In this episode, Chris breaks down how to stay clean in the woods, covering everything from DIY soap-making to clever ways to carry soap-impregnated paper. It’s a gritty, God-centered look at survival hygiene—and how cleansing the body and soul aren’t all that different.
In this episode of the Primitive Camping & Bushcraft Podcast, Chris breaks down practical, field-tested ways to stay clean in the woods. From simple DIY soap paper strips to pack-friendly sponge-based products, this talk covers everything you need to know to wash up when you’re off-grid. The episode also features a brief look at traditional soap-making concepts using lye and fat, and closes with a reflection on spiritual cleansing based on 1 John 1:9.
Real-world hygiene challenges when camping
Listener question from Clay: “How do you make soap from nothing in the wild?”
Making lightweight soap paper at home using liquid dish soap and regular paper
Testing and using “Skunky” 60-second shower sponges for bushcraft use
The benefits and downsides of different packaging methods (tins vs. Ziplocs)
Intro to soap-making: hardwood ash (lye) and rendered fat
Modern tools you can bring to reduce risk of infection and illness
The connection between physical cleanliness and spiritual cleansing
Supplies: Regular paper or newspaper, liquid dish soap
Steps:
Cut paper into squares or strips
Lay the paper flat and apply soap
Let it dry completely (air-dry or use a dehydrator)
Store dried sheets in a Ziploc bag
Tips:
Avoid paper towels—they don’t dry well
Ziplocs are better than tins for waterproofing and convenience
Add water when needed to activate soap
Compact sponges infused with soap
Lightweight and mess-free
Biodegradable and disposable
Use: Just add water, scrub, rinse
Ideal for hands, body, and general trail hygiene
Use hardwood ashes to make lye (not explained in detail)
Render animal fat to mix with lye
Caution: Real lye can be dangerous without proper ratios and handling
This method is for long-term wilderness setups, not short trips
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
You can make soap out of ash and fat. You can wash your hands with the best gear. But none of it changes what’s inside. Christ is the only one who can cleanse the heart. Just like hygiene takes work and preparation, so does spiritual cleanliness. Confession brings cleansing. Not because you earned it, but because He promised it.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to the Primitive
Camping and Bushcraft Podcast.
I'm your host, Chris Speir.
So here we're gonna
talk about gear, grit,
and the kind of stories
you only get around a fire.
It's all about learning, adapting,
and keeping your faith strong.
So whether you're a seasoned outdoorsman
or just looking to unplug and reconnect,
you're in the right place.
So pull up a chair by the
fire and let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
Well, welcome back to the podcast.
And today we're gonna be
talking all about hygiene
and we're talking about specifically soap
and even more specific than that,
how to make soap when
you're out into the woods.
And I'm coming to you
live, well, not really live.
I'm recording this on a
Friday to be played on a Monday,
but I'm coming to you
from underneath the tarp
what the heck, right
here in South Mississippi.
This episode is inspired
by one of my Facebook folks,
one of my community members there.
Clay, this is for you, dude.
And what we're going to talk about today
is just specifically making soap
or how to keep yourself
clean while you're out
into the woods.
Now he asked, how does
he make soap in the wild?
How does he make soap from nothing?
And we're gonna get
into that process here
in a little while, but
let's talk about some tools
that you can bring with
you to keep you sanitized
while you're out into the field,
while you're out camping
and to deepen the woods.
A lot of folks, and you
see this online all the time,
these little pieces of
paper that people cut
and they soak them in
some kind of dish liquid.
Pre-soaked paper towels or
napkins and a liquid soap.
And that works, it does.
I've used it before, I've done it before.
You know, you just want
to lay these things down
and you go to catnip.
And what I found is that if
you take like regular paper,
regular paper or newspaper
or something to that effect,
I have found myself
that those work better
than using like paper towels,
because the paper towels, they never
fully dry or whatever.
So you lay these dudes, you
cut them out the way you want,
you lay them down, you
put some soap on them
and then you just let them dry.
You just let them out the dry.
If you got a dehydrator, you
can put them in that dehydrator
and it'll take all
the moisture out of it.
And it'll leave the glycerin
and then all the soap
components and everything,
still pliable and everything in there.
And then you can just
add water and you got soap
and you could do it with
as many squares as you want.
You can make an entire
one gallon Ziploc bag
to take with you if
that's what it's gonna take.
