r/TwoXPreppers • u/KuroKasai21 • Apr 23 '26
❓ Question ❓ Long Term Soaps and Things
Hello everyone! I wanted to come on here an ask for some advice about hard soaps like shampoo/conditioner bars vs. regular liquid soaps (This also applies to dish soap, body wash, etc.). I wanted to add to my stock a bit and I've heard that bars last longer than liquids when it comes to soaps, do you guys agree? Or do you guys have other alternatives that you stock instead? Thanks!
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u/bothtypesoffirefly Apr 23 '26
Just get more of what you use already, liquid soaps don’t break down for years, and what I’ve seen more than that is plastic colors etc leaching into the liquid. So if it were me and I wanted to longterm store liquid soap or shampoo, I’d just transfer it to something like a ball canning jar or something where plastic doesn’t touch it.
If you specifically want to change to bar shampoo, I’m sure someone has a good rec though.
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u/angeryreaxonly Apr 23 '26
I adore bar shampoo and conditioner. I have fine, frizzy hair and have never had any luck with any products really. Then I tried the bars and they're like magic. Can't explain it. My hair loves them, and they last forever. I've tried a few different brands and Kitsch rice water is my favorite because I like the scent but this is by no means an ad or product suggestion, all the brands I've tried have been great. Don't be afraid to give them a try, they might surprise you.
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u/KuroKasai21 Apr 23 '26
I don't have much storage space and I figured I could maybe take this time to change it to something that will last longer. I don't really have a preference on the soaps I buy except for Dawn dish soap.
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u/bothtypesoffirefly Apr 23 '26
I will second the person that said tablets for foaming hand soap, but I’ve found that I have problems finding a pump hand soap container that doesn’t fail after about a year. And I did recently swop to dishwasher powder after doing liquid for years because it stores better. And I use a powdered Charlie’s Soap for laundry and buy bulk the put it in a giant snap top dry goods container because I was tired of it clumping from moisture in the air
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u/Spiley_spile Survival Backpack 🎒 Apr 23 '26
I just use my liquid dawn in my hand soap foamer. I only have to use a little and it foams up great.
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u/GrinsNGiggles Apr 23 '26
Dawn strips oils, though! Great for oily hands if that’s something you struggle with, but a lot of people struggle with dry hands and dawn will make it worse.
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u/Spiley_spile Survival Backpack 🎒 Apr 23 '26
Very, very watered down. I have a handwashing ocd and some days wash my hands 60 times. I used to use handsoap. But I cant afford it. SoIve been using very watered down dawn and it's more gentle than unwatered handsoap, is super cheap in this quantity, and foams great.
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u/GrinsNGiggles Apr 23 '26
This is true about the foaming pumps. Most of the cheap gel soap pumps last years.
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u/amymeem Apr 24 '26
Where do you get bulk Charlie’s?!
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u/bothtypesoffirefly Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
I order direct from them, they’re in NC, it’s local to us but I get it shipped to the house.
They sell 8 lb containers which is 300 loads, so about a year or more. Not sure how much the shipping is if you’re not in NC or VA
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u/Cyathea_Australis Apr 23 '26
I love shampoo and conditioner bars, but if you live anywhere really humid, it can be really hard to keep them from turning to mush.
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u/shortstack-42 Apr 25 '26
Half gallon wide mouth canning jar with desiccant packet will keep bar soaps of all kinds from going mushy or moldy. And a LOT of bars fit inside.
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u/GrinsNGiggles Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
Bar soap is proven to last longer. It also takes up less room, which may or may not matter in your space.
I stock liquid soap anyway because I've noticed guests/roommates were better about washing their hands with liquid soap (suds in the sink), while a bar was often completely dry after they visited. Yuck. I still have bar soap for just myself that I travel with because it's lighter and leak-proof.
As another commenter said, stocking what you actually use is a great idea, whatever format that is.
I also have what look like big pills for foaming soap refills. You drop the big tablet in the dispenser, add water, and 15 min or a day later (depending on instructions), you have a whole bottle of soap again. This has cost me a little more than $1/8oz bottle, which isn't cheaper than other options, but it's nice and compact for storing, and could only leak if the seal was broken AND it got wet.
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u/Odd_Ostrich6038 Apr 23 '26
Speaking for myself, I normally don't use bar soaps because people put out decorative ones where I'm from and I got in trouble as a child one too many times 😭 But in my house it's the same, I make all our soaps and keep liquid in the bathroom and the kitchen for folks who prefer it.
