Soap Talk! Handmade Soap vs. Commercial Soap
Questions I Get About Soap
I have worked at the farmers market the past couple of weeks and it has been so fun! I have met many great people, and like the many reasons, they buy our soap. I am often asked questions about the soap-like, how it is made? Which is the best for dry skin? And in general, what do you recommend? These questions got me thinking about when you buy soap/body wash in a drug store, grocery store, or a commercial bath and body store, for the most part, there is no person there to answer your questions. You have information on the bottle, which tells you what the product is supposed to do, and the ingredients. You have the smell, in the end, the smell was always the deciding factor for me. I never paid attention to what the bottle told me it was going to do or the ingredients, just the smell.
I am asking you all to buy our soap online, and you can’t smell it! So what would make you buy it? Well, aside from you supporting my obsession with making artful, quality, good smelling soap:) I thought I would compare our handmade soap with what I know about store soap, so you would know why cold process soap is a better product. Not just because of smell, but because of the ingredients, and love that goes into each batch. So here it goes!
Handmade Soap
I make soap in small batches by hand. Each ingredient is chosen carefully to produce a quality, bubbly, skin loving, good smelling, leave your skin feeling clean bar of soap.
All soap ingredients are a combination of oils, butters, sodium hydroxide (lye) and distilled water. Each bar contains the oil/butter combinations: 1) Coconut Oil, Olive Oil , Sunflower Oil, Shea Butter, and Castor Oil
In handmade soap there is Glycerin! Glycerin is naturally found in cold process soap. Therefore, it is in our soap. Glycerin is great because it is a humectant, meaning it attracts and retains moisture.
I control the superfat! That means a percentage of oils, fats, and butters do not turn into soap. They are left in their natural state to nourish your skin.
My soap smells good. There is something for everyone here! You can find soap scented with essential oils, some scented with food or herbs, and some with fragrance oil. There is also fragrance free!
Finally, you are supporting an artisan and small business.
Commercial Soap
I am not sure how it is made and who is making it. I have never been to a soap factory.
Here is a list of some ingredients found in a commercial bar of soap: Sodium Lauroyl Isethionate, Steric Acid, Sodium Tallowate, Sodium Palmitate, Lauric Acid, Sodium Isethionate, Water, Sodium Stearate, Sodium Coocate, Sodium Palm Kernelate, Sodium Chloride, Tetrasodium EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, and it goes on! I can see some traditional soap ingredients, but there are quite a few listed there that I have no idea what they are. That list looks quite different from handmade.
I have read in several places that it is common practice for commercial soap to remove the glycerin from their soap. They can sell the glycerin, which is a valuable ingredient in the cosmetic world. In the end, it leaves the soap glycerinless, which is sad:(
Commercial soap can smell good.
There you have my comparison of our handmade soap with commercial soap. I think you should give the handmade soap a try. I am sure once you do, you will never go back to commercial soap! Now head on over to the shop and buy a bar:) If you don't see something you would like, I am making soap daily, the shop will be filling up!
Finally, I will leave you with a couple of batches I worked on last week.
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This is a Coconut Milk, Shea Butter Soap! This soap is fragrance-free!
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This is a Honey Soap:) I added honey to the soap right before I poured it into the mold. Honey is great because it will help the skin retain moisture.