And speaking of Ziploc, you just go ahead
and you store these
things in the Ziploc bags
or you make a 10.
But I find that a
Ziploc bag is less messy
and you can just throw it away.
Plus it's somewhat waterproof.
You could drop it in
the water if you have to
and still not get it all over the place.
If you drop the 10 full
of this stuff in the water,
you're gonna have a soapy mess.
So, soap sheets, like I found some,
well actually my wife found them.
They're called Skunk Works, Skunks.
Skunky, hold on, let me look and see
what they are actually called.
And these things are pretty cool.
I played around with them.
They're called Skunky.
They're 60 second shower.
They are a sponge
that is filled with soap.
And basically what you
do is you get them wet.
You lather up with them and
the sponge will help you scrub
and get the dirt and the nasty off.
And then it's disposable
and it's biodegradable.
And so them things
are pretty doggone cool.
And I haven't used them in the woods yet.
I just recently brought
them home a couple of weeks ago
but I've tried a couple of them.
The good benefits to these is that
they're extremely lightweight.
They're very compact.
They're mess free.
And one of the sponges
is enough to do your hands
and your body.
And then, you know, it's pretty cool.
You know, what you could
do with a soap in the woods.
You always want to be able
to keep your hands clean.
Bacteria and, you know,
just germs and nasties always.
They always want to try
to get you sick, you know.
And people will probably
think you're kind of silly
for saying it that
way, but that's the case.
And you know, these bacteria and stuff,
their whole goal in life
and the whole reason
they live is to reproduce.
And that reproduction is
what causes you to get sick.
So when you get out into the woods,
there's a couple of
other things that I have used
and I have found that
fragrance free baby wipes,
those are their
cheapest option, you know.
I've taken those into the
woods with me for years.
I've never had a problem with it.
And I think that those all around
are a very good source of being clean.
You could take yourself a little wet bath
or whatever at night and it has,
I don't really know
what they got on them.
I know they disinfect your
hands and all that garbage,
but they actually leave you clean
and it's non-toxic if
you touch your mouth
or anything like that.
So another option that people use is,
you can get you a little bottle
like a hand sanitizer bottle.
You can fill it up with
some liquid dish soap.
I've done that several times.
I've taken different size
containers full of soap.
I've actually taken a small
dish soap container with me,
you know, the little
squirt bottle things.
And I've used that all the time.
I keep, whenever I have my boat
and I'm going out
fishing or camping in my boat,
I keep a bottle of soap in my boat
because when you're catching catfish
and you get that stuff on, when you're catching catfish
and you get that stuff on you,
you know, that slum,
that dawn will get that stuff right off
or the fake dawn, the ultra
or the Ajax or Palm olive,
whichever you like,
whatever brand you want,
whatever smells best to
you, that actually works.
But there's another
thing is that you can,
you can take a cheese grater and you
could take a bar of soap
and you can grate it
down into a little shavings.
And those little shavings you can use
to just put some on
your hands under the water
and you got soap and it
doesn't have to be a liquid
kind of a soap product.
It can be a bar.
You can bring the whole bar with you.
It don't weigh too much, you know,
and we're talking about
primitive camping here.
We're not talking
about ultra light hiking.
And so sometimes it's
worth bringing a little extra
just for the convenience.
And, you know, especially
when you're primitive camping,
we're not talking about survival
bushcraft, you know,
we're blending in a
little bit of bushcraft
with our primitive camping.
So, you know, the soap
shavings we just discussed,
the shavings are gonna
dissolve a lot faster
than an entire block, you know,
if you carry it a whole bar of soap
and the shavings will
rub down and dissolve
into what you need it.
So you can get you some small shavings
that'll look like cheese.
Just do not put that
over whatever you're cooking
whenever you're eating.
(laughs) So you could do the no rinse options.
And that's what I was
talking about with the baby wipes.
You know, your
vinegar, alcohol-based wipes,
ash and water and a pinch.
I've never used the vinegar-based wipes.
I have used the alcohol-based wipes.
I've used those,
they're like sanitizer towels.
And they work pretty good.
One of the things that I use,
like I just mentioned
just a few minutes ago,
the one thing that I
use the most would be
the actual baby wipes.
And those things are amazing.
They get your hands clean.
They're easily disposable.
You can burn them or you
can haul them out with you.
You know, they're gonna degrade.
You don't leave them
in the woods, you know,
but they will burn down
to absolutely zero nothing.