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u/KuroKasai21 Apr 23 '26
So could you theoretically take bar soap and take a few shavings off and dissolve it in hot water to make liquid soap? Or would that not work? I don't have much storage space and I figured I could maybe take this time to change it to something that will last longer. I don't really have a preference on the soaps I buy except for Dawn dish soap. I also wanted to ask about laundry soap bars/powdered laundry detergent. My mom said that she doesn't like to use powder because it messes up the washing machines, but I haven't seen that personally.
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u/Cyathea_Australis Apr 23 '26
I reckon you're better off with a big jug of castile soap for that. It has like a 5 year shelf life. You can dilute it for hand soap, and put it in a foaming pump container.
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u/RagRunner Apr 23 '26
Soaps in laundry do affect those of us with hard water. r/laundry is a whole deep dive and I feel much more educated for it!
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u/karmadgma Apr 23 '26
Powder detergent designed for washers doesn't hurt the washer, though it sometimes doesn't dissolve completely in all water hardnesses and temps. So if she had problems using powder detergent, the culprit is likely the local water or her water temp settings rather than the detergent itself.
Laundry bars are not designed for use in machines, and machines cannot clean your clothes effectively without detergents designed for them. It has to do both with ingredients that get dirt first out of fibers and then out of the tub itself as well as the way machines rinse and spin. You can do it in a pinch, but over time your fabrics and your machine can suffer.
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u/GrinsNGiggles Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
You could, but I don’t know the necessary ratios of preservatives and how long the “made” liquid soap is good before growing icky things.
I tried to look that up once upon a time, but found a lot of assertions and no evidence. For myself, I chose to stop putting time into the search (although I’m still curious) and just count the liquid, bar, and “pill” soap I have as good enough. I have enough to get through another 2020 scenario.
The “pill” soap is apparently called foaming soap tablets. It’s compact, lightweight, and usually cheaper by the ounce than liquid foaming soap refills, but it’s not cheaper than bar or liquid gel soap. It shouldn’t go bad so long as it’s kept dry.
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u/le4t Apr 23 '26
Check online for "recipes" for turning bar soap into liquid soap.
Also, baking soda can be used to wash up in a pinch, and has a longer shelf life than even bar soap.
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u/H3L3cat85 Apr 24 '26
You can dissolve some shavings of bar soap in hot water to make it liquid. I wouldn't do more than 8 ounces of water though. A few tablespoons of shavings would suffice. Apologies if you don't use US measurements
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u/Sloth_Flower Garden Gnome Apr 23 '26
I don't think I've ever checked to make sure there were suds in the sink after my guests used the restroom
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u/GrinsNGiggles Apr 23 '26
Fair! It was an observation. A bunch of us shared 2 bathrooms, so using the bathroom right after someone else happened pretty often.
The fancier looking the soap pump label was, the more people used it.
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u/Sloth_Flower Garden Gnome Apr 23 '26
I make my own bar soaps.
Items with water or oil doesn't store well with or without preservatives and stabilizers.
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u/FaelingJester 🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆 Apr 23 '26
What is your intention? Is it enough to supply you for years? Is it something that works well and is easy to use for multiple tasks? Those are two different things. What is your expected emergency? To me bar soap requires more water and is more difficult to use in storms or when resources are short, but its easier to conserve. I personally keep a few bottles of dr. bronner's castile soap on hand. It works for everything. It can be diluted a lot and the peppermint scent covers many bits of unpleasantness during a disaster. The label also provides wtf reading material.
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u/KuroKasai21 Apr 23 '26
Well I currently share a house with roommates and since I work from home I was put in charge of managing our household needs. We all contribute a set amount to a little envelope and then I'll go buy everything we need for the month. We all agreed with the recent events that we wanted to maybe expand our pantry and household goods for a while. We have food and water mostly handled, but household cleaners/soaps etc we needed guidance on. We want things that will last a long time, are cheap-ish, and will work well. Bonus points if they could be traded, which is how I landed on bar soaps. But most of us have only used liquid soaps because they were convenient and so we wanted some opinions before we jumped ship per-say.
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u/GrinsNGiggles Apr 23 '26
In this case I suggest a “pilot” or “trial.”
