By which I mean that the things you try to do in order to save money or be more resilient should actually save you money or make you more resilient.
For me, I buy my soap in big packages. When we had a Costco/Sam's Club I bought from there, now if need be I can order the same giant packages on Amazon and get free shipping with Prime. It works out to about 45 cents a bar when I buy soap like that. (And yes, I am aware that what I'm actually buying is detergent. I'll talk about that a bit later.)
The values I would want from making my own soap would be 1) cost savings and 2) less stuff in it that would cause the kids' skin to break out.
If I can get those values with storebought soap, it would be the better choice for me--because homemade soap has a huge, whopping CON attached to it for those of us with little kids: lye.
Understand, I don't have anything against soap made with lye. (Lucky, since it's impossible to make soap without lye.) The lye gets neutralized in the soapmaking process, and it does produce a superior cleaning agent to make soap with just lye and lard (or coconut oil, or olive oil). But in order to make soap you have to handle caustic ingredients with a fair amount of precision.
Caustic, precision, and little kids are not good bedfellows. I mean I have yogurt that fails because of sudden child emergencies.
So for our family, it just makes sense to buy soap.
Now, I could see some situations in which that might change--for instance if we discovered that the only way to avoid eczema outbreaks was to use a lard/lye soap like this really expensive one. (It is lovely soap, I bought a couple of bars from a health food store. It lasts a long time and doesn't dry out my hands. Still, one can buy a lot of lotion for the difference between 45 cents and $6.)
In that case the price difference between homemade/storebought soap would be extreme enough to justify me handing the children to the Husband with instructions to keep them outside until the soap process was done, and going through the fuss of making blender soap.
What making soap with purchased lye and purchased lard would NOT do is make us more resilient to financial ups and downs. If I'm purchasing lye and oil, how is that better than purchasing soap? It might be nice to know how to make real pioneer soap, in case you ever have to drip lye and render tallow, but that seems like a looooooot of work when I can just buy 16 bars of Ivory bath soap for $7.99 on Amazon.
The lesson here? Don't start up a frugal or homesteading practice just because a bunch of people on message boards think that it's cool. Actually sit and do your own analysis.
One area where I have found that doing the work myself yields values I want--savings and health benefits--is cooking and preserving food. For instance, the kimchi I put up lately serves both the purpose of using up the ton of radishes that came in our co-op basket and allowing me to eat kimchi for less than the price per ounce of say, caviar. Learning how to preserve extra food when you have it, instead of letting it rot and wrinkle in the bottom of the fridge, is a genuinely useful skill.
Homemade bread saves us money; we buy flour in giant sacks (which we then pour into food-grade buckets we got for free from the Walmart bakery department--you just have to ask them) and yeast in 1lb packages, and I can make very good bread for about $1 a loaf. The bread we would buy at the store, for similar nutritional content, would be anywhere between $2.60 and $4 a loaf, depending on sales. I've even seen it as high as $4.99. So making bread--which is effortless for me because I have a stand mixer--makes sense for us.
A website I found the other day recommends keeping three lists when becoming prepared: To Learn, To Do, and To Buy. I think that's sound advice. Go down your list of things and run your own analysis on each item. Which values does this item support? It's okay if your values are not the same as mine--if having pure soap, where you know everything that went into it, is more important than cost savings, for example. Or maybe you will find the time savings of buying your bread and kimchi is more important for you right now, so that you can pick up overtime at work. That's okay. What's not okay is just doing something because I told you to, or because someone on a frugal living forum told you to.
Do your own math.
Cheers,
Breanna
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| Like, for example, optimistic early potty training because you are |
Take the darling of most simple living websites/messages boards, making your own soap. Does making soap actually give you the value that you want from it?
 |
| This is darn cheap soap. |
The values I would want from making my own soap would be 1) cost savings and 2) less stuff in it that would cause the kids' skin to break out.
 |
| This is what you call mugging for the camera. |
Understand, I don't have anything against soap made with lye. (Lucky, since it's impossible to make soap without lye.) The lye gets neutralized in the soapmaking process, and it does produce a superior cleaning agent to make soap with just lye and lard (or coconut oil, or olive oil). But in order to make soap you have to handle caustic ingredients with a fair amount of precision.
Caustic, precision, and little kids are not good bedfellows. I mean I have yogurt that fails because of sudden child emergencies.
 |
| An example of something that really does help me save money and be more resilient: my inherited metric measuring cup. It's difficult to make German recipes with English measuring cups. This has the added benefit of looking pretty on my shelf. |
Now, I could see some situations in which that might change--for instance if we discovered that the only way to avoid eczema outbreaks was to use a lard/lye soap like this really expensive one. (It is lovely soap, I bought a couple of bars from a health food store. It lasts a long time and doesn't dry out my hands. Still, one can buy a lot of lotion for the difference between 45 cents and $6.)
In that case the price difference between homemade/storebought soap would be extreme enough to justify me handing the children to the Husband with instructions to keep them outside until the soap process was done, and going through the fuss of making blender soap.
What making soap with purchased lye and purchased lard would NOT do is make us more resilient to financial ups and downs. If I'm purchasing lye and oil, how is that better than purchasing soap? It might be nice to know how to make real pioneer soap, in case you ever have to drip lye and render tallow, but that seems like a looooooot of work when I can just buy 16 bars of Ivory bath soap for $7.99 on Amazon.
The lesson here? Don't start up a frugal or homesteading practice just because a bunch of people on message boards think that it's cool. Actually sit and do your own analysis.
 |
| Homemade kimchi, fermenting on my countertop. Storebought kimchi is $4.60 for a pint, as nearly as I can tell my homemade version runs about $1.10 a quart, even with paying for the fancy Korean chili paste. |
Homemade bread saves us money; we buy flour in giant sacks (which we then pour into food-grade buckets we got for free from the Walmart bakery department--you just have to ask them) and yeast in 1lb packages, and I can make very good bread for about $1 a loaf. The bread we would buy at the store, for similar nutritional content, would be anywhere between $2.60 and $4 a loaf, depending on sales. I've even seen it as high as $4.99. So making bread--which is effortless for me because I have a stand mixer--makes sense for us.
A website I found the other day recommends keeping three lists when becoming prepared: To Learn, To Do, and To Buy. I think that's sound advice. Go down your list of things and run your own analysis on each item. Which values does this item support? It's okay if your values are not the same as mine--if having pure soap, where you know everything that went into it, is more important than cost savings, for example. Or maybe you will find the time savings of buying your bread and kimchi is more important for you right now, so that you can pick up overtime at work. That's okay. What's not okay is just doing something because I told you to, or because someone on a frugal living forum told you to.
Do your own math.
Cheers,
Breanna
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