I'm a bit of a saver. Really, I'm a low-grade pack rat. But only because I'm convinced the pack rat has his advantages. More than once have I been saved time and effort because I had this-and-that tucked away "just in case."
Imagine: in the wee hours as I hurry to get clean and dressed for a flight or trip out of town, I suddenly realize I already packed my deodorant and toothpaste in my luggage the night before. Now, if I weren't a pat rack, I'd have to unzip my carefully loaded bag, dig out the toiletries, apply them, repack and re-zip the bag, thus increasing my pressure and tardiness. Fortunately, though, I keep old stubs of deodorant in my closet and shriveled tubelets of toothpaste in my bathroom for just such a last-minute deliverance (or for the case, bizarre as it may sound, when a friend needs some deo and toothpaste I haven't just used). Clearly, this is an example provided by a pat rack in defense of pat racks, but hopefully the point stands: I have lots of little "leftovers of life". (No, I don't reuse toilet paper!)
One sort of these leftovers has caught my mind's eye more than others lately, though, since I'm not sure what to do with it. I speak of my old, thin, fragile but still very usable slices of bar soap. Rather than scrubbing them down to useless shards of soap that break to pieces when you use them (you know what I'm talking about), I insist on stopping at a minimum usable mass, in the off-chance that I unwittingly run out of new soap and need some back-up without having to go to the store. (Hey, it's saved me before.) But as long as I have new soap, these old soap cards just sit there, leading me to wonder, and then to blog...
INSCITIA:
What can or should I do with these pieces of soap? (Obviously, tossing them is not an option, at least not until I move.) How can I reconstitute them?
COGITATIO:
I have considered for some time melting them all down into a new hybrid-bar (though, in reality, nearly all of them are Ivory, so the Frankensoap would be soothingly, albinously homogenous). The problem is just how to melt down the soap and, not being a soap maker, reform it into usable soap-bar condition. (It was a virtual disaster when I melted down an old coffee-bean-studded candle and tried to remold it in a cooking pot; this melt-and-mold approach is a last option.)
My proposed solution is to buy a cheap, and thus basically disposable, pot to melt the soap down, and then pour the soap sludge into a heavy plastic, soap-shaped box, letting it cool.
The only catches I see so far are 1) not knowing the melting temperature (or possible noxious fumes) of soap and thus whether it's dangerous to try melting it at home, and 2) how to remove the Frankensoap from the box after it hardens. I think I'd let it harden at room temperature and then place it in the freezer, expecting the soap to contract more than the plastic box, allowing me to pop the frigid soap out by hand.
RESPONSUM:
