Yole's Craft

How to Improve Your Laundry Soap for Better Cleaning Power 👇

Start with your formula.
One thing that really matters is:
✅ Oil combination
The oils you use affect how well your soap cleans. Oils like coconut oil, palm kernel oil (PKO), and palm kernel stearin are good cleansing oils.
Coconut oil cleans very well, but it’s expensive for laundry soap. If you can afford it, fine. But most soap makers prefer PKO or stearin because they still give good cleaning power and are more budget-friendtly.
⚠️ Don’t over-superfat your laundry bar soap
Too much extra oil can reduce cleaning power and may leave residue on clothes.
I always leave it out but if you must, use little.
✅ STPP (Sodium Tripolyphosphate)
Helps soften hard water so the soap can clean better.
✅ Borax
Also helps with water softening and can assist in stain removal.
✅ Washing Soda (Soda Ash / Sodium Carbonate)
Helps cut grease and dirt and improves performance, especially in hard water.
This one is actually my favorite, and I recommend it often
If you check most major laundry soap brands, you’ll usually find it in their ingredients.
You don’t need to use everything together. Just choose what works for your formula, your customers.
⚠️ don’t overload your additives. Too much can make your soap harsh, brittle, or crumbly and affect quality of the bar

Which do you prefer as an experienced soaper?
Borax, Stpp or soda ash?




Yole's Craft

Why Your Laundry Soap Is Not Cleaning Properly 👇

A few weeks ago, I talked about whether more foam means more cleaning power. Today, let's talk about why your laundry soap may not be cleaning your clothes as well as it should.
The first thing to understand is that foam and cleaning are not the same thing. Your soap may lather ( foam) beautifully and still struggle to remove dirt and stubborn stains. That being said, a soap that produces good foam is still a good thing,foam helps with spreading the soap through clothes and gives a nice, satisfying washing experience. The key point is that foam alone does not guarantee deep cleaning.

Here are a few possible reasons:

✅ Hard water; Hard water simply means water that contains a lot of invisible minerals, mainly calcium and magnesium. You don’t see them, but they are in the water. When soap is used in this kind of water, part of it gets "used up" reacting with those minerals instead of cleaning your clothes. This makes the soap less effective, so clothes may still look dull or feel unwashed even after washing.

✅ Insufficient cleaning power; This means the soap itself is not strong enough to properly remove dirt and grease from clothes.It may still foam well, because soap made from oil and water will naturally lather, but foam does not mean the dirt is actually being removed

Next post we talk about solutions.

✅ Formulation errors. This simply means the soap was not properly balanced during production. soap is made from oil and water, the type of oils used and active cleaning ingredients used

✅ Too many fillers or bulking agents; Some soaps contain extra ingredients that are not actually part of the soap itself. These are called fillers. They are added mainly to increase size or weight, not cleaning ability. Examples include sodium sulfate and calcium carbonate. The issue is that when too many fillers are used, they reduce the amount of real soap in the product, which lowers cleaning performance, ability.

✅Using bathing soap formula for laundry soap
Bathing soap is designed to be mild and moisturizing, often containing extra oils (superfatting). Laundry soap, on the other hand, is meant to remove dirt and stains aggressively. Using a bathing soap-style formula for laundry results in weaker cleaning performance.

Next post we talk about solutions.



Yole's Craft

🥱😴
Tomorrow.
Goodnight

Ever wondered why your laundry bar soap cleans better than your bath soap?

Well, let's find out!
Next post ☝️


Yole's Craft

Different slides of soap🥰

You don't have to have all the machines and equipments before you start soap making.
Start from somewhere and learn your way to the top.

Stop waiting for millions!
Starting from the bottom, this gives you experience you'll need at the top.

I'm sure you've heard something like this before?
Good.
I'm not a motivational speaker though, just a truth teller.

LEARN YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

🌿 Soapmaking Terms (For Beginners)

Soap Making Series — Day 5

If you’re new to soapmaking, some words can sound confusing at first. Here are a few common ones explained simply 👇
✅Saponification
This is the soap-making process. It happens when oils/fats react with lye and turn into soap. The process of conversion.
✅Trace
This is when your soap mixture, oil and Lye solution starts to thicken. When you lift your stick blender or spatula and it leaves a light trail on the surface before disappearing—that’s trace.
Simply put, when the oils and Lye solution emulsifies completely and there's no visible separation.
It could be light, medium or thick trace.
✅ Gel Phase
This is when soap heats up inside the mold and turns more gel-like in the center. It can make colors look brighter and the soap harder.
Happens during hot process or cold process overheating.
✅ Lye (also known as Sodium Hydroxide or Caustic Soda)
This is a key ingredient in bar soap. It reacts with oils during saponification. After curing is complete, no lye remains in the finished soap.
✅Stick Blending
Using a hand blender to mix oils and lye solution faster until trace is reached.
✅Curing
After unmolding, soap needs time (usually 4–6 weeks) to dry out, become milder, and last longer.
✅ Superfatting
This means adding extra oils to your recipe so some oils are left unsaponified. It makes the soap more moisturizing and less harsh on the skin.
✅Lye Discount (or Lye Reduction)
This is another way of increasing the “extra oils” in soap, but instead of adding oils, you reduce the amount of lye in your recipe. It has a similar effect to superfatting—making the soap gentler—but it’s done by using less lye from the start.

Stay tuned for the next part

Yole's Craft

When making commercial laundry bars, I recommend hot process.
Faster curing time and all.
Makes producing in bulk super easy

Yole's Craft