Turning caustic, skin-melting ingredients into healthy, skin-friendlysoap

I've always loved nice soaps but am far too cheap to buy the lovely artisan ones and far too lazy to run over town to buy them. Grocery store soap it is!

With my boys having some eczema, I've attempted to keep their skin as irritant free as possible. I started with getting rid of laundry detergent in favour of soap nuts (I'll do another post about those). Then I made my own wool dryer balls to get rid of dryer sheets (after much unravelling, I have now perfected those!). I've picked mild soaps but things haven't cleared up completely so I wanted to give natural, homemade soap a try. 

Instructions on Pinterest didn't seem to complicated and I was good at high school chemistry so why not?  Lye was rather intimidating but I'm adventurous.

First: steal a simple recipe online.

Check: http://www.orthogonalthought.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/homemade-natural-soap-basic-recipe/

Second: heed advice about long-sleeved shirt, glasses and gloves.

The kids are sleeping and there's no one home  drive me to the hospital.

Third: go for it!

It was easy enough. The lye mixing went smoothly with no accidents. Precautions seemed overkill until I started using the stick blender.  My red shirt is now covered in tiny black spots!  

I decided to add some ground oats for fun. Everything is now setting in my downstairs closet and my lye is safely stored away from little hands. Hopefully things will set nicely to cut in a couple of days and I'll have some nice soap in a month's time.