What can I do with the small bars of soap from bar soap? Can I reshape them?
Louis from Chesapeake, Virginia
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I've heard of some people melting them in water and using them in pump soap bottles. Too much trouble for me! We just stick the old, small bar on top of the new bar and after a few times of using it they have formed one bar. Both have to be wet, of course.
I just read this in a blog.
Hope it helps.
casasugar.com/
I've also heard for people who like to garden or work outside, that you can put them in a mesh bag,(like an onion bag)and hang them by your outdoor faucet.
For Halloween I've grated them and boiled them. Added red and green food color, and bits of grey foam. It makes real nasty looking stuff! Call it whatever disgusting name you can think of and challenged children to put their hands in it. I told them it would remove any bad curses that were on them.
I refilled soft soap pump bottles with it too, minus the revolting gray coloring. Londa
Hi
You can either soak them overnight, then squish them together to form a lumpy bar, or get a sponge, cut a deep slit in it, and push to soap scraps inside. It suds up wonderfully in the shower!
You can use cookie cutters to cut fun shapes out of them. And also if you have younger kids, you can let them use so then it will be easier for them to get a hold of the soap bar instead of the reagular sized ones that are bigger than their hands.
I grate them up in food processor when I have a bunch and use them to make the homemade laundry detergent with borax and washing soda that has been on this site for a long time. I'm sure the recipe is the archives.
My grandmother would save them until she got 4 or 5 of the tiny things, cut the foot out of an old pair of pantyhose, put them in that, tie it up and there you have something to wash with for quite a while without wasting a thing.
Warren
1) Try to adhere them to a new bar.
2) Walmart sells a drawstring bag (in cosmetics) that allows you to insert bits of soap and wash with them.
3) You can grate them down (make sure you have lots), add some water, and heat until melted. Then pour into a mold, allow to harden, and you've got a new bar--it's called rebatching.
4) You can also grate and use it to make your own homemade laundry detergent. There's lots of recipes on the net--no need to use fels naptha.
5) Sometimes, you can stick the small slivers (that wouldn't stick to a new bar) together to make a bar that's big enough to use.
I take the bits and pieces and put them in a canning jar. I then pour very hot water over. Let it sit. When the soap melts it goes in my liquid soap dispenser.
I read once on a helpful tips list in a magazine. You cut the pieces of soap into small 1/2 pieces or smaller. Next you drop small glass beads or marbles into an empty liquid soap dispenser. Add water. Let physics do the rest. The soap breaks down via the water. Then it continues to liquefy over time by disintegrating over the marbles.
Ingenius!
I grate all of them in my Kitchen-Aid grinder (The soap makes a lot of dust when it is ground. To avoid getting it everywhere including into my nostrils I attach a plastic bag to the opening of the grinder, and the ground soap plus the dust are settling nicely in this bag without making me sneeze uncontrollably).
Add gradually hot water and mix all of it until it becomes a stiff gooey paste, then I line a glass baking pan with saran wrap. Pour and scrape the paste into the pan, let it air-dry. When 3/4 dry (takes a while) I lift the entire slab with the saran wrap from the baking pan and cut it with a cleaver into rectangles (don't slide the cleaver, but press it straight down into the slab, you also can use a butcher knife and similar) or use cookie cutters for fun shapes as I did when my grandkids were small.
Place on a saran wrap lined cookie sheet so that the pieces don't touch. Let dry completely. Option: After drying scrape the uneven edges of the soap pieces (I don't, they wash out quickly). Voila: your elegant soap with a 'nouveau' perfume mix is ready to use!
Oh, I forgot: My 'soap stocking' with some of the soap remnants hangs in my kitchen as long as I can remember. My mom got this idea during WW II when every little bit of soap was a treasure. This is the easiest way to recycle your soap bits!
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