17 Ways to Reuse Leftover Pieces of Bar Soap

When you use a bar of soap, it eventually wears itself down to a little scrap that is generally too small to use for hand or body washing even though there is still a nice chunk of soap left. Normally I’d wet the soap sliver and the new bar of soap it will replace and press them together to make one glorious Megazord of soap in an effort to not waste it.

Unless for some reason the soap sliver won’t stay stuck to the new bar of soap.
Which seems to happen more often if one of the bars has a slight curve or is apparently in the wrong airspace for optimal soap sticking togetherness.

In that case, I like to find a creative reuse or recycle for soap scraps and slivers rather than throw them away and risk being haunted by dead relatives tsk tsking me from the great beyond for wasting things. Tsk! Tsk!

17 Bar Soap Hacks You Need to Try Right Now!

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You can make soap last longer by putting it (or those two renegade soap pieces that won’t stick together) in a soap saver bag. sisal or mesh soap saver bag or pouch (you can find several styles here.) I have a mesh soap pouch in our shower and likes the way it makes bar soap lather like liquid shower gel. I think it also helps keep bar soap from melting into a puddle of goo too. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links for your convenience.)





If you sew, you can use a sliver of soap to replace tailor’s chalk (it looks like this) when marking sewing patterns. Soap marking won’t easily rub off fabric like tailor’s chalk will and it will wash out more easily than mark’s made with a tailor’s pencil (learn more about them here.)

And speaking of sewing, you can stick pins and needles in a bar of soap to lubricate them so they will go through tough fabrics more easily

If you have pest problems, use Irish Spring soap (you can get it here) to repeal deer and mice. Many people swear that putting chunks of Irish Spring soap in their garden will keep deer from eating their plants and repeal mice from nesting in their home due to the strong scent. It makes sense to me, because I can’t stand the smell of Irish Spring either.

Keeping a bar of soap in your toolbox or workbench as a handy lubricant is a great hack. There are a ton of things around your house that rubbing with a bit of bar soap will unstick and fix. For example:

• Running a bar of soap along a stuck zipper will release it.

• Running a bar of soap long the bottom track of a sliding glass door can make it slide more easily.

• Running a bar of soap over a squeaky door hinge will silence it.

• You can speed up a sled by running a bit of soap on the runners – use this one with caution!

• Running a bar of soap over metal or wood drawer rails will prevent them from sticking.

• Running a bit of soap onto a key to help loosen a stiff lock if you don’t have any WD-40 (learn more about my DIY BFF here) laying around.

• Many DIYers swear by running a bit of bar soap on the ends of screws and nails to make it easier to drive them into hard woods and to keep the wood from splitting (which sometimes happens to me even when I drill a pilot hole first.)

• Washing your hands with a good lather of soap will help you remove a ring from a swollen finger.

 
 
You can save a ton of money and control the ingredients if you use bar soap to make your own laundry detergent! Sometimes I’ll grind a couple of slivers of bath soap in my food processor to add to my homemade laundry detergent recipe (1 cup of Borax (you can buy Borax here), 1 cup of Washing Soda (you can buy washing soda here), and 1/2 of laundry soap flakes.) I think the Zote laundry soap (learn more about it here) works better than 1/2 cup of nothing but bath soap (too much bath soap in the recipe makes my HE washer smell) but that doesn’t stop me from adding extra soap slivers if I have them on hand.

Photo courtesy of my DIY blog Condo Blues!

And speaking of laundry, you can use a bar of soap as a clothing stain fighter. Wet a bar of soap, rub it on the stain (I like to use a little brush to work the soap into the stain,) and pop it in the washing machine.

If you rent, running a piece of soap over a small nail hole in a wall to fill it and save you your security deposit. White toothpaste also works.

You can use bar soap to find leaks! Rub a wet bar of soap on a tire, pipe, value, or plumbing you suspect is leaking. When the area bubbles, you’ve found your leak!

There’s also nothing stopping our from using all of those little bits of soap to make one big bar of soap! Check out my tutorial below!

And last, but by no means least, you can also use those little bits of bar soap to make liquid soap by melting grated bar soap in more water than the above bar soap tutorial to make what soap makers call soap jelly that you can use as you would liquid hand soap.

Looking for more soap saving hacks and ideas? Check out the following options - and more!- below!

 

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