Looking for old-school soap

Yeah, yeah, I already turned off the water softener... moving on. Before I end up having to rinse my gear in pure spring water or some river out in the middle of nowhere, I'll be fine. 😲

I don’t even know what you’re getting at here—you’re just assuming you’re allergic to some random additives they toss into soaps and detergents. My first point was more about the semantics of it all, honestly... You used the word "chemicals" like it's some scary boogeyman when you're talking about those extra ingredients, but let's be real: soap itself is literally created through a chemical reaction between fatty acids (which is why I brought up lard, by the way) and something like lye—say, sodium or potassium hydroxide. NaOH is a chemical *par excellence*, if we're being technical...

But my second comment was actually the important part—go get tested to find out what you're actually reacting to (assuming it really is an allergy). Seriously, knowing the specifics could make your life a whole lot easier.

Hey, look, I actually have this whole little manual on how to make soap, but since we're keeping things simple, I’ll just write out two of the easiest recipes you could use if you were stuck in some survivalist situation or just trying to get by on nothing:

😁 😁
GOOD HOMEMADE SOAP
To whip up a decent batch of homemade soap, you'll want to grab
400 g of tallow
300 g of fat (honestly, even old grease works fine)
30 g of rosin
Just melt all of that over low heat, stirring it constantly for about half an hour. Once that's done, you need to add
400 g of soda ash and
600 g of water
Give it another ten minutes of mixing, then pull it off the heat. After that, pour in
25 g of pure alcohol (like high-proof spirits),
mix it well, and let it sit for about 6 hours. Once the mixture has settled and cooled down, you'll put it back on the stove, melt it again, and stir in
120 g of table salt dissolved in 400 g of water.
Keep heating the whole thing for roughly an hour, take it off the fire, and then toss in
20 g of turpentine,
give it a good stir, and pour it into a wooden box that you've lined with an old, damp
cloth, then just let it dry. When the soap is firm, you can cut it into whatever size pieces you want.
The soap you get this way is actually pretty high quality and lathers up beautifully.

👋

CHEAP HOMEMADE SOAP
For this one, you should probably use
500 g of potash
and put it into a wide-mouthed glass jar, the kind you might use for making pickles. Pour
1 liter of rainwater over that potash.
Into this liquid, you're going to throw in all sorts of scraps left over from meals—whatever bones you have from beef, pork, chicken, fish, etc. If you have bigger bones, like from a ham, you really ought to break them into smaller chunks before dropping them in, and keep adding enough rainwater to make sure everything is completely covered. Once that glass jar is filled to the top—we're talking maybe 3 to 4 lbs of bones in there—just let it sit for 12 to 15 days.
Besides bones, you can also toss in other kitchen scraps like cheese rinds or bits of bacon skin; all that stuff will eventually break down in the jar. Then, grab a larger pot, maybe something around a ten-liter capacity, and pour everything from the glass jar into it, adding another
2 liters of water
and letting it boil for at least two hours from the moment it starts bubbling.
After that, you'll need to strain the mixture through a sieve to get rid of any leftover bone fragments or bits of skin, then leave the liquid in the pot until the next day. The following day, bring the pot back to a boil, and once it's bubbling, stir in
50 g of potash,
and let the whole thing simmer for an hour. While that's cooking, prep a wooden box or crate by lining the inside with an old, wet cloth.
Once the mixture has boiled for an hour, toss in a couple of handfuls of table salt and take it off the heat. Pour that thick paste into your prepared wooden box, which should be sitting over a tray or some kind of basin to catch any excess liquid that drains out.

The next day, shake the soap out of the box and let it dry in one solid block for a few days. Once it's fully dried out, you can slice it into whatever shapes you like and let those slices finish drying.
The soap you end up with is really substantial, it lathers up great, rinses off easily, and best of all, it's incredibly easy and fast to make without spending much money at all.😁