Why Do I Bother?

As an artisan soapmaker, every once in a while someone will ask me why I bother to make soap when the grocery aisles are full of it.  It's a good question, and it deserves a good answer.  Why do I bother?

As a family, we have the usual assortment of skin problems...one family member as eczema, one rosacea, and so on.  Over the years we've purchased and used just about every product out there, and they all caused or exacerbated the "dry itchies."  We have three grown sons, and when our granddaughters came along, the dangers of parabens had just hit the news.  Alarmed, we began to really study exactly what was in the stuff we were using.  The more we read, the more confused we became.  "All chemicals are bad!" said one, and "All chemicals are good!" said another.  Common sense suggested to us that since the skin is the largest organ in the body, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to expose it to chemicals and detergents on a daily basis.  We needed to search out some alternatives.

As we looked for new products, we turned to ones with the fewest ingredients; ingredients with names we could recognize and pronounce.  At our local health food store, we purchased a bar of "true" soap...basic saponified oils, rather pricey compared to that grocery aisle.  Didn't think much about it, until a couple of weeks later when it dawned on me that none of us had complained of the "dry itchies" in a number of days!  Hmmmmm....maybe we were on to something.  I continued to purchase and use the good old plain "healthy" soap, and we continued to improve.  My curiosity began to build.  How exactly did they make this soap?  I pictured the old iron pot over an open fire in the yard and leaching out lye from wood ashes.  I read every book on soapmaking I could find, and was pleasantly surprised to discover soapmaking had made it into the 21st century.  After a couple of months of research and study, I began to feel the pressing need to try this soapmaking thing myself!  The rest, as they say, is history.  I found my inner science geek and became addicted to soapmaking in short order.  So much to try; so much to learn.  If I used olive oil, for example, would the soap be milder?  What about coconut oil; drying?  Necessary for big bubbles?  I learned the properties of different oils and butters, how to handle what potentially could be a danger -- sodium hydroxide (lye).  How to make the bar of soap nice and hard without sacrificing mildness and lathering qualities.  Then there were the fragrances...oh!  The fragrances!  And the best discovery was that I could produce wonderful soap for a lot less than we had been spending purchasing it.  We soon had literally hundreds of bars of soap lined up on the shelves.  Family and friends were supplied with soap for the next several years, yet I could not stop making soap.  Guess there was only one thing to do....OPEN A BUSINESS!!  Share this wonderful discovery with others!  Voila....Woodhaven Soaps was born.

Why handcrafted soap?  Well, most of the so-called soaps in the grocery aren't soaps at all.  They're detergents "disguised" as soap.  True soap, saponified vegetable oils and rich vegetable butters, contains somewhere around 25% glycerin, a natural byproduct of saponification and a humectant, drawing moisture to the skin.  Commercial producers take that stuff OUT of soap and sell it.  They can make a lot of money selling glycerin.  Our soaps are also superfatted, meaning we use less lye than necessary to make our soaps, leaving some of the skin-friendly oils and butters free in the soap to prevent it from being drying. 

Because our soaps are handmade by little-ole me, we have complete control over what goes into them.  We search out sustainable and ethically-sourced oils, make sure none are chemically processed, and formulate different soaps to serve different purposes.  Camping?  We make a soap for campers...one which hopefully won't attract the little beasties.  Shaving soap, shampoo bars, pet soap, baby soap....the list can be virtually endless!  Hundreds and hundreds of fragrances available to us.  We can and do choose to use phthalate-free fragrances (phthalates---subject of a future blog!).

We're a small operation.  We don't have a big factory producing waste.  As a matter of fact, we produce virtually no waste and no pollution.

Why use handcrafted artisan-made soaps when the grocery aisles are full of them?  Our question is...why would you use a synthetic detergent "soap" when you can get wonderful, skin loving REAL soap at an affordable price?  Let's see....no waste, no pollution, no preservatives, no phthalates, mild and kind to the skin, lathers like crazy, any fragrance we want, affordable...not to mention the wonderful feeling we get when a customer tells us they no longer stay awake nights scratching....guess that's why I bother!