Borax

I came home from a wonderful family weekend to find... beetles in my basement.  Ewww! Doesn't sound so bad until I mention that I'm living in the basement-- the air conditioner upstairs is turned off so I can save on utility bills.  So far, I've only seen them on the carpet and they generally move with a purpose from left to right.

I also found a lot of dead beetles... a few google searches later I mixed some borax, flour, sugar, with a little chilli powder and sprinkled it around the baseboards.  The recipes for the bait were pretty generic, and I was very unscientific about mine.  Probably about 1-2 cups borax with 1/3 cups each flour and sugar.  I threw in chili powder because it was a part of the pet friendly remedy we used last summer.  No pets to eat the borax now.  Cocoa powder was also suggested but I wanted the overall mix to be more the color of the carpet to prevent further discoloration of the carpet.  There is a red stain from cinnamon/ chili powder that I can't vacuum up or get to with the carpet cleaner.

I have leftover mix stored and labeled.

This got me wondering-- what is borax, anyway?  Most bloggers who I have come across are pro, neutral (but do not use it) or seriously anti borax.  But I haven't found any good reasons as to why.  Let's find out.

According to Borax's youtube channel, Borax provides a laundry boost by softening water, changing the pH to better lift stains, and keep them lifted so they do not redeposit on clothes.   I first bought borax for laundry so yay.  It is harvested from evaporated lakes or made synthetically.

The Environmental Working Group does not recommend Borax for use in cleaning.  The website offers alternatives for scrubbing stuff without borax.  They also add that borax can be found in nutritional supplements and sticky play material.  So you might consider making playdoh or goop instead of using commercial product with children who are too young not to eat it.

Chemistry wise, here is a discussion of borax.

It looks like I will be saving borax for the laundry in the future.  I will keep you posted about the critters.

Soap Oops-es

Yesterday was not a great day for me soaping.  I had two fails learning experiences.  A sugar scrub didn't emulsify and playing with new toys didn't work well either.

First, I'd become enamored with the solid sugar scrubs over at Rebecca's Delicatessen.  She's one of my favorite soapy bloggers and has a great, well informed site.  I didn't have the ingredients that her recipe called for, so I used the recipe at Soap Queen, substituting crafter's choice Mango Butter base and rice bran oil and adding a bit of shea butter.  It didn't emulsify.  I ended up with a layer of scrub and oil floating on top.

• I used a cheaper base.
• I assumed that rice bran was a good substitute for sweet almond oil but maybe not.
• The air conditioner is not on upstairs here, so they were sitting out at 85+ F.

I tried to salvage this by popping it in the freezer.  The top layer did freeze, but melted by the time I cut the bars into smaller rectangles.  I haven't used them.  I think they will still be scrubby, but not quite as luxurious as I wanted.

I got a new box of goodies from Brambleberry! Including my first wooden soap mold.  I was super excited to try it out and picked this recipe to try.  I loved the colors.  I received a free sample of coconut lemongrass fragrance in the box and figured that would be a great summery, beachy fragrance.
What went wrong:

• I substituted Lots of Lather quick mix for Basic Quick Mix.  This was not a good substitution for this recipe.  
• Brambleberry suggests using an olive oil free recipe for this soap to avoid the yellow green color of olive oil.  Lots of Lather has lots of olive oil.
• The recipe calls for 23 pounds of the quick mix.  I had 33 pounds of lots of lather mix, and decided to use the whole bag.  I did run in through the lots of lather lye calculator, but did not anticipate how much extra I would have.  This probably influenced my colors as well; the olive oil and greater amount of oils.  I had extra molds but not enough and had to grab more.
• I mixed with a stick blender until I got an emulsion, not a light trace.  
• I hated the fragrance.  I'm a big fan of Bath and Bodyworks' Coconut Lime Verbena and expected the type to be more similar.  I hope that the soaping process will improve the fragrance.
• The sea clay did not play well with the fragrance.  It kind of appeared ricy.  It might have been ricy.
• The sea clay colored soap was not contrasted well with the plain soap, due to the olive oil in the base.  Instead of three, separate and intentional colors, it appears [to me] that the colors were mistakes.
• Finally, I had my first lye burn.  This was either from removing my gloves (which were a size too small) or reusing my lye water container to mix colors.  It was a small burn, luckily, smaller than a dime.  I noticed that there was a shiny patch of something on my arm, and it started to burn.  I rinsed it with water and it still burned.  So I rinsed it with vinegar, which I should have done first.

