Mormon family cleans up with pioneer soap

PLEASANT GROVE — When the children in Trent and Michelle Snyder's family want some extra cash, they always ask mom if there's soap to make.

When there's a batch ready, they know they can get paid for helping get the homemade bars of soap ready for sale.

It works for them, and mom gets some help with the family business from her seven children.

Some stamp the bars with mallets that leave an acorn image. Others shave the corners with potato peelers. Several help sell the soap at various venues. One child, 10-year-old Willow, is a star soap saleswoman, telling customers which is the most popular and which she thinks will work best for them.

"It really is a family business," Michelle Snyder said. "Everybody helps."

Acorn & Ivy Soap Company was created after Snyder volunteered to teach the Young Women in her LDS ward how to make soap like the pioneers.

"As youth leaders for the stake trek, we were trying to think of ways to teach the youth about pioneer living, the chores they did. Everyone jumped in, offering to do this or that, and by the time it came to me, I blurted out, 'I'll teach them to make soap.' I don't know why I said that."

Snyder didn't have a clue about making soap but figured she could find out.

She searched the Internet and the library. She found some soap-making mentors.

She started with a simple recipe using lard, lye and water. Her rudimentary samples were made in ice-cube trays. She realized there was more to learn and started paying attention to soap.

She learned about weighing and measuring so the right amount of lye was mixed with the proper amount of oil. She found what works to make the bars more creamy, experimenting with various oils, including olive oil, palm oil and coconut oil. Her father made her some molds.

She found out about curing and hardening.

Now, four years later, she usually has a batch simmering in the crockpot. (She has one crockpot dedicated to soap.)

She buys lye in bulk, and her soap-making has evolved to where she's making and cutting 30 bars a night in 79 different varieties, colors and scents. She makes liquid soaps, lotions and bath fizzies, as well.

Her Atomic Bomb bath fizzies — colorful soap products that dissolve and bubble in the bathtub — are a big seller.