Trying to tidy up my soap curing areas

[Catscankim]

Ughh...I have so much soap LOL. Some good, some not so good. Mostly the not so good ones are good soap, just not pretty enough to even give away. Experiments. Plus I have a lot of ends and do dads that pains me to throw away. What do you all do with all of those? I am sure I am not the only one with soap that you wouldn't gift or give away. Plus all those ends and what I cut as "samples", but will never be a sample to anything. I have learned to make smaller ends, so most of my newer soaps don't have all of these samples. Plus every bar is different, so it's a sample for what? lol.

Do you throw em all into a bucket for later use like confetti soap? Throw them away? I feel like my ends and such are taking up more room than my pretty soap that I want to baby.

I just walked into my spare bedroom and I feel like a hoarder LOL.

 

[Zany_in_CO]

I use my end cuts/samples at the kitchen sink after putting the cut bars out to cure. Always drying at first, it's a good way to check the progress of the cure over time.

When I have a lot of bits and pieces overflowing the soap dish, I chop them up, put in a Pyrex cup, sprinkle with tap water, nuke for a minute, rest for 5 minutes, then knead the soap well with gloved hands into a ball or press into a single cavity mold. It's ready to unmold and use the next day.

I've never made confetti soap but it is a great way to use up a lot of odds & ends.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Even if you don't like something you created, someone else may love it! Seriously. You can put it in a pretty wrapper and donate to a homeless shelter or something similar. I'm always amazed when people like some soap I made that didn't measure up to my persnickety standards. It's all good and much appreciated by those who've never used handmade soap before.

 

[Catscankim]

I have a problem LOL

I had cutting and measuring issues lol. Plus in the beginning i had poor record keeping skills, so i dont even know what half of this stuff is. I mean, i have a general idea. Like it was just labeled “Lard bar 6/5”... Which im pretty sure back in early June was probably just 80/20 lard coconut. Some i dont know the fragrance. I have been sitting on the floor for a half hour trying to figure out what some of them smell like.

I have one labeled scrubby...soooo, which one? Apricot, walnut, coffee, or flax seed?

The plus side is, Im so happy i cleared all that out. I dont know what to do with it all. These arent full size bars. Those will be donated for a benefit project me and a friend are doing.

I have been working on uniform bars with less waste

 

[AliOop]

Your local homeless shelter won't care AT ALL how the soap looks - they just need soap! The one in our area provides over 1000 showers per day throughout the metro area.

Not only do they get all my not-so-pretty regular bars; I also give them my rebatch bars (made out of various end cuts, beveling shreds, broken pieces, etc). They really like it when I cut everything into fairly small guest-sized or sample bars, too - makes it last longer. I "package" these bars in snack-sized Ziplock bags, and provide a single, master ingredient list that covers all possible ingredients for all of the soaps.

 

[TheGecko]

Soap that I’m not happy with...wrong color, design didn’t turn, forgot to add fragrance, a wonky cut, didn’t like fragrance, fragrance faded, etc...I set aside in a box. When the box is full, I cut half of it in half and put in a ziplock bad and washcloth and donate to our local homeless shelter. The others are wrapped, labeled and donated to our local food bank.

 

[Anstarx]

I collect my loose ends like yours in a bucket. Once I have enough, I take out my crock pot and manual salad shooter to make a rebatch batch. If you have too many colors to group them by, I just throw in a lot of activated charcoal and make them all black. Most of my failed batches are unscented test batches so I use vanilla and sandalwood FO, which is cheap for me and overwhelms other scents. I just dig some out, roughtly shape them into a ball, and let dry, and give these out during christmas to "naught kids" aka my friends and colleagues..

 

[The Park Bench]

My grown sons take my end cuts to their house, my close friends are always asking me for bars that I don't plan to sell. I never have experienced having too much "scrap" soap

 

[SPowers]

Ughh...I have so much soap LOL. Some good, some not so good. Mostly the not so good ones are good soap, just not pretty enough to even give away. Experiments. Plus I have a lot of ends and do dads that pains me to throw away. What do you all do with all of those? I am sure I am not the only one with soap that you wouldn't gift or give away. Plus all those ends and what I cut as "samples", but will never be a sample to anything. I have learned to make smaller ends, so most of my newer soaps don't have all of these samples. Plus every bar is different, so it's a sample for what? lol.

Do you throw em all into a bucket for later use like confetti soap? Throw them away? I feel like my ends and such are taking up more room than my pretty soap that I want to baby.

I just walked into my spare bedroom and I feel like a hoarder LOL.

Sounds like me. I live in a condo and use the spare bedroom for my soap, supplies and tools. I have a Murphy bed in there so there's a least some room to move around but it also serves as office so there's a fairy big table and 2 bookcases. My soap cures in the book cases. My tools and supplies have taken over the closet and the FO's have moved out to one of the book shelves that surround the bed. The other side of the bed (bookcase) has had a shelf removed and I've made a little photo booth of a sort. Yesterday I spent the entire day rearranging, purging, etc. I have 3 big containers of soap scraps so I know that feeling. I've even started to discard the shavings, etc from my 'dark' soaps. I seem to have a lot of that and rebatching so far has resulted in dark, crappy looking soap! Once I get rid of the charity boxes, I'll be happy! And soap on my floor! Oh my it's crazy.