Last year I only worked the last 10 days or so and no one used those nifty little soaps I made - sigh. This year, I only worked like half the year, but that's okay - I'm getting too old for this job, plus, I really wanted to welcome my new granddaughter into the world. She was such a tiny doll and she liked to curl up on my tummy, but once again I digress.
As I took over the cabins, I discovered that no one had used my soaps and I had more sitting at home, and no room for them here, so they stayed there. As I worked, I thought on display. Since I was still working on those last soaps from my very first efforts, I was still working on square bars, and they stood up nicely beside the little bottle of shampoo (I think it's like 3 oz, but don't quote me on that). So it would stay on it's side, with my handwritten label in plain view, I angled it slightly with one edge against the wall of the cabinet (there is a nice little cubby perfect for this display) and the other edge supported by the shampoo bottle.
It's this display that I was considering. Throughout all my soap making, my goal was a small bar that was oblong - rather like the bars you buy in a store without any indented stamps or fancy shapes - just rectangular and nice looking.
But...
Looking at my display, those bars that were smaller would have looked really small, and I didn't think there would be enough room to write my label. I thought about this issue all summer long as I worked through my soaps. Finally, like maybe a month from the end of the season, I made my decision. If I remade all those smaller soaps, aiming for the larger size, I would end up with less (in number) bars. (Remember, I had 3 bins that each held 36 bars, and thanks to no one else using them, they were overfull, which is why my most recent batch stayed home) I went through all those bars, wrapped the next 36 bars to pack into the now empty bin. They'd been curing for 2 years now, so I was confident that they would be fine next year. I even taped them closed and wrote my label on them. With luck, the next girl would see the label and know to use them - with luck. Who knows, maybe I'll be there next year, but I'm not planning on it - not much anyway.
End result of removing all the smaller bars, what was used this summer, and what I'd wrapped up already, left only one bin of extra soaps to cure for another winter.
To make sure I would fill my block mold to the brim, I allotted 3 pounds of soap to a batch. Following my tried and true recipe, that meant I would need to add 1.5 cups of water to the shredded soap. So, my jar that I melt my soap in doesn't hold 3 pounds of shredded soap, I mean, it's close, but I didn't want to pack it in, however, after adding the water and starting the heating, it wasn't long before I could pour the rest of the soap into the jar.
Making homemade soap in this manner has always been a learning curve, and I think this effort is my best yet, but I'm getting ahead of myself. At 3 pounds of soap per batch, I ended up with 5 big blocks. Each block yields 12 bars. Not a bad haul if I do say so myself. It kinda reminds me of my very first effort - I'd hoarded so many used bars of soap, which is why this whole adventure got started.
I did something different this year - ever so slightly. This year like 99% of all the soap was my recycles being recycled again. Last year all the full sized Dove bars that had been used had also been thrown away. They were gone from my shelf and just plain gone - what a waste. I hate waste. Anyway, what I did different was melt the soap until the water I was melting it in actually bubbled. Before I'd only waited long enough for the soap to be stir-able - not that the soap got any thinner, but it appears as if it did more melting. Before slivers of different colors from different kinds of soaps could be seen. This year, there's still some variation in the colors, but my efforts to use white bars seems to have made a difference. They're all a creamy color now (not counting a speck or two), and I think they'll cure a lot nicer too, but only time will tell there too.
Another thing I did different was to turn all the soap into my 5 blocks (5 blocks = 5 days), and then on day 6, I started to slice them into their 12 bars - one per day - the oldest one first. You get the idea. Before starting the next bar, I put the last ones down into a square bucket (My husband had weedeated a hole in the bottom, so it was worthless as a water bucket. It was going to get burned, but I'm glad I was able to repurpose it. Between the layers of soap, I put cardboard cut to fit. When all 60 of my bars were in the bucket, the last cardboard square was level with the very top of the bucket.
My plan at this point is that I will let them sit like that until somewhere around the 1st of next month and then I will trim them up and shave off the rough edges - make them pretty, you know - and then put them back in the bucket to cure for the rest of the winter.
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So I prettied up all 60 of my bars and ended up with a whole lot of shavings, so I decided I'd melt them into bars. I figured if they were on the small side, I'd just recycle them with next year's project. As it turned out, they were a little smaller than the others, but still square, so I'll give them a few days to dry and then pretty them up too. Two more layers of soap in my bucket will make it too full, but I'll think of something. I'm eyeing a brown paper bag to see if I can decrease the space between layers, but we'll see.
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