What making soap taught me
Everyone has seen Fight Club. At least, every self-respecting man my age who likes to think they are hip has seen fight club. Brad Pitt with -2% body fat is the man we want to be, and Ed Norton as the split-personality Tyler Durden is the kind of self-made king of the underworld we all secretly aspire to.
Also they make soap out of rich people’s liposuction-ed meat and sell it back to them for fat (get it?) profits.
Recently I started making my own soap. Here’s a photo of some coffee soap that I just made today:
Soap is stupidly easy to make. Literally, it’s just oil, water, and lye. If you remember lye from the movie, it’s this white powder that Tyler puts on Tyler’s hand after Tyler kisses Tyler’s hand. It bubbles and foams and burns him. That part is true — that shit, when mixed with water, will burn the hell out of you.
So anyway, the coffee soap follows that formula in that we used coconut oil, olive oil, coffee for water, lye, and at the end added some coffee grounds and some walnuts (exfoliants).
This shit is the bomb. It does these things:
- Removes all odors completely. Garlic and onions? Yes. Fish guts? Yes. Blood of the innocent? Yes.
- Washes off super clean.
- Exfoliates the hell out of your skin. Sooo great feeling on your hands and feet and elbows, etc. The grounds and the soft walnuts gently rub your skin. So nice.
- Looks cool as hell.
- Has just a very very faint coffee scent.
Do you want a bar? Tweet at me and I’ll get you one for cheap.
What it taught me
In the movie, they make soap to fund their enterprise of destabilizing society. In real life, I make soap because it gives me a creative outlet, it provides me a little extra money, let’s me spend some quality time with my sister, and it feels good to actually make something with my hands. As a web engineer, I spend all my time at a computer, building things there. This, on the other hand, makes me use my actual hands to make something I can actually hold in them. I can actually wash my perfectly sculpted Durden-esque physique with these bars of soap.
So, what I’m saying is, it taught me that I can find pleasure in something simple but unique like soapmaking. I can also make a kick-ass bar of soap that is literally better than any soap you can buy in the store. Seriously. And that’s not the only flavor we have. It’s so good.
I’ll bet if you put your mind to it, you too can make something unique. Your own little contribution to the physical world. Try it.