First three color soap

The soap looks prettier on screen than in real life.

I also unmolded a soap sample too quickly and it smushed.  I put another sample from the batch in a silicone cupcake liner and some of the red from the liner leached into the soap.  Grr.

In happier news, a trial batch of these dishwasher tablets worked great.  I used a little peppermint essential oil, but not enough to leave a peppermint residue.

My color fails led me to research color mixing in soaps and I found this series very helpful.

I have so much that I want to try and being patient is hard.  /end grump

Cold processed soap

Tuesday I made my first batches of cold process soap... and was so nervous that I forgot to take pictures of it!  There are many great tutorials free on the internet, and I don't feel comfortable posting a tutorial after only making 2 batches.  But I will talk about the process a bit.

First, I did research about soap.  I'm still learning, so this research is not done.  :)  I did a cold process soap. I decided to launch this before I really understood what hot process soap is.  Let's talk about definitions.

• Melt and pour soap: commercial based soaps are melted in a double boiler or microwave. This takes about 1-3 minutes. Color, scent, oils, and or other add ins are added, the soap is poured into molds.  Soap is ready to use in 24 hours or less.
• Rebatching, French Milled, or triple milled soap: Commercial or homemade soap is melted in a boil safe oven bag-- this takes about an hour.  Color, scent, oils, and or other add ins are added, the soap is poured into molds.  Soap is ready to use in 24 hours or less.
• Cold process soap- lye water is added to [hot] oils and blended.  Color, scent, oils, and or other add ins are added, the soap is poured into molds.  Soap is removed from molds and set to cure which can take up to six  weeks, six months, or longer.
• Hot process soap- lye water is added to hot oils and cooked in a crockpot for about an hour.  This speeds up the saponification and curing process.  Color, scent, oils, and or other add ins are added, the soap is poured into molds.  Soap is removed from molds and set to cure which can take up to six  weeks, six months, or longer, but generally shorter than a cold process soap.

My biased internet searching revealed more information about cold process soap than hot process soap.  I assume it is for want of a crockpot.  I used the cold process method.

Cold or hot processed soap making requires lye.  Basically,

• lye is a very caustic and dangerous substance.  It can be hard to find, I think I got the last container of it from my local tractor supply store.
• lye + water  gets hot.  Always add lye to water as the reverse can volcano.  I used a candy thermometer and it got to around 200 F.  The thermometer goes much higher, but lye water is more dangerous than sugar water.
• lye water + oil = a chemical change (saponification) that creates heat as they combine to create soap.
• water discount (not recommended for beginners) is adding less water to speed up the process.
• superfatting is adding extra oil so the lye does not change all the oil to soap.  This provides extra moisturizing, skin happy goodness-- but can decrease lather.

There were videos that ranged from a high, medium, and low caution of lye.  I can be clumsy and used a high caution-- goggles, gloves, long sleeved shirt, pants, and shoes.  I made sure I was home alone.  The cats stayed out of the kitchen.

Adding lye to water creates fumes.  I avoided these fumes and was surprised to find that I couldn't smell them at all.  Speaking of fumes, the 100% olive oil soap I made smelled like olive oil and was fairly stinky.

I think this is long enough for now! I'm off to felt some soap!

Liquid Dish Soap

I ran out of my first batch of homemade liquid dish soap today so I decided to make more.  I modified this recipe by omitting the vinegar (vinegar and liquid soap do not get along) and increasing the borax by 1 tablespoon. I used

1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup liquid lavender Castile Soap
2 TBSP Borax
1 TBSP Arm and Hammer Washing soda

I decided not to add essential oil due to the strong scent of the lavender.

  I am also happy to report that I have iced coffee steeping thanks to Pioneer Woman and Hostess with the Motzes.