Well, on this snowy day, I decided to try something that’s been rattling around in my brain for awhile; to wit: turning all the soap chips I’ve accumulated into a new bar (more like a glob, really) of soap.
My routine for soap usage goes along the lines of:
Use the soap in the shower until it gets small and hard to hold.
Move that wee soap to the sink for hand washing and suchlike until it gets really small.
Accumulate a bunch of these, try to squeeze them into each other, then throw them away.
This always seem wasteful to me. My mother, who was married during the Great Depression, used to say:
Use it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or do without.
And my father used to hang paper towels up to dry.
But I digress.
I thought maybe I could melt the half-dozen soaplets over the stove, but just to make sure, I googled it.
And sure enough, there were plenty of directions on how to combine soap remnants and I was saved from burning up the kitchen or some other dire consequence.
I was pretty close, actually. So here we go.
I minced the chips. Google recommended grating them, but I have done terrible things to my fingers with graters, so I opted for mincing.
I put the resulting soap bits into an ersatz double boiler over boiling water.
When the soap started to melt, I added a little water to smooth its transformation from mound of soap itty-bitty soap bits to semi-liquid soap.
When it was more or less a smooth mass of oozy soap, I scooped it into an ersatz mold (a round cookie cutter set on wax paper) and swirled the top for an artistic touch. (It didn’t swirl very well, alas.)
I let it harden while I watch a documentary about Frank Zappa.
And voila! From the many, one!
Until next time,
XOXO
I’ll have to try this sometime!