Day 14 - Clutter Free Shower

Does your shower look something like this?

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Do you find yourself frustrated beyond belief when you're constantly knocking all those bottles down?

As usual, the key to organization and clutter free living is to PURGE. But how do you do that with your shampoo and body wash? You NEED all these bottles, don't you?

Well, I'm here to tell you that maybe you don't. Now before you right me off as a lunatic and assume I never shower and smell bad...hear me out.

Dave has always LOVED handmade soap. He would occasionally buy it at a festival or at Cracker Barrel. Well, last August, right after Levi was born, he decided to make his own lye soap using Red Crown Lye that he had bought at an Amish store and lard from a hog he and his brother butchered together. (He even went to the extent of building his own "soapbox" for the soap to cure in, out of repurposed pallet wood. So we like to say that now he can actually get up on his literal soapbox.)

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This may sound crazy and totally "old school" but that lye soap was the most fabulous soap we've ever had. I actually thought it smelled a bit like bacon grease, but it got us so incredibly clean. We were able to use it to wash our faces, bodies, hair (it even conditioned!), and I even used it to shave my legs since it lathered so well. We've since bought some lye soap from an Etsy shop and although it is good, it does not compare to that batch we made ourselves. And I honestly think it is because we were not able to separate out the lard like the real butcher does so it was more greasy and brownish tan colored than the pure white lard you can buy from a butcher. Ours actually did a lot better job cleaning our bodies.

So, anyways, during the time that we were using the lye soap for washing every possible body part, we completely eliminated all other bottles/bars of soap in the shower (facial cleanser, body wash, shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, etc. - they all left!). All we had in there was one bar of lye soap. And my clutter-free-loving-self was ecstatic!

If you're at all the "homesteading" type you should definitely look into making your own lye soap. Or at least buy some on Etsy. It's totally the way to go. Just make sure you get lye soap made with animal fat. The other lye soaps that use other oils like olive oil as opposed to lard irritate our skin a bunch.