Learn How To Make Soap

When you watch the adverts for soap you might well imagine that the process of making soap is a complicated procedure that needs scientists and a factory to produce the magical qualities the soap provides.

The reality is that the process of making soap at home has been around for thousands of years and you can easily make soap at home in your kitchen with some fairly standard kitchen equipment and a few easily obtained ingredients that you can buy at your local store.

The earliest known references to making soap date back to around 2800 BC in ancient babylon.

The production of soap was always a local industry and there would be someone in every village or town that would make a batch of soap every now and again but with the arrival of the industrial revolution factories started to produce large quantities of consistent quality and we moved into the era of buying soap from stores.

The soap manufacturers have continued to compete with each other to get their brand to be the one you buy on a regular basis and if they get you as a customer for life they will make a lot of money from you over your lifetime.

Soap has a couple of main ingredients and these are animal fat or a vegetable oil and lye which is an alkali often obtained from wood ashes though these days we can simply buy it ready to use.

Mixing the oil or fat with lye produces a firm or hard material that when mixed into water causes oil and dirt to remain suspended in the water which can then be flushed away. The soap, water and dirt all stick together leaving whatever surface you are cleaning to be free of dirt and oil.

You can change the oil or fats you use and that will change the hardness and results of using your soap. You can add fragrance and moisturizers as you become more experienced.

Soap making is a fun and practical activity that brings us back to an age when we got more satisfaction from life through doing practical things to improve our lives.

Here are some videos that explain what is needed to make soap and how you can try making soap at home and have a lot of fun making soap for yourself and as gifts for family and friends.