Lydia wrote:When I was a child, my grandmothers made soap from pig fat and fireplace ashes,i.e lye soap. They used it to clean everything, including us.
It didn't lather, you just scrubbed. I don't recall that it stung or anything and they used to fragrance it with things like lavender.
Wow! I haven't thought about that in decades!BTW, its not that they couldn't afford store bought soap... they were people who had lived through great want and were loathe to waste anything.
Now I'm getting teary-eyed...I loved them both so much. It's funny how I feel like a little girl again when I remember them.
Do you remember the people who would come around to the residences and collect items? Things did not go to waste. There was not as much waste in land fills either because we did not have all those disposable things like facial tissues, diapers, and paper towels. Even toilet paper is a modern luxury. Many outhouses used rolls of news print instead of toilet paper. In addition, we had to recycle our bath towels to make wash cloths, kitchen and garage towels by necessity. In fact, we used to use the phrase "wash rags" instead of the modern phrase "wash cloths."
(1) The soap factory workers who collected our bottles of bacon and pork fat in order to make soap products.
(2) The glass collectors who collected all of our old glass bottles including wine bottles and olive oil bottles, but we reused our jam jars, only needing to purchase lids for the next canning season. People would take these old wine bottles and put twine on them. Others would melt this glass and make figurines.
(3) The milk delivery trucks who collected the milk bottles we put on the door steps, and in return gave us new glass bottles of milk in a wire container. Of course, we paid him for his deliveries, but the price of milk was inexpensive. Now dairies need to charge more due to interference from federal and state dairy inspection bureaus, the unnecessary homogenization treatments, unnatural hormones added to milk, etc.
(4) The paper collectors, who collected our newspapers and other papers to recycle into paper products.
(5) The rag collectors looking for cotton, linen and wool to process into rag rugs, coat linings and paper, but my mom did cut up our old shirts and underwear to make rags.
(6) The scroungers and thrift stores who came to pick up any old furniture that we left out at the curb for them to pick up.
p.s. There is a butcher shop down the road from us (about ten minutes away by car), that processes chickens, turkeys, deer, etc. Some of these are from people who hunt, but they do process their own meat for sale. Several times a week, if not daily, there is a truck that comes to pick up the fat renderings to make soap.
