82—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March 31,1984
Betty Geib enjoys making
homemade soap
BY SALLY BADR
Making homemade lye soap is a
custom which is quickly fading into
oblivion. Not too many people wish
to take the time to make their own
soap when they can walk into any
supermarket and find 20 varieties
to choose from.
But for Betty Geib, 44 South
Main Street, Manheim, making
soap is just one more chance for
recycling. She makes soap at least
once a week, and she does it
because she enjoys it.
“I am a recycler.” she says, “I
really enjoy making something
useful out of what someone else
throws away. It is a conversation
peice. It’s not work if you enjoy
doing it.”
Many ,readers will remember
having watched their mothers
make soap, and probably
remember it as a dangerous
project - children frequently had to
leave the room where the soap was
being mixed.
“You have to treat lye with
respect.” Betty says. “It is
dangerous to splash it on your skin
or to breathe the fumes.”
Nevertheless, Betty has never had
an accident with the solution. Her
balcony makes a perfect spot for
mixing it.
She makes the process look and
sound easy, but part of that cer
tainly comes from her experience.
She made her first soap in 1963
when her older sister taught her.
Last year she made a total of 112
batches, and already in 1984 she
has made 36 batches.
The principle ingredients for
homemade soap are lye, fat and
water. The fat must be solid
shortening, not oil, but can be any
kind of vegetable or animal fat.
“A lot of people know I do this
and bring me their used fat,” Betty
explains. She gets donations from
the local school cafeteria, and
from others who know of her need
for it.
The water is also free, since
Betty uses only rainwater. She
prefers it because it contains no
chemicals. When there is no rain
she purchases spring water.
The third ingredient, lye, she
tese ee cakes of soap are general purpose soaps and have been slightly scented.
Betty grouped the three as a gift and presents them on a recycled meat container
covered with plastic from a local newspaper.
always purchases. To make one
batch, she uses one 12-ounce can of
lye. Betty now pays 93 cents per
can for the lye, compared with 15
cents when she began making
soap. Nevertheless each batch
producers about 9 pounds of soap,
so it remains inexpensive.
First you melt the fat, after
which it must be strained. In her
true conservative manner, Betty
was using the lining from an old
coat she had taken apart as the
strining cloth. It takes six pounds
of fat per batch.
Although Betty melts the fat in
aluminum, she says that con
tainers which come in contact with
the lye should be enamel. The
utensils she uses to make soap are
used exclusively for that.
The can of lye is then mixed with
five cups of rainwater. As the lye is
added, it causes the water to heat
up. The lye solution and the fat
must both be cooled somewhat
before they are mixed together.
Betty says the containers in which
they are cooling should be
“comfortably warm to the touch”
from the outside.
While some people prefer mixing
the lye in a crock, Betty feels this is
not satisfactory because you
cannot guage the warmth of the
material through a crock. “You
can’t feel through a crock,” she
says.
The lye is carefully poured into
the fat, stirring as it is poured. It
must be stirred until it begins to
solidify. When it looks like pud
ding, it is ready to be poured into
molds.
The amount of tune this takes
varies with the fat being used.
Mutton fat is hard fat, and quickly
reaches the desired stage. Beef
tallow is also good, hardening fast.
Pork and poultry fat are really
soft, so when she is using those she
mixes them with other fat to speed
their hardening process. Also she
points out, “I know from ex
perience that you can’t use rancid
fat.”
Betty makes both laundry soap
and general purpose soap, and it
depends on its final use which kind
of mold she will use. What doesn’t
- pours it as the first step in making hometnade soap, a process
she goes through at least once a week.
vary is that every mold is a
recycled product.
For laundry soap, she adds
borax to the solution and pours it
into frozen fruit juice containers.
These containers can be easily tom
away from the finished soap. She
then cuts it into thirds, and grates
it in her Mouli grinder.
This laundry soap can be
scooped and used in the same
manner as powdered commercial
products. “I gets diapers nice and
white and is great for stains,”
Betty asserts.
If the soap is general purpose
soap, Betty will probably add an oil
scent to it, and perhaps color,
although only oil base materials
can be used to color the soap. She
(Turn to Page B 4)
ttfotcs
Betty opens one of the many containers of fat which friends
and acquaintances give her to help in the soap making
process.
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