Smith’s House of Soap doing it the old-fashioned way
Yankee Hill — Smith’s House of Soap is just that, a solar-powered house with a spring-fed well situated on 62 forested acres off Big Bend Road. It is also the place Donna Smith and her husband, Larry, call home.
“Our business is not located out of a shop; it’s in our home. Although, we usually just call it the kitchen,” said Smith.
Since 2004 Smith has been creating her “cold process” soaps using natural vegetable oils, herbs, spices, color pigments and essential and fragrance oils, filling her kitchen with the scent of lavender, vanilla rosemary, sandalwood and lemon grass.
“I try to be as natural as possible with my ingredients,” she said.
“Cold process is an old-fashioned method for making soap,” she explained. “It means that I don’t cook it on the stove. I do heat the oil and the lye and water mixture, then let them cool before mixing them.
“As soon as the two are combined they instantly become soap in its raw form. At this point I have to watch it very carefully and pour it into the boxes, adding more oil, before it seizes up,” explained Smith about her process.
“Cold process soap dries or ‘cures’ for a minimum of three weeks so that it hardens and any residue of lye dissipates leaving a gentle soap with all the goodness of its natural glycerin and other ingredients.”
Born in Chico, Smith, who lived and worked in Antioch as an adult, said her mother always cook, sewed and made “crafty things” for the family holidays so it was just natural for her to also learn how to craft. For years, Smith said she had had wanted to make soap and had purchased “how-to” books on the subject which sat on the shelf because she never had the time.
“Before my mom died, we were talking about the family history. Her family had migrated from Oklahoma to California and as the oldest she was expected to help out around the house. One of the things she did was to help my grandmother make soap using oak ashes and animal fats,” said Smith.
