Soap, Shampoo & lotion

Soap from the grocery store is not real soap. It is a detergent and it is nasty on the skin. I had huge patches of dry flaky skin, I needed to slather buckets of lotion just to be able to deal with the dry air here in Colorado. I had serious skin problems.

I researched soap and discovered that Ivory and such is actually a detergent and is no good for the skin. The chemicals just destroy the skin. And the antibacterial stuff is another thing they are convincing consumers they need and it is causing a lot skin problems.

I was buying a homemade soap at the Celebrations fair for awhile until the people who made stopped coming. I started buying Kiss My Face, which is a olive oil soap and my skin liked it.

I did some research and found out that pure, real soap that nourishes the skin, moisturizes, etc is actually made from oil and lye. It sounds contradictory, but it is true. I also found that people who make melt and pour soap are horrified at the thought of using lye!

I took a class and we were off! We took an entire day to make a batch of soap. We had vinegar ready for accidents. We had gloves, we had aprons, we were ready for anything. An hour later we had 5 lbs of soap and wondered what to do next. At this point we have in the house goat milk soap, almond oatmeal, plain, shea butter, and I have giving away a lot and sold some.

It amazes me that people will be horrified when I say I use lye. But they will buy the very expensive sponified oil $5 a bar soap at the health food store and not believe that sponified means it was make with lye!

Then we make shampoo bars and I will never buy shampoo again.

The hard part was the lotion. I could not find a lotion that did not break my skin out and I do need some for my hands and face in the winter here even with good soap. We found out that most lotions have some sort of corn product in them. So back to the classroom. We took a class for $75 and now we have lotion worth several hundred dollars to buy and it will last for years. If it ever goes bad in the fridge, I will make a much smaller batch!

People will ask for recipes. The recipes are all over the net. The tricky part is learning to do deal with the lye and not burn anything. But it also easier than a lot of sites make it seem. The best thing is to take a class and watch someone deal with it. And then you know how.