How to Make Your Handmade Soap Last Longer (And Stop Watching It Disappear Down the Drain)

You finally found a bar of handmade soap you love.

It smells amazing. It makes your skin happy. You look forward to using it in the shower.

And then, seemingly overnight, you’re holding a tiny little soap nub wondering:

“Where did you go?”

We make handmade goat milk soap here at Jollity Farm, and after making it for nearly 30 years, we can tell you this: a good bar of handmade soap can last a surprisingly long time—if you let it dry out between uses.

Soap and water are a wonderful combination when you're washing your hands.

They are a terrible combination when your soap is supposed to be sitting peacefully on the edge of the sink.

So, if you'd like to make your handmade soap last longer, here are our best tips.

Don't Let Your Soap Sit in a Puddle

This is the big one.

If your bar of soap is sitting in a little puddle of water, it isn't resting.

It's dissolving.

Soap is designed to dissolve in water. That's how it gets you clean. But when the entire bottom of the bar is sitting in water for hours, that water keeps dissolving soap long after you've finished washing.

Before you know it, your nice firm bar has turned into something resembling a small, expensive marshmallow.

Give your soap somewhere to drain.

A soap dish with drainage holes, a slatted soap rack, or anything that keeps the bar elevated above standing water will help enormously.

Try a Soap Sack

A soap sack is one of our favorite little soap tricks.

You put your bar inside the sack, wet it, and use the whole thing like a washcloth.

It helps make a great lather, gives you a little gentle exfoliation, and—best of all—it lets you use up those last little bits of soap instead of watching them disappear down the drain.

And when your bar gets down to the "too small to hold comfortably" stage?

Put the little piece in the soap sack.

Congratulations. You have defeated the soap nub.

At Jollity Farm, we have hand-knit cotton soap sacks for exactly this reason. Our soap sacks are made by a local crafter (I have goats, I don’t have time to knit).

Don't Hold Your Soap Under the Shower Forever

We know.

You're standing there enjoying your hot shower.

You're not thinking about soap conservation.

But every minute your bar spends directly under running water is another opportunity for it to dissolve.

Wet the bar, lather up, wash, rinse, and put it somewhere it can drain.

Your soap doesn't need to experience the entire shower with you.

Cut Your Bar in Half

Keep one in the shower and put the other somewhere cool and dry.

Now you're only exposing half the bar to water and humidity at a time.

There's another bonus: if you have a tendency to get bored and open a new soap before you've finished the old one, smaller pieces make it much easier to rotate through your favorites.

Because yes, we understand.

There are a lot of good soaps.

Properly Cured Handmade Soap Lasts Longer

Here's the part you don't have to worry about doing yourself.

When we make handmade soap, it doesn't go straight from the soap mold into your bathroom.

Traditional cold-process soap needs time to cure.

During the curing process, excess water evaporates and the bar becomes harder and milder. A properly cured bar is generally going to hold up better in use than a freshly made bar.

This is one of the less glamorous parts of making handmade soap.

There are no cute Instagram photos of soap sitting quietly on a shelf for weeks.

But it's important.

Good soap takes time.

From Our Farm to Your Shower

We've been making goat milk soap since 1997.

We make our soap by hand in small batches using goat milk from the goats here on our farm.

It's good, old-fashioned soap.

And while our goats have absolutely no opinion about proper soap storage, we do.

Keep your bar dry.