I make my own soap from 3 ingredients: lard that I process from bacon grease, lye, and water. It is extremely cheap and easy to make, and cleans really effectively. And no, the soap does not smell like bacon at all, it just smells like soap.
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
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Isn't that what is considered hard soap? A bit like Marseille soap.
You use it for general cleaning or personal hygiene?
Unless you enjoy the process, or the end result enough then no.
The reason artisanal soap is expensive is because it's a fairly labour intensive process on a small scale. I did the numbers with a friend who thought about making it a few years back.
It might be fun, but it is only cheaper in the long run if you consider your time to be worth nothing.
Soap making involves very little time investment. There is a long drying time (weeks to months) but you can spend that time on other things 🙂
My time is priceless. So priceless that I run out of it even if I try to save it. Time is the least concern I have.
Just buy a ready to use kit with everything already weighed out. Cold saponification is the easy way. Took me about 30 minutes to prepare six bars and they will last for quite some time. The soap turned out much softer but i keep the unused soap in a dry place for curing. Maybe the next soap will be harder. Next step for me will be to buy the ingredients in bulk to cut down on plastic waste. I will also add fragrance next time.
There is a soap making comm, but it's dead last I checked.
Whenever I think about making soap I think about making my own lye in a pottery kiln. Would fire pots while burning up clam shells or whatever to make the NaOH, at least that's how I remember it's made.
I want to go back to basics but I'm not considering going that basic. But it's a nice idea.
You'd make CaO that way, which mixed with water forms Ca(OH)2 (milk of lime). I'm not sure, but as I remember it NaOH is used to make liquid soaps, lime is used to make solid soaps.
The overall costs long term are much cheaper to make your own soap.
We started making food for our dogs due to one of them having an allergic reaction to the food we were feeding them before. It's far far cheaper to make it ourselves, and isn't really that hard. It just took learning about the basic steps and doing it.
You got me curious: kibble or wet?
Because I know how to prepare fresh/wet food for my dogs. But kibble is a whole different subject.
Not really relevant but still relevant https://youtu.be/tK-cKWSPBBs
That was wonderful and horrifying
My parents used to buy Imperial Leather when I was a kid, I used shower gels for a while, but eventually came back to it. It cheap, lathers well, cleans well, isn't overly perfumed. I struggle to believe you could make an equivalent soap at home for the same price assuming you value your time. (you could buy it in both the UK and Australia so I assume it's everywhere)
I had never heard of Imperial Leather until this day and I am sad for it. Seems to have an unusual scent when compared with the usual herbs/flowers/vegetable byproducts my country usually favours.
I made soap once and it was fun. We were 4 people and everyone made a slightly different version. The base was the same but the add-ins (fragrant oils, poppyseed, coffee, honey, etc.) were chosen individually. It was quite fun and everyone walked away with 4 different types of soap (after a few weeks/months).