Frequent washing can be pretty hard on your hands. Your skin can feel dry and cracked. And the more you wash, the worse it gets. Did you know that commercial soap sold in stores is often made with chemicals, hardeners and synthetic lathering agents? Some of these ingredients can be drying and irritating to the skin. Handmade soaps are created with oils, liquid and lye and do not contain any of these harsh ingredients.
Although lye is used to make soap, there is no lye in soap once it has completed the process of saponification. Saponification is the natural chemical reaction created by combining the oils or fats with lye and water or milks.
Handmade soap is soap in its pure and true form. Soap, unlike alcohol, sanitises and works to break down the layer of fat that protects the germ molecules. Without that layer of fat, the molecule breaks down and the bug is destroyed. It gently cleanses away the excess oils and bacteria but without stripping away any of your skin’s natural oils.
Handmade soap also contains glycerine, which attracts moisture from the air to the skin. It is produced naturally in the soap making process. This is one of the things that makes handmade soap so awesome.
A lot of commercially made soaps remove the glycerine from the soap. The glycerine is then sold to be used in a wide variety of bath and beauty products. The glycerine is one of the things that makes handmade soap so loving on the skin. Without the glycerine content, shop bought soaps can leave your skin feeling dry. Adding to that, the use of alcoholic sanitisers that many of us are using today, our skin is truly suffering. With shop bought soap, because of the lack of glycerine that locks in the moisture, you are forced to buy two products, soap and hand lotion. Handmade soap will do both jobs.
Many of my handmade soaps contain extra butters and other oils to increase the moisturising effect of the soap and some even contain natural exfoliants to remove dead skin cells.
I do recommend that you take extra care with your handmade soap. If you leave handmade soap in water, it tends to dissolve quickly due to the soap and glycerine molecules that wash clean with water. Handmade soap will last longer if stored on a draining soap dish and left to air dry.
Try some Wombat Lagoon today and feel the difference.
Photo compiled by zifbox.