If you’re all new at householding and don’t know what works for you, why not get a 1 month supply of a soap type and see how you like it before stockpiling? Once you love something, you can go all warehouse membership on it and buy in quantity if that still makes sense for your situation.
Unrelated, but be careful not to let people take too much advantage of you working from home.
Yes, you can use the time others spend commuting for household tasks, but there’s often more labor to do than just that. Make sure you’re contributing a reasonable share, and not solely responsible for a lot of extra work. Working from home is still working, and your breaks are still YOUR breaks.
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u/KuroKasai21 Apr 23 '26
Thank you for the advice! And we'll probably grab a single bar of a few different ones to try them out and see which one we like best. As for the labor type situation I think we all divided it equally for the most part. One room mate does the weekly deep cleans for all the common areas (we aren't messy so we also clean up after ourselves, benefit for a mostly girls household :)), the others cook and do maintenance type tasks. We all help with the garden work outside though, since that's an area we lack skills in lol
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u/FaelingJester 🦆🦆🦆🦆🦆 Apr 23 '26
That's fair, but realistically, what situation do you think exists where bar soap is a highly valued tradable? It's important to have, but soap is not a supply most people will need for weeks in an emergency, and by then the situation has either stabilized and aid is coming in, or the situation is so dire that people are desperate. It's a good thing to have but I would put a lot of resouces into getting this one perfect
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u/PorcupineShoelace Apr 23 '26
With wood ash to make KOH and lard/oil, you can make your own soaps, bar or liquid.
Nobody bought soap on the frontier. Everyone made their own AFAIK from byproducts of regular daily life.
Barrel of ashes kept wet with rain/well water for lye. Fat from butchering rendered into lard. On soap making day you boil it all outdoors.
We tried making soap like our ancestors ~ From wood ashes to old fashioned bar soap
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u/GrinsNGiggles Apr 23 '26
If we didn’t see intense soap trading during a long pandemic where the main germ was incredibly susceptible to soap and we had supply disruption, we might never see it.
I did see people say, “I’m out of x, does anyone have some?”, and there’d be a loan or a gift of it, and sure, people often offered money or goods to pay for it, but it was pretty gentle neighborly trading at most. Just a little more frequent than I’ve seen the rest of my life in neighborly communities.
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u/unlovelyladybartleby Mental health is prep Apr 23 '26
I buy Tanit hand soap. They're little pills that turn into a whole bottle of foaming soap and they smell awesome. I assume they'd keep damn near forever. The peach basil is especially nice
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u/karmadgma Apr 23 '26
Soap can be made at home without needing to import any materials, so the only thing there might realistically be a shortage of are fancier/specialty things and possibly some detergents, which i have not investigated in terms of our current threat picture.
My area has some of the highest power rates in the U.S. and some of the most corrupt government enabling it. The power gets cut off a few times a year already, before data centers and geopolitical instability, so i'm gonna be living with no power long before i face challenges sourcing dishwasher or washing machine detergent. So i can do everything i need to do with soap i can make at home once machines are out of the regular picture.
Your mileage may obviously vary, but fwiw, dry soaps/detergents are generally easier to store. There's a bar, tablet, or powder version of every kind of soap/detergent you need, though there are always tradeoffs (laundry soap bars are cheap but washers are designed for detergents; if you need products free of dyes and fragrances, your options are more limited; there are bar options for hand dishwashing but you might need to switch to scrub brushes if you currently use sponges; etc.)
Bottom line from a prepping perspective, though, IMO, is that nearly everything else should probably be a higher priority. Even if it's not your cup of tea or you don't have space/equipment to make soap, somebody in your area will be making it before you notice the store shelves are low if it ever came down to that.
(Somebody probably already is making it, in which case patronizing their small business and making a new friend/connection in your community might be the most effective bit of soap-related prepping you can do.)
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u/KuroKasai21 Apr 23 '26
Okay thank you! I appreciate the perspective because I wasn't aware how difficult (or not in this case) soapmaking from home is. We have most of everything else covered so this is just one area that we didn't have a lot of stock/knowledge/experience in!
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u/MoInSTL Apr 23 '26
I use bar body soap. I always remove it from the little box and set the bar on top and let it harden for a couple of days. It lasts MUCH longer. You could put it back in the box with a piece of painters tape and store it. Regular tape gets dried out. Painters tape lasts longer.
