is.

I set the timer for 1 minute. In 1 minute, the bar of soap will look something like this

You can see some hard edges remaining. I continue to "cook" the bar of soap for 15 second intervals.

It takes my 3-oz bar of soap 1 minute and 30 seconds. Your microwave may vary.

You want to watch these 15 second intervals, as leaving the soap in the microwave too long will result in scorched soap. When the hard edges of the bar are gone, it's done. Like this

Open the microwave, and allow to sit for a minute. Peel the lump of inflated soap off of the waxed paper. The lump will still have hot spots, especially in the center, for another 6 or 7 minutes.

Allow it to cool!

With microwaving, the hard bar becomes pliable, breaks apart easily with your hands and is airy, like foam. Now that is something to see.

For powdered soap

Pull the lump into marshmallow-sized pieces and one by one put them in your food processor or blender. I use my blender for this, doing about 1/3 of the large lump at a time. Turn the appliance on for short bursts, until the lump is pulverized. This only takes a few seconds. With a blender, you'll want to empty the soap powder from time to time, into your storage container. 

The entire time spent pulverizing is about 2 minutes. And does not stress my blender in the least. You will have pulverized soap like this

Be careful about breathing in the soap dust.

One 3-oz bar yields 1 cup of soap flakes.

Powders work well for combining with other ingredients, like washing soda, borax or OxyClean. 

Using the powdered soap:
when I do use this in powdered form, I use about 2 to 3 tablespoons of soap flakes per load. This gives me about 6 to 8 loads of soap per bar.

Most folks find there's better cleaning power if soap flakes are blended with borax, washing soda and/or OxyClean. There are many recipes for these homemade laundry soaps online, all very similar.

Some people prefer to use homemade soap flakes to extend their favorite commercial laundry products, like Tide and Gain, mixing a commercial product with the homemade product in up to a 50/50 mix. You would use less of this blend, due to the density of the soap flakes.

I began making my own laundry soap to reduce eczema flare-ups. But the money-saving aspect also appeals to me.

My husband's laundry seems to require a 50/50 blend, like mentioned above. Soap, alone, does not handle the man-smell. I blend a powdered detergent from Dollar Tree with homemade soap flakes, for his own detergent (and for when I'm washing other clothing/linens that won't include my own). When using just the Dollar Tree detergent, our cost is about 11 cents per load. When I extend the DT detergent with pulverized hand soap, (using 3 bars of Dial Basics to one small box of DT powdered detergent), our cost per load is about 6 cents. Good, right?



Playing in the kitchen is a lot of fun. Even my grown kids think microwaving soap is entertaining. But the real value for me is how easily this makes creating my own laundry soap. Grating bars of soap on a hand grater was tedious. This is just simple.

Who knew I could use my microwave for making laundry soap? Funny thing, there isn't a listing in my microwave cookbook for microwaving bars of soap.

(I have broken this post into 2 parts. It was verging on too long for the blog. More tomorrow on how I make liquid soaps, using microwaved bar soap.)

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