Seven bath soaks we keep coming back to

Simple small-batch recipes — including one with cow's milk and one with coconut milk for dairy-sensitive skin. We wrote all seven down into a free guide. No email required.

Two kraft pouches of Citrus Sunshine Soak standing on brown paper. Through the clear front you can see white salt flecked with orange calendula petals, topped with three dried citrus slices. — Citrus Sunshine, bagged up. The dried orange and lemon slices go in last so they sit right at the top.

We're learning to make things at Start Small Farms. Soap, candles, balms — and somewhere in there, bath soaks. They started as the easy one. No lye, no double boiler, nothing you can really ruin. Just salt and a few good smells.

Which is probably why they were the first thing we made enough of to start giving away.

They're mostly salt (that's the good news)

There's no secret to a bath soak. Epsom salt for the magnesium, a little baking soda, a spoon of arrowroot so nothing clumps, a few drops of essential oil, and whatever dried botanicals make it feel like a treat instead of a chore. That's the whole thing.

The fun is in the combinations. A lavender one for winding down at night. A bright citrus one for mornings. A magnesium-heavy one for the day after you overdid it in the garden. Same base, seven different moods.

The whole ingredient list fits on one small label, which tells you most of what you need to know about how simple these are.

Two of them have milk in them

Milk powder makes a soak feel silky — it's the one slightly fancy ingredient here. But milk isn't for every skin, so we split it: one recipe uses whole cow's milk, and one uses coconut milk instead, for anyone who's dairy-sensitive. Same softening feel, nobody left out.

That's the kind of thing you only think about once you start handing jars to real people with real skin. Which is sort of the whole point of making small batches — you find out what actually matters.

A pouch of Rose Coconut Milk Soak, label facing up, with a second pouch behind it showing salt flecked with dried rose petals and lavender buds. — The coconut milk version. Same softening feel as the cow's milk one, no dairy.

We keep ours in a mason jar

Early on we portioned everything into little bags, and it was fiddly and slow. Now we just make a batch, pour it in a mason jar, and scoop out half a cup when the bath's running. One batch is about four soaks, it looks nice on the shelf, and there's nothing to fuss with.

Here are all seven

We cleaned the recipes up into a little guide — seven blends, the amounts, the steps, and a note on each for the things worth knowing (citrus oils and sun don't mix; magnesium flakes hate humidity).

It's free. Take it.

Download the free guide (PDF) — A Bath Soak Guide for Small-Batch Makers. No email required.

If you make one, tell us what you put in yours. We're always looking for the next blend to keep coming back to.

— Kim