We don't like to be wasteful and toss the soap "ends," so we came up with a couple of ways to use them. We also looked into a few more ideas to use soap ends that we could share with you.
For the most part, we incorporate the small piece into the next bar by getting them both wet and smashing them together. Sometimes it takes a few washings before they stick well.
We recently received a soap saver bag as part of a gift. These are bags made of natural fibers. You put your bar of soap in it, use it as a washcloth or scrubby, then hang it to dry. This is supposed to lengthen the longevity of your soap bar by using less soap to lather and by letting it dry well in between uses. Adding your pieces to your soap saver is another way to use up the smaller chunks.
We have also saved a few pieces with the idea that surely you can use them for something. We let them dry then put them in a container until we collected enough to do something with them. Husband uses a shave kit, complete with a soap bowl and brush. He suggested using the soap pieces in the bowl for his shave soap. He already uses a soap bar for this purpose and since we only use natural soaps, we know the bar pieces will be mild enough to use on his face.
One of the reasons I saved pieces was that I remembered seeing an idea years ago for turning your soap pieces into a new bar of soap. With that in mind, I searched for instructions on how to turn your soap scraps into a new bar. Here are a couple of articles I found describing slightly different processes, both of which seem rather simple and produce a result that would make a great gift idea.
Bottega Zero Waste - How to Use Leftover Soap Scraps
This instructional article has you grate the soap and use a bit of heat with a tiny amount of water to work the soap into a moldable paste that you then press into a mold.
Savvy Homemade - Making Pretty Little Homemade Soap Bars
This article also has you grate the soap, but does not call for using heat. Instead, it suggests working it with your hands into a ball.
We used Bottega Zero Waste's instructions to make a new soap for Husband's shave soap container. We will report on how it turned out in a future article.
I saw an idea for turning your soap (or soap slivers) into liquid soap. The process is similar to the laundry soap we make, only it uses fewer ingredients (soap and water). Here is an article I found that describes the process as well as their experience using too high a ratio of soap to water.
My Plastic Free Life - How to Make Liquid Soap from a Solid Soap Bar, Take 2
I like this particular set of instructions because it does not require anything fancy like glycerin. It just takes soap and water.
While this is a great idea (and one we will keep in our mental toolkit), we usually make liquid hand soap in foaming hand soap dispenser by adding a bit of liquid Castille soap to water, shaking to mix, and putting the lid on.
This page contains affiliate links. Using our links helps to support this website at no extra cost to you. We know you have many choices when you shop. We are grateful to all of our readers and we thank you for choosing to purchase through our links.