Saponification Sunday

No, I have not stopped dilly dallying in the amazing world of soap but I have gotten far behind in production. But after being gently encouraged by the masses  ”Hey, you slug, make some soap will ya?”  I have returned to the big pots of Babassu, Castor and Olive and created more bars for those lather loving fools.

I could make soap all day (and write all night and ride horses at dawn) if I independently wealthy but alas it is the pig fat and beef steaks that bring in the most cash and so soaping takes the seat in the way back of the auditorium sometimes.

There are many thousands and thousands of soap makers in the US and it is now rare not to walk into a small craft , specialty or even antique store and not see someone else’s homemade soap. Some of it is very nice as can be told by scent, texture and list of ingredients while others are pure crap, with labels being quite vague.

I myself did the wholesale thing for about a year and it was a thrill to see the soap you made for sale in small boutiques but unless you choose to kick out many hundreds of bars per week, it’s hard to get a good profit from selling wholesale. Plus I found myself getting stressed about meeting the demand in the midst of other demands I so love placing upon my auto-victimized self.

So I nixed the plans of an online store and decided to sell my soaps in only one other store  (Thank You Miss Effie In Donahue, Iowa) beside our own farm store or via email requests. ([email protected]) This is working out swell. I now have about 20 regular email customers who just reorder as they run low and I sell to about a hundred regular farm store customers. All have learned I make my soap up as ordered and it will take a few weeks to get their suds.

If I run out in the farm store, folks wait until I make more. I restock that shelf and watch the soaps disappear in about a weeks time. It’s a fairly lazy way to make soap and yet very rewarding and I never have to worry about watching large amounts of soap stock (not too mention cash tied up in base oils and essential oils (for scents and health properties) just wasting their time sitting around on a drying rack in my house.

I also have the luxury to be as creative as I like, to mix and match to experiment, to create, to fail. And the fails are not even a big deal because some of the ugliest soap makes the most effective laundry soap.

It’s all good.