Often times when people are preparing for an emergency, the focus tends to be on the food and drink aspect and not so much on hygiene supplies. While food and water should be a top priority as it is a human essential, cleanliness should be given a little more attention. After all, filthy water can be just as harmful as whatever disaster you are experiencing. For instance, when people are creating a food and water storage, they often try and plan for how much everyone in their family will drink per day when, in contrast, rarely do people ever factor in the water they will need for various hygiene purposes such as bathing and brushing teeth. While everyone is caught up in the soup (how many can be stacked? How high? How many can fit in everyone’s backpack?), they should be just as concerned with the soap.
Although soap, up until this point, has always been readily accessible and underappreciated, it has now become a priceless asset to your emergency supply. Although soap is an important necessity for maintaining good hygiene, it should never be out of reach. Soap really only consists of a few key ingredients and can be made at home.
Cold Process (CP) soap is one of the most common and convenient soaps for emergency situations. Another thing to consider is how you are going to wash your family’s clothes. To make your own detergent, all you need are bar soap shavings and equal proportions of borax and washing soda (one cup of each to every 4.5 ounces of bar soap). Of course, this does not help you much if you are all out of bar soap, so let’s start from the beginning. How do you make bar soap anyway?
CP soap is the best option for preparing for an emergency situation as it is sturdy and long-lasting. This soap-making process basically involves the combination of fatty acids, sodium hydroxide, and hydrogen dioxide. In other words, oils, lye, and water are the staple ingredients in cold process bar soap. Various oils can be used interchangeably depending on the preferred fragrance. As lye can be dangerous, you need to use goggles when making CP soap. This particular soap-making process takes about six weeks to complete. As the process is long and somewhat rigorous, you will want to study further into the exact process before making it yourself. You can read on www.teachsoap.com for specific step-by-step instructions on how to make strong, sturdy, yet wonderfully smelling soaps.
Remember hygiene is just as important as food and water when it comes to you and your family’s well-being, so don’t count soap (or soap ingredients) out when you are preparing your family’s emergency supply kits.
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