soap

Before Colgate and other companies like it set up industrial shop, soapmaking was a home industry--and for some DIY entrepreneurs today, it still is. (Image from NYPL Digital Gallery)

Soap making is a thriving indie business. A recent quick search on Etsy led me to over 13,000 handmade soaps from which to choose, and the creative varieties are outstanding--from bars with city maps to bone-shaped soaps for dogs, you are bound to find the perfect concoction for you. Clearly you won't have to get your own hands dirty making soap unless that's what you're into (and if it IS, take a look at the latest issue of Bust--it offers a soap-making tutorial.)

For many centuries, however, soap making was a routine household chore, done in small batches using materials collected around the house. In Susan Strasser's eye-opening social history of trash, Waste and Want, she discusses how "spare fat" and drippings, as well as ashes (used in making the lye needed to create soap) could be collected and used to make soap at home. But even as commercial soap makers appeared on the American scene, the industry remained a "small, local enterprise before the Civil War." Strasser's study of the economics of American trash is well worth reading for much more than just the soapy bits, however. It provides a startling reminder of how radically our ideas of value and re-use have changed, and how old habits of recycling lost their place in industrial America.

To learn more about soap, and about the Western world's long-held suspicion of hot sudsy baths, I recommend Katherine Ashenburg's The Dirt on Clean. This memorable book considers the rise of soap (made at home using animal fats, but also later produced as a luxury item using gentle and attractive plant oils) and how its role shifted from that of a perfumed cosmetic to become the cleansing necessity it is for us today.