# Is making soap really money-saving...?



## Little_Bit_Red

I know that home cooking and making things from scratch IS frugal. Does this hold the same for soap (shampoo/conditioner/bar soap/laundry soap/ dish soap)????

And - best type to make...ingredients???? Should I stock the supplies or make the soaps and stock that????

thanks, trying to put a plan together....


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## Narshalla

I do not know about the others, but laundry soap is _very_ economical to make. My recipe calls for a bar of soap (Zote or Fels Naptha,) a cup of borax, and a cup of washing soda, and five gallons of hot water.

A _box_ of washing soda is leas than three dollars. This makes _many _five-gallon batches.
A _box_ of borax is leas than three dollars. This makes _many _five-gallon batches.
A bar of Fels Naptha is leas than two dollars. This makes _one _five-gallon batch.

So for ingredients alone, the star-up cost is less than eight dollars, and one batch least right around five and a half months. (We do laundry almost daily.)

I don't know how far $8 will go for pre-made laundry detergent, but it won't last five months, that for sure!


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## opportunity

Laundry soap is cheap to make and it works we switched in November after 8 years I finaly found a soap that my husband and I both like. 
As for bar soap, shampoo and conditioner it's cheaper if you look for the same quality more is really really bad for you at the store to you must look at the leaht benifits to.


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## tentance

making laundry soap is for sure cheaper than buying detergent.
making homemade barsoap is much cheaper than buying all natural barsoaps, which are desired primarily for their gentleness and lack of processed chemicals (you could eat homemade soap if you wanted to, but can you eat dove? would you?) 
cooking at home can be much more expensive that fast food, but it is more desirable in many ways, because it can be both frugal and not full of ingredients you don't particularly desire.
gardening, same deal. you can go from mild to wild on spending for your garden, but the best thing about gardening is when you're organic and you know your food doesn't have chemicals on it.
it's a mindset.
i'm not sure about shampoo and conditioner. i don't use conditioner any more even though i have long hair. it just isnt worth the time and expense. and that was after using conditioner for like 20 years, switching off between pantene, dove, etc.


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## Tinker

Making a few batches of soap for personal use is NOT cheap. If you soap on a bigger scale (as a business) you can do better, as buying in bulk is much cheaper. When I started soaping (about 12 years ago), I think someone figured it cost about .50-.60 cents to make an average bar of soap. Probably closer to a dollar now. If you use luxury oils, and expensive EO's, it would be even more. Now, you can probably get soap at the Dollar store for less (2 or 3 bars for a dollar???), but it will NOT be the same.

So, if you want to make a nice gentle bath soap, unscented, for your family, it will probably be a bit more that discount stores, but it will be much nicer. And in some cases, you might save on lotion, if the cheap soap you are buying is drying your skin.


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## bluefish

A lot depends on the ingredients you use. I tend to have a lot of lard and tallow available from the animals we raise. My standard recipe is pretty much those and coconut oil. I can get that fairly cheapish from walmart. I also tend to have beeswax around from my hives so I do use that sometimes as well. I don't know if it's cheaper than store soap, although nicer, but it is cheaper than homemade soap that uses the fancier oils that everybody seems to like.

You kinda have to experiment a bit with oils that are easily and cheaply available to you and see if you like the soap that they make.


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## linn

I think if you render your own lard and tallow and use that with a little coconut oil and milk you can get a very good bar soap for a reasonable cost. Whether it is cheaper or as cheap as the cheapest "bar soap" you can buy at the store, I don't know. But what you buy at the store is probably not pure soap. I tend to want to add other things to my soap such as essential oils and color so my soap is not as cheap as the cheapest you can buy at the store. I make my own shampoo using eco friendly surfactants. It is not cheap, but more expensive than Sauve or Breck shampoo. You can make a very decent cream hair rinse.

http://swiftcraftymonkey.blogspot.com/2010/06/conditioners-cream-rinses.html


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## mtnviewfarms

Next time you go to Walmart, Dollar Store or equivalent allow yourself more time than you would usually so you can 'really' read the ingredient labels on the cleaning sprays, laundry detergents, soaps, body care products such as facial creams, face & body lotions, shampoo, body wash, etc of the brands that you and your family typically use.

Keep in mind that anything that contains ingredients such as paraben, petroleum, Sodium Laureth Sulfate aka SLS, petrolatum, and/or is any word that is so long no one can pronounce it easily, is most probably a quite toxic and potentially cancer causing man-made chemical compound commonly used as ingredients in most 'commercially manufactured' cleaning products' as fillers and stabilizers and other things to make them go farther and look bigger in the package thus earn the manufacturer more $$ for the least amount of cost to them.

Incredibly, for every toxic unhealthy product ingredient there is a totally natural, often botanically-based, as well as both beneficial AND safe-to-humans counterport readily available and often at not much additional expense! A couple of the most common non-plant healthful ingredients for skin, body and hair care products are goat milk and all bee products ( i.e., honey, beeswax, pollen and propolis ).

I know all of this from experience as I had terrible excema as a child and as a young adult I began to research this topic and to create my own products based on what I learned. I now have a small homestead/hobby business where I sell my totally natural
handmade skin and body care products from my website and at local farmers markets. 

Is it 'cost effective' to use only 'totally natural' home cleaning and personal care products - well, I guess, to be honest here, if that is your ONLY criteria then the answer would be NO.

Is it more pleasurable as well as beneficial to the overall health and well being of you and your family and our enviornment to use these natural products you either make or buy make yourself? Then the answer to that question would have to be a resounding YES!


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## BackfourtyMI.

I do think it is less expensive to make your own soap at home but also it's better for you & your family just like mtnviewfarms said basically.


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## JamieCatheryn

Soap of the same quality as you can make for $0.50-$1 a bar costs $4-$6 a bar retail. But you *can* buy soap far cheaper. Maybe if you have a cheap source available of say lard for the majority of your soap you can actually save.

I prefer to make olive oil, coconut, and castor oil soap. Homemade soap is good for a year maybe two, so is oil on the shelf, highly refined stuff might last longer.


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## Maura

I make olive oil soap. It is only cheaper than store bought if you compare it with itself. It is cheaper than buying the same quality soap, even if I could. I make soap for gifts and sometimes sell it, so I buy in bulk which saves money in the long run. I also save because I don't need hair conditioner or body lotion, my soap does not dry out my skin or damage my hair.


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## MDKatie

I think making a fairly plain soap would definitely be cheaper than buying it at the store. When you start adding specialty oils and scents/essential oils, that's when it starts adding up.


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## halfpint

If you're comparing apples to apples, making your own is cheaper. If you're comparing home made soap to the cheap store brand varieties, then no it is not. But for me, I was allergic to every type I tried, and was having to use a bar that ran about $12, so when I began purchasing home made soap for about $4 per bar it was much cheaper, and then when I began making my own because my supplier moved, it was again cheaper.

I don't use the Fels Naptha in my home made laundry detergent, I use my plain home made soap.

And because so many people love my homemade soap as gifts, it saves me a bunch on birthday and Christmas presents.

Dawn


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## fffarmergirl

I've never made soap, except for laundry soap. I think you can make lye soap for free using lye made from your wood ashes and fat from your animals that you butcher - if you butcher animals.


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## lathermaker

You can make soap that is fairly economical if you don't scent it. Most of the cost of my handmade soap goes into the fragrance or essential oils that are added. You can make soap using wood ash lye, but it's not an exact science. Really easy to end up with lye heavy soap. Better off buying commercial lye and then using home rendered fat with it to make the soap.


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