And then you can haul them
out of the woods with you.
But now we're gonna move
over to the meat of the story.
We're gonna move over to
actually making our soap
in the wild.
And this is gonna be a
true primitive method.
Now there are different
ways that you could use the,
what is it, ginger soap?
I've used fruits off
of a ginger, whatever.
I think it's called ginger soap.
I've seen it before.
And then people walk up to
it and they'll squeeze it.
And it's got the little soapy
and they use it just
like soap and wash it off.
Then you got the other stuff like yucca.
You can use yucca if you have it.
We don't have that plenty of
flea here in South Mississippi.
So we're not gonna talk about it and
mention it very well.
But one thing that you wanna do,
if you're gonna decide to
make your own soap in the woods
or out when you're
camping or hunting or whatever,
is you're gonna burn
some hardwood, oak, hickory,
some type of hardwood.
And then you're gonna get that ash.
You're gonna collect the
pure white ash from that.
And that's ASH ash.
I know I had the
southern draw on some people
will be like, "He said, hee-haw."
(laughs)
You know, you're gonna pack the ash
into some kind of container.
Now, a bucket with a hole in it
and it's gonna be good.
A water bottle or an
old plastic water jug,
something like that
with the bottom cut off
with the hole in the lid will work great.
And you're gonna pack your ASH in there
and then you're gonna
pour water through it
and then you're gonna collect it.
And it's, you're gonna
pour your water through there
and then when the water comes out,
you're gonna be making
what's called lye, L-Y-E.
And you can feel if it's kind of,
if you got a cut on
your hand and it stings
or if it's kind of slippery feeling,
you know, that's what you want.
That's when you know that your lye
is gonna be strong
enough to actually do this.
Now, part two of making
your soap is going to,
you're gonna have to have some fat
and you're gonna have to
bring some fat with you
or you're gonna have
to dispatch an animal
where you can get the fat from it.
And if you're long-term
and you're out like survival,
like let's say you're on a lawn
or you're, you know,
something to that effect
and you have to dispatch a
big old hog or, you know,
a deer and, you know,
something with a lot of fat in it,
beaver, whatever, you're
gonna use that clean animal fat
and then you're gonna
chop that fat down real nice,
real small, real fine.
Then you're gonna slowly,
you don't wanna cook it fast,
you wanna slowly let it
render over a warm fire.
You don't want it to
be too hot, you know,
you just want that
fat to turn into grease.
You wanna render it down.
Then you're gonna
strain out all your solids
and you're gonna save that liquid grease.
Now, once you get to this point,
you're going to slowly add
the lye water to your fat
while your fat's
still liquidy, still warm
and you're gonna start, start keeping,
you're gonna continue to
stir that over low heat
until it thickens.
And once it thickens,
it's called tracing,
you're going to, whenever you stir,
you can see where your spoon went and
that's called tracing.
And pour what you just stirred up,
pour it into some kind of mold.
You know, I've read where people will cut
like molds out of logs,
they'll do like little bars,
but I mean, realistically,
you're gonna put it in
some kind of container
and then you'll let it harden
and then you'll break it up.
You know, but pour it
into some kind of mold.
You wanna either line it
with bark or green leaves
or something to the effect,
that way you can get it back out.
Now, all you do is you
let this stuff harden
and it's gonna probably
take about a day or two,
you know, 24 to 48
hours for it to harden.
And then it typically
takes about two to six weeks
for all your soap to
actually yield the best results.
Suponification is what they call it,
I believe that's the
correct way to pronounce it.
So it goes through a
chemical process there.
And so it's gonna be
about two to six weeks.
And so, you know,
generally the average there,
I'm one that always takes the average.
If it says two to six,
I'm gonna take the four.
Now, you know, I'm gonna go that way.
And that is simple enough.
And I thought it was gonna
take me a little bit longer
to explain it.
But, you know, once you
do that, you let it sit
and you let it cure
for a couple of weeks.
It's not something, you know,
you're going to have right away.
So you're not gonna, I mean,
you could probably use some of that
before it hardens up as a soap.
It's not really gonna lather up too well.
I mean, most of these kinds of soaps
don't lather up very well
anyway, but I mean, they will.
But,
so,
I just, I think that bringing your soap
is gonna be more of the viable option.
We don't want to wait six weeks
because most of us are
out there camping for,
you know, for days, not weeks.
