The Benefits of Handmade Soap

Every so often, someone asks us – “What got you into this?”  They refer to making our own personal care products, usually soap.  Well, here’s the answer.   A close friend gave us a bar of handmade soap in a gift basket many years ago for the holidays.  It was beautiful and it smelled wonderfully, but it was a bar of soap.  We really didn’t expect it to make such an impression when we actually used it, but…wow.  We must not have ever tried a bar of actual handmade natural soap before, because if we had, we’d have remembered it.

So we made it a mission to figure out how this could be.  How could this be so different from the soap I’d been using all my life?  A quick internet search later, and I realized an important fact.  Mostly all (if not all) of what we had been using wasn’t actually soap at all.  It was detergent.

So What?

What’s the big deal?  Are there benefits of handmade soap?  Is there a difference? Turns out there is.  In the traditional soap making process, (cold process, as it’s usually referred to) the maker uses lye to “saponify” oils into soap.  The lye is used up in the process, and what remains is soap…and glycerin.  Glycerin is a humectant.  It attracts moisture to the skin, and helps keep it there.  Maybe this is why it felt so different?  Glycerin is expensive, and most commercial operations remove it from their bars to be sold to other industries (cosmetic, pharmaceutical, etc.).

In addition to removing the glycerin from their bars, the commercial industry adds a long list of ingredients, which fortunately for us, aren’t necessary.  Google some of these ingredients, and you’ll find terms like “hormone disruption,” “possible carcinogen,” among other things.  Some of these compounds can be absorbed through the skin into the body.  Probably not the best thing for you.

So we decided to try to make our own.  We bought some supplies, made some molds and got to work.  A couple of months later we had some soap to use, and share with friends and family.  We loved it, but the feedback we got was intense.  “You need to keep making this, and maybe sell some?” was a common response.  I remember laughing, thinking it was a little silly, but went ahead and created a listing on Etsy.  We sold some, and word got around.  Once folks got their hands on it, it became challenging to keep up!

The products we have been making and using for years now, and have listed in our shop, Bowered and Bare, are our solution to the problems necessarily created by today’s “need” for mass production, profit protection and “efficiency” along with the preservation required to keep those mass produced commercial products shelf stable.

Our extremely small scale production allows us to leave out all of the unnecessary unnatural ingredients that large companies have to use. None of our soaps contain any artificial colorants or preservatives. And you know what we put down the drain? You know what chemicals we add to our neighborhood water table? Absolutely nothing. We even compost the cardboard boxes our raw ingredients come in, and we reuse the packing material.

If you have questions about anything we make, would like any additional information or a custom order, please do not hesitate to contact us.