If you use bar soap like me, over time you end up with a lot of barely useful slivers. Whaddaya do with 'em?! I hate throwing away anything remotely useful, so I had been collecting the slivers in a plastic zip top bag. On another forum I heard of someone running their slivers through a cheese grater, adding a bit of very hot water, letting the shavings soak for a bit, then forming the mess into a ball inside the bag. "Great idea!," I thought, but didn't like the idea of the ball shape. So...I took some 1" x 4" scraps and made a simple soap press. Instead of "contaminating" the cheese grater, I take scissors and snip the slivers into small pieces, about 1" or less in size. I add about a teaspoon of water to the bag then microwave the bag and soap pieces for 30 seconds. Next, I kneed the bag to make sure the pieces are all soft and damp, press out as much air from the bag as possible, push the mass into one corner of the bag, then with a bit of the top unzipped, stuff the bag into the soap press box and push the press onto the bag until the mass feels solid. I put some tissue at the bottom of the soap press box and some on top of the bag to catch any liquid that pushes out of the bag. Letting it sit for a couple of days until the bar shrinks a little makes it easier to remove the bag from the press box. You now have a "free" "new" bar of soap. The beauty of it is if you forget the soap in a campground shower house, it was just "scraps that you rescued/reused" instead of "#$%@#!!! I forgot a brand new bar of soap in the shower stall!!!" Does one have to make a soap press box? No. You can just hand-mould the soap scraps into whatever shape you like inside the bag.
Yeah, as I've warned in other topics, I'm retired with too much time on my hands. Hope reading this will help y'all pass a nasty, cold winter night.
Yeah, as I've warned in other topics, I'm retired with too much time on my hands. Hope reading this will help y'all pass a nasty, cold winter night.