With twenty pounds of ground beef in the bathtub and fifty bars of soap melting on the stove, this has been a wonderful day so far.
Yesterday didn't count as my first day Home because I was so sleep deprived I couldn't function very well, but today I'm feeling much better and starting some of the little projects I've always thought about, but never got around to. Like melting the tiny, left over bars of soap into larger, more usable bars.
I've been keeping all the discarded soap ends for this purpose. When they started overflowing the glass container, I figured it was time, but I still didn't do it, that is, until today.
Today I was feeling capable of trying something new. So I put all those little bars into a pan to melt them down. I didn't Google the idea or see it on Pinterest, but it just made sense that soap would melt on a pan on the stove. It doesn't. After adding lots of olive oil and water and standing over the stove for an hour, stirring and stirring, I ended up with a gooey glob with giant chunks of soap in it.
Smashing the concoction into "molds", I left them to cool. I'm pretty proud of my work.
Yesterday didn't count as my first day Home because I was so sleep deprived I couldn't function very well, but today I'm feeling much better and starting some of the little projects I've always thought about, but never got around to. Like melting the tiny, left over bars of soap into larger, more usable bars.
I've been keeping all the discarded soap ends for this purpose. When they started overflowing the glass container, I figured it was time, but I still didn't do it, that is, until today.
Today I was feeling capable of trying something new. So I put all those little bars into a pan to melt them down. I didn't Google the idea or see it on Pinterest, but it just made sense that soap would melt on a pan on the stove. It doesn't. After adding lots of olive oil and water and standing over the stove for an hour, stirring and stirring, I ended up with a gooey glob with giant chunks of soap in it.
Smashing the concoction into "molds", I left them to cool. I'm pretty proud of my work.
They look like bowls of delicious mint ice cream and I keep wanting to eat them.
Hopefully they'll harden enough to be usable. Otherwise.... does anyone know what to do with lots of mushy, left over soap?
I used to think I was crafty, but I eventually realized I'm not patient enough to be crafty. I am crafty in my head, but when it comes to executing a project, I'm extremely lazy. Melting soap, for example, I could have looked up how to make soap, or even looked on the box of soap to see if water and oil were in the ingredients somewhere. I guess I could have looked something up on YouTube or Pinterest to see other projects people do with left over soap, but I'm getting lazy just writing this. I was sure melting soap would work, soap is just like chocolate, or peanut butter. So I threw it on the stove and found something around the house to work as the mold.
(Those are little gelato cups we get at this Italian place downtown. They serve their gelato in these nice plastic cups and then just throw them away. When we go there, we save ours and collect them from other people's tables. Does that make us hobos? I like to think we're just environmentally conscious. Right? Right.)
So anyway, I got tired of standing and stirring the soap. I wonder if soap is supposed to take days and days of stirring and melting. Does soap even melt? Maybe I should have looked that up. And the picture above illustrates the end product. Voilà!
When I woke up this morning I wasn't sure what to expect with my new Home. Would I have tons of energy? Would I feel different? Would I be extremely happy or comfortable or emotional? The answer is, I don't really feel anything extreme. I just feel totally normal. I don't even feel like I'm the most comfortable person in the world anymore, I'm just neutral, like floating in zero gravity.
I started the day going at a steady pace, not pushing myself too hard to get a million things done, but not forcing myself to go slowly in order to keep the rising anxiety in check (those are my two most common settings). Instead, I left the house and ran errands for three hours (something that would usually throw me into a galaxy of misery) and returned home still feeling like a floating astronaut. Nice.
I walked the dog. I did some laundry. I threw the ground beef in the tub (that's another story) and then I started melting soap. It's four in the afternoon and my steady pace is slowing down. A nap would be nice about now, and it's probably not a good idea to start another project at this time, but I feel good. I don't feel great, or fantastic, or out of this world, I just feel like me.
I'm sure I'll settle in more with time. Maybe I'll throw a house-warming party and give "homemade" soap as gifts to all my guests. Want to come?
Hopefully they'll harden enough to be usable. Otherwise.... does anyone know what to do with lots of mushy, left over soap?
I used to think I was crafty, but I eventually realized I'm not patient enough to be crafty. I am crafty in my head, but when it comes to executing a project, I'm extremely lazy. Melting soap, for example, I could have looked up how to make soap, or even looked on the box of soap to see if water and oil were in the ingredients somewhere. I guess I could have looked something up on YouTube or Pinterest to see other projects people do with left over soap, but I'm getting lazy just writing this. I was sure melting soap would work, soap is just like chocolate, or peanut butter. So I threw it on the stove and found something around the house to work as the mold.
(Those are little gelato cups we get at this Italian place downtown. They serve their gelato in these nice plastic cups and then just throw them away. When we go there, we save ours and collect them from other people's tables. Does that make us hobos? I like to think we're just environmentally conscious. Right? Right.)
So anyway, I got tired of standing and stirring the soap. I wonder if soap is supposed to take days and days of stirring and melting. Does soap even melt? Maybe I should have looked that up. And the picture above illustrates the end product. Voilà!
When I woke up this morning I wasn't sure what to expect with my new Home. Would I have tons of energy? Would I feel different? Would I be extremely happy or comfortable or emotional? The answer is, I don't really feel anything extreme. I just feel totally normal. I don't even feel like I'm the most comfortable person in the world anymore, I'm just neutral, like floating in zero gravity.
I started the day going at a steady pace, not pushing myself too hard to get a million things done, but not forcing myself to go slowly in order to keep the rising anxiety in check (those are my two most common settings). Instead, I left the house and ran errands for three hours (something that would usually throw me into a galaxy of misery) and returned home still feeling like a floating astronaut. Nice.
I walked the dog. I did some laundry. I threw the ground beef in the tub (that's another story) and then I started melting soap. It's four in the afternoon and my steady pace is slowing down. A nap would be nice about now, and it's probably not a good idea to start another project at this time, but I feel good. I don't feel great, or fantastic, or out of this world, I just feel like me.
I'm sure I'll settle in more with time. Maybe I'll throw a house-warming party and give "homemade" soap as gifts to all my guests. Want to come?