I’ve let go of liquid soaps in the last few years and opted to used classic solid soaps for my hygiene but between trendy scents or seasonal supply I haven’t been able to find a soap I can stay with.
This led me to consider making my own soap but is it worth it?
Artisanal soaps are expensive and hard to find in my country and mostly pass the notion they are targetting luxury customers and not making something for everyone to use and enjoy and trying to make an effort to create change.
I am aware initial costs have to be considered and that there is a learning to it.
Cool stuff.
Sidebar:
I remember reading about soaps at one time, and there was this trend on websites to demonize sodium lauryl sulfate, the key chemical ingredient in soap, in order to sell their own soap.
There was complaint that always bothered me: exposure to sodium lauryl sulfate was used as a measure of skin irritability. This, they showed was an example of how HARSH SLS was.
I hated that, and kept thinking, maybe SLS is the measure because it’s, cheap, easy to produce, and has a mild effect that ramps up slowly for more precise measurement.
And that I saw Fight Club and saw what lye actually does to skin and started wondered what the hell these people thought soap actually DOES to get you clean if they were so worried about “harsh chemicals.”
The lye reacts with the fat to chemically change into soap. The ratio of fat to lye in the recipe should ensure that all of the lye chemically reacts, leaving none left in the final product.
And this is what soap actually does:
One end of the soap molecule loves water, the other end hates water. Tons of the soap molecules end up sticking to dirts and oils, completely surrounding them and pulling them away into the water.
Oh, yes, I’m getting chemistry flashbacks, now.
One of the ends of the soap is hydrophilic and the other is hydrophobic, so the hydrophobic end buries itself into the grease.
?
Yep
SLS gives some people (my wife) canker sores when used in tooth paste. No one told us this, and a dentist just prescribed a herpes medicine. I found out by chance on line and switched tooth paste to one of the few I could find without SLS. No more canker sores. The kicker? The only thing SLS does is make the tooth paste a little foamy. Absolutely worthless ingredient that I’ve held a grudge against for 15 years.
Lye will NOT do that to your skin. I buy in it bulk (99% pure sodium hydroxide) for various cleaning/restoring projects and for making soap. I’ve stuck in hand in a saturated bucket. You’ll get instantly slimy as the lye converts your skin oils to soap, and you WILL find tiny cuts you didn’t know were there, but it’s not going to instantly burn through your flesh.
Anyway, there’s no lye in the final soap product, no lie! Soap making is a chemical, not a physical, reaction.
An imaginary character made up by another imaginary character lied to me!