The Fun Art of Soap Making

BETWEEN THE GARDEN AND THE SINK

Soap making is more than just creating something you can clean with. It’s a creative hobby

that brings satisfaction and joy to me. Whether you want to make personalized gifts, explore new scents, produce a healthier option or simply enjoy a hands-on craft, soap making offers a fun and rewarding experience. This post is an introduction how I started to do my own soap.

And it started with Homesteading

Soap making is almost a gateway skill of homesteading. You take simple, everyday ingredients and turn them into something essential. It reduces waste and dependence on store-bought products, while making room for homegrown herbs, goat milk, honey, lard or tallow. It’s both practical and creative—true old wisdom meeting modern self-sufficiency.

I started asking myself how I could benefit from the herbs in my garden sometime in summer, when the plants were growing faster than my reasons for them.

It felt wrong to let them just be pretty. They were doing work—pulling sun into themselves, holding scent, surviving heat and rain—and I was only passing by with a distracted nod.

So I started paying attention.

The idea of soap came to me while talking to my manager at my work. She was telling me that her mom used to make their own lard soap. And it was cool to have own, home made soap for dishes, laundry and day by day cleaning. And I thought :"I could make something like this."

And here you are. I dried the herbs. Rendered my own lard. And tried my first batch. As the mixture warmed, the kitchen filled with the scent of my own garden—real, green, alive. It felt like inviting the plants indoors and asking them to help.

When the soap finally hardened, it wasn’t perfect. The edges were uneven. A few rosemary needles poked out at odd angles. But when I used it, the lather smelled like mornings in the garden, like dirt under nails and sun on skin. It didn’t promise miracles. It just did its job—cleanly, gently, honestly.

That’s when I understood the benefit.

It wasn’t just soap. It was a way of carrying the garden with me into winter, into ordinary days, into moments that usually pass unnoticed. Every time I washed my hands, I remembered that I had grown something, transformed it, and made it part of my life.

The herbs kept growing. I kept making soap. And somewhere between the garden and the sink, I learned how to listen to what I already had.