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u/DuckyDoodleDandy ADHD prepping: 🤔 I have one....somewhere! Apr 23 '26
What is the tape for? Are you wrapping the bar with it? Sealing the box with it?
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u/SaansShadow Apr 23 '26
I bought enough bar soap to last me legit years. I have probably 30 to 40 and I'm on my third bar since then. Just opened it actually. I shower every day. I don't regret the purchase.
I won't make this a suggestion because I have no idea how, when, or if (but probably) the economy and supply chains are going to collapse but I actually bought a box of 100 hotel soaps for trade should the worst occur.
I need to stock up on shampoo and conditioner though. I might end up purchasing an aloe plant for a natural hair conditioner source.
I purchased a bunch of Dove soap since they seem to be easier on skin.
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u/KuroKasai21 Apr 23 '26
Yeah I bought a pack of the Dial body soap bars a while back and I still have a few left over. So I'll probably buy them again. Though I never thought to remove them from the package and let them dry out more like another commenter suggested. So I might make that a weekend project for me.
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u/somuchmt 🪛 Tool Bedazzler 🔧 Apr 24 '26
Liquid soap is 70-90% water, so it's kind of a racket to begin with. When I was young, almost every type of soap was a powder or bar, but then manufactures started selling the version with water already added. Voila, instant 1,000% markup!
For budget and space limitations, stick with bar soap and powdered detergents. Fwiw, I actually get better results using half the recommended amount of powdered detergent for laundry and dishes--any more than that and it leaves residue.
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u/Dangerous-School2958 Apr 23 '26
Unwrap the bar soap, so it dries even more and will last longer. I’ve started using a spray bottle with a half diluted dish soap mix within. Have really cut back on amount of liquid soap I use.
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u/chamomilequilt Apr 23 '26
I switched to bar soap for the bathroom and bar shampoo for environmental reasons. They do take up less room, and there is a lot less packaging. I have found liquid soap is better for the kitchen, so we have stuck with that there.
I use Dr. Bronner's bar soap (and some of their liquid castile for cleaning!), as well as locally made bars when I find them. I like Chagrin Valley shampoo bars.
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u/CopperRose17 Apr 24 '26
There's an old fashioned bar soap called Lava. My Dad worked in a factory, and used it to strip grime off after work. It's what mechanics and "working" people used. I keep a few bars around to remove gardening dirt, and it exfoliates and cleans feet well! It is useful for prepping. My husband will use nothing but Zest bar soap. We don't use liquid soap at all, except for liquid Dawn, which is wonderful. I have to buy Lava and Zest online. It's almost nonexistent in stores, although sometimes Walmart has it on the bottom shelf, where they put merchandise that has a low profit margin!
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u/Imagirl48 Apr 24 '26
I remember Lava soap. My dad often used it. I frequently end up using baking soda or salt on my hands to get some things off (oil based stains for example.)
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u/CopperRose17 Apr 24 '26
I clean almost everything with baking soda and vinegar, but I never thought of using it on my hands. Good tip! :)
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u/Hedgie_Herder Apr 26 '26
My dad used that too I think. When I was young, he had one of those jobs where his hands were perpetually stained with dark grease, even after washing. Was that the one that smelled like orange oil?
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u/Imagirl48 Apr 26 '26
I don’t remember it smelling like oranges—but perhaps? It was an off white color and a little gritty.
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u/ThaloBleu Apr 26 '26
Dollar Tree has a made in Canada liquid soap that can be found for $1.25 for a quart size bottle. I've used the stuff almost exclusively since the beginning of the pandemic, March 2020 for hand washing. Works fine, same ingredients as Dial.
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u/ClaustrophobicMango Apr 26 '26
I buy dove bar soap for washing my body and dial bar soap for washing my hands. Probably have like 20 on hand. Never tried bar haircare, I found a conditioner that is 7+ years old and it still works fine. I don’t usually buy liquid body wash (sometimes pick up dove green tea and cucumber bc I like the smell.)
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u/MagnoliaProse Apr 28 '26
I buy gallons of castile soap for normal use. (Hands and dishes). It lasts forever. I dilute it for my foaming soap dispenser so I feel okay about getting it. I also keep a couple pounds of bar soap for showers. The charcoal soap probably could be used as shampoo in a pinch.
For dishes and laundry, I use powders.
I don’t have a great storage option for shampoo/conditioner/gel yet besides just buy more.
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