I went to the local Walmart the other day, looking for a natural soap. I was appalled at the ingredients listed on the labels I found, labels that said “Natural”! They have to be kidding — do they really think I want that on my family’s skin?!?
I wanted ingredients that I could understand, not long multi-syllable chemical words. Then a friend suggested that I try my local Farmers Market. She said there was a woman there who sold natural handmade soap. I decided to give her a try.
Wow! Am I glad I listened! I learned that true soap is made from oils (fats) mixed with sodium hydroxide, which I found out is lye. I also learned that lye is a natural ingredient made from wood ashes. Yes, by itself, lye can be caustic, but when lye is mixed with oils and water, it goes through a chemical reaction called “saponification”. (Really, this should be “soap-i-fi-ca-tion”!) The lye completely disappears. The product remaining becomes soap.
I found out that soap has been made this way for 100s of years. Mix oils (fats like lard or beef tallow) with water and lye, and you get soap. Today, we use more sophisticated oils like olive oil or coconut oil or castor oil, but the process is still the same. Mix oils with water and lye and you get soap.
So my trip to the Farmers Market was both enlightening and beneficial. The woman I talked to (to protect her privacy, we’ll call her Nancy) is the person who made the soap. Nancy explained the reasons for the different oils she used in her natural handmade soap, and she helped me to choose those soaps that would be best for my family’s skin needs (I have a child with eczema.)
The moral of the story is that yes, you can find natural handmade soap that is good for your skin. It just takes a little effort 🙂