What a shock! I went to open a new package of bath soap and lo and behold I found the bars are now 1/2 of the original sizes! I went into my supplies and found some I had packed away, just to confirm! yup the ones i got less than a year ago are doubled the size and weight of the new ones I bought last month! It got worse! Those flimsy cellophane wrappers on the bar soaps, when you get them in a package of 4,6,or 8 are not a lot of protection...There is a ceratin degree of humidity in thoe bars and IF they dry out, YIKES! Looks like old cracked dirt! I had bough several packages and opened a couple taking out one or 2 bars for use on a "what I need now" basis. The ones I put back are ruined! It's horrendous! Now I'll have to buy new soaps and put them into a vacuum sealed package/s to keep them from dehydrating. Or, any thoughts and ideas? Then I got to wondering about the soaps ( laundry) powders I have stored. Great, being in Arizona you'd think they'd stay in a nice condition, nope! Due and owing to the use of swamp coolers, the high humidity permeated those carboard boxes, and now I have really large masses of yukkk! I suppose you can fix that, with a blender? Or maybe an "ice pick"? Sheesh!
Dragon you must be storing your soap with your kerosene,LOL I quit preeping a couple of years ago because of wife proplems. Ive basically consumed all my preps and now Im starting back. Basically all suplies need to be rotated into your everyday life. However I had no idea bar soap had a shelf life.
you know those net sacks that they ship citrus in? drop a couple of bars of that cracked up soap in the bag. twist above the soap. now like folding socks, double back on the soap ball. twist above the soap ball again and then double. twist tie the end. now you can place in a small saucer of water. after about 1/2 hour your soap will be more creamy but not falling apart. You could use as it as the netting will give you some great scrubbing power. as for the detergent goop, erm, sorry no help from me on that one.
I buy an expensive specialty soap bar for washing my hair. I always remove the bars from the packaging and let then sit (air dry) for a couple months so the moisture is removed - the bars last 2 or 3 times as long that way. The water content in soap products is superfluous anyway.
I still like Ivory soap, from my Navy daze. It's the only bar soap that doesn't yellow the white piping on the navy uniforms. Nice clean smell, and I have bars that are a couple years old, in the heavy paper wrapping - still look good when unwrapped! I once saw a magazine ad for a gadget that you'd put the used slivers of bar soap in, and wet them - it would be 'pressed' into a new full sized bar! Wish I could find that thing - I have been saving the slivers, just in case!
Liquid body wash is the way to go but I still keep a dozen bars of Ivory as a back up. To prevent the drying out, I put them in a Foodsaver bag and vacuum sealed them. No moisture loss or drying out at all, they looked as new after 2 years in the bag. They were still in the factory wrap, no fuss no muss.
