Step 3: Reuse & Refuse

Love this! Imagine how silly it would be for them to buy new glass jars and lids, when there's so many in abundance being thrown away each day.

Yes, bar soap absolutely can be used as a contributing ingredient in laundry detergent. I tried this because I had many used, small pieces of soaps left, plus samples and hotel bars. Newly wrapped, clean mini-bars I donate to shelters and such, but used ones or ones with no wrappers? Nope. You still need washing soda, baking soda and borax, at least per the recipe I used. The drawback is that if you do not get the soap into small enough bits, especially with harder soaps, they may not dissolve all the way and then may stick to your clothes. I know some use a food processor to get them finer but I didn't have one. The other part of that is that soap can stick and gum up on itself, so you have to be careful using a food processor for it. I got around it with a parmesan grater, after my first failure with a regular cheese grater! You may also be able to use one of those foot-smoothers, like the Ped-Egg, since it also uses about the right size grater (and will collect it for you!) After realizing the problem was the size of the gratings depending on the hardness of the soap and amending that with a smaller grater, it worked just fine! I would recommend sticking to light colored soaps (ivory, white, very light blue, very light yellow,) since especially with handmade soaps, darker colors often mean food dye and food dye LOVES to cling to clothing. Also, glycerin-bar soap based detergent seemed to leave an odd slip to my laundry. It did mostly go away after drying, but I think there's a potential for build-up there. It's oddly clingy but slippery! You can try it with 2 parts washing soda, 2 parts borax, 1 part ground/grated bar soap and 1/2 tsp baking soda, up to 1 teaspoon. 🤗

@Savanna These are such great directions and with such detail! I find the same problem with the gumming up in my vitamix, so next time I'll try grating whatever soap I use with a cheese grater on the very fine side. Exercise for the wrist and arms. Great advice about the colored soaps! I have access to a lot of used soaps too, so I want to try to use them up as laundry soap. I'd love to see a photo of just how fine the laundry soap is that you make, if you ever have time to share one. Many many thanks!