And you don't want to
spend your whole time.
If you're out there and you know
you're gonna be months at a time
or you're in a secluded place
to where you're gonna be
there for the whole season,
seasons at a time,
then making your soap is a viable option.
If you're wanting to make soap at home,
then, I mean, it's the same thing.
You just pour your soap
into some kind of container.
You can make it, do it any way you want.
You can add essential oils to it.
You can add fragrances to it.
You can do whatever you want.
It's made the same way.
Soap is made the same
way all over the world
and it's the same concept.
But in the woods, soap isn't just luxury.
It's not really, I
wouldn't classify it really
for sanitation purposes, you know?
It's for survival
purposes, it's sanitation.
Because if you can't clean your hands
and get all the nasty and the germs off,
eventually you're gonna get sick.
So you don't wanna
wait until things get bad
in order to clean up.
You go ahead and prep ahead.
You pack some soap paper.
You stash some dry wipes.
Maybe even shave a
bar down before the trip
because you know that
staying clean out there
keeps you healthy, keeps you
ready, and keeps you sharp.
And 1 John 1, 9, verse
one, chapter one, verse nine,
says, "If we confess
our sins, he is faithful
"and just to forgive us our sins
"and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness."
So that verse, it
doesn't say God might forgive.
It says he is faithful.
That means you don't have to wonder
if he'll show up with grace.
You just have to show up with honesty
and confess what you've
done, confess your sins,
make a soap in the
wild that it ain't pretty.
It takes ashes.
Ash is what's left over after a fire.
And it takes fat.
And the part of the animal
most folks throw away anyway.
It takes time.
It takes heat.
And you gotta stir this stuff together.
Honestly, that sounds familiar, don't it?
You know, God often does
his best cleansing work
after the fire's already burned through,
after your pride is all gone,
and when you got
nothing left but what's real.
And just like soap, you know, we can,
soap comes from the scraps and the soot,
if you think about it.
And just like that soap,
real purity comes after confessions.
Really, it comes after confession.
When you hand God the mess and say,
here it is, and I'm done
pretending, here it is.
Yeah, sometimes it stings.
Sometimes you don't
wanna say what you gotta say.
Sometimes it gets uncomfortable.
But that's how real cleaning works.
Scrubbing out the dirt so
something new can start.
So something new can
start from the beginning.
So this way, whether you're
wiping now with soap paper,
you're cooking up lye or grease,
or just rinsing your hands
with creek water, remember,
clean hands are good, but a
clean heart is even better.
So, I mean, I know
this one wasn't very long,
and it's not that there's a set time
limit on these things,
but, you know, 20 minutes,
something to that effect,
is a great conversation, you know?
And I really do appreciate
each and every one of you
that have been reaching out to me
over the past couple of weeks,
and talking to me about the podcast,
and telling me how much you learned.
I really appreciate it
because I'm learning a lot too.
And, you know, having to do
some research for these podcasts
on top of the stuff that
I've already written about
in the book, or talked about on forums,
and, you know, stuff like that,
in the Primitive Camp and the
Bushcraft group on Facebook,
I still have to do my research,
and I still have to make sure
I know what I'm talking about.
So, I put this stuff together, and I
start researching it,
and looking it up, and reading it,
and making sure that
you guys can understand
what it is I'm trying to say.
I'm learning stuff too.
I learn stuff every day.
If you're not learning
something every day, then,
I guess you've reached the pinnacle.
You don't have to learn anything anymore,
you're unteachable.
(laughs) So, I'm gonna sign off on this one.
I thank you guys so
much for sitting around
a fire with me today, and right out here
at Camp What the Heck,
and it is 93 degrees today
underneath this tarp.
And I got one little
tree providing some shade
over the tarp, but the
rest of the tarp is hot.
And so, it is burning up out here in
South Mississippi today,
but the good thing is the
humidity is only about 70%,
so it's kinda cool, it's
not as humid as normal.
Thanks for sitting
around the fire with me today.
If this episode gave you
something to think about,
if it helped you feel a
little bit more prepared,
or it even stirred your faith a tiny bit,
go ahead and share it with someone else
who might need it as well.
We don't go camping
to run away from life.
We come out here to
slow down and to recharge.
So, grab another log,
throw it on the fire,
and remember this, in all
your ways, acknowledge him.
And he will direct your path.
I'll see you next time.
God bless you.