Does it saponify? Moisturizer in soap

[myriad]

We have a ton of moisturizer in our house, and I’m the only one that uses it (house full of boys). I‘ll never finish it, and we are always being gifted more… is there a recipe out there for making it into soap?

I imagine it will be hit and miss because every moisturizer is different. Last week, I threw a bunch of body butter that was too old in my soaping slow cooker with some sunflower oil, and eventually got it to saponify and turn turn into a decent soap. So it’s possible! Any recipes or experiences with it out there?

 

[lsg]

Since it is impossible to know the ratio and amount of each oil or butter in each product, it would be hard to give you accurate information.

 

[Zing]

We have a ton of moisturizer in our house, and I’m the only one that uses it (house full of boys). I‘ll never finish it, and we are always being gifted more… is there a recipe out there for making it into soap?

I imagine it will be hit and miss because every moisturizer is different. Last week, I threw a bunch of body butter that was too old in my soaping slow cooker with some sunflower oil, and eventually got it to saponify and turn turn into a decent soap. So it’s possible! Any recipes or experiences with it out there?

Last week, did you use a lye calculator?

 

[AliOop]

We have a ton of moisturizer in our house, and I’m the only one that uses it (house full of boys). I‘ll never finish it, and we are always being gifted more… is there a recipe out there for making it into soap?

I imagine it will be hit and miss because every moisturizer is different. Last week, I threw a bunch of body butter that was too old in my soaping slow cooker with some sunflower oil, and eventually got it to saponify and turn turn into a decent soap. So it’s possible! Any recipes or experiences with it out there?

Would any of those boys in the house help you use up those lotions if they were repackaged and relabeled as hair conditioner? Body lotion and hair conditioner are basically the same thing.

 

[not_ally]

That sounds like a bad idea, basically you'll be putting a bunch of extra oils and maybe water and emulsifiers into your soap that are not in the recipe and that you cannot put into the calculator. It sounds like you were lucky last time (did you have a low superfat amount in the original recipe?) Also, if the body butter was already old, I would not be surprised to see DOS popping up in the soap sooner rather than later. Personally I wouldn't want to take the time, energy and ingredients to gamble on each batch, soap can be wilful even if you do everything right.

ETA: Maybe if you really liked the soap from last week you could use the exact same amounts of everything in your "BB hack recipe" and use them up really quickly to avoid DOS? But then you'd have the same issues with just randomly guessing for each new moisturizer.

 

[basti]

Us boys need moisturizer, too. Food for thought.

 

[myriad]

Thanks for the replies, all. To answer questions:

I ran the weight of the moisturizer (it was shae butter based) plus about 100g sunflower oil in a calculator at zero superfat, and hot processed it. Some of it traced, but I had a lot of lye water still separating from the mix, of course, because likely only a small portion of the moisturizer was saponifiable. What do we do with extra lye water? We feed it! so I put in more sunflower + some coconut oil until the whole thing traced, then let it cook until it was neutral. I poured and then cut the next day. It’s soft because of the excess water, but otherwise ok! This is all personal-use soap that will probably be salted out and made into laundry soap eventually

I think what worries me, mostly, is the reaction of lye + some of the wacky synthetics they put in moisturizers.

I didn’t know that moisturizer could be used as hair conditioner, that’s a thought! Though our shower pipes aren’t the best so I’d be a bit afraid to use it straight (they always use a ton of whatever they put in their hair). Maybe I’ll try it out on myself

Basti, no worries, there is plenty of fresh moisturizer for the boys, I only experiment on older stuff. But they don’t like it and therefore don’t use it

 

[cmzaha]

I didn’t know that moisturizer could be used as hair conditioner, that’s a thought! Though our shower pipes aren’t the best so I’d be a bit afraid to use it straight (they always use a ton of whatever they put in their hair). Maybe I’ll try it out on myself

Yes, hair conditioner is a lotion, just with additional additives, such as Allantoin. Actually, some conditioners do not even have as many additives as some body lotions. I have used my lotions for years as my hair conditioner and I am a retired cosmetologist, so I am pretty picky.

 

[AliOop]

I didn’t know that moisturizer could be used as hair conditioner, that’s a thought! Though our shower pipes aren’t the best so I’d be a bit afraid to use it straight (they always use a ton of whatever they put in their hair).

As cmzaha confirmed above, lotion and hair conditioner really are the same stuff, plus or minus some additives. That means there won't be anything in your lotion that will clog your pipes any more than whatever hair conditioner you already use. So, go for it! I still recommend repackaging it so your users don't turn it down because they don't know what you know (that lotion = hair conditioner).

 

[KiwiMoose]

You could ask Dove soap how they do it? They have 1/4 moisturising cream in theirs.

 

[lsg]

 

[KiwiMoose]

Interesting that she uses stearic acid in a cold processed soap - my belief was that would harden instantly upon adding the lye solution?

 

[myriad]

Thanks for the Dove link. I’m shocked they can advertise that it contains 1/4 cup moisturizer when it has absolutely none and is stuffed with surfactants?

No stearic clump - maybe because it’s just a bit, already melted and well blended?

I tried the lotion for conditioner substitution on my own hair and it worked pretty well! I’ll definitely be adding the unscented lotions to bottles of conditioner that the kiddos use. If it doesn’t smell like their conditioner they may reject it, so… can I mix them 50/50 without issues?

 

[AliOop]

I tried the lotion for conditioner substitution on my own hair and it worked pretty well! I’ll definitely be adding the unscented lotions to bottles of conditioner that the kiddos use. If it doesn’t smell like their conditioner they may reject it, so… can I mix them 50/50 without issues?

That's awesome! You can probably mix it 50-50 with no problem. Let us know how it goes!

 

[myriad]

Hey, thanks again for the advice to use moisturizer as hair conditioner! I made a 50/50 mix of the boys’ hair conditioner and it seems to be working! I’m also using it in the shower mixed in my hand with my own hair conditioner, which stretches the time between conditioner purchases. Brilliant!

 

[AliOop]

That's awesome! Glad to hear it is working for you.