HELP! I’m Going Crazy! Or Cosmetic ingredients revealed.

and it’s my own fault.

For decades, I’ve been trying to educate people about the benefits of handmade soap and body care. I’ve told this story before…but my first experience with handmade soap was an epiphany. Mostly because I’d made it myself.

When I began growing herbs, it quicky led to making salves, potpourri; the usual ’70′s hippy thing. Then, I needed a soap base for an herbal shampoo and found a recipe in Organic Gardening for castile soap.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it made enough soap for years. Oh yeah, the herbal shampoo quickly turned brown and smelled bad. Forgot to keep it in the fridge.

But with all this soap in shoeboxes under the bed, we began to use it everyday. And.. what a miracle! Handmade soap did not burn my skin… make it itchy…or dry…or anything….just nice and clean and moist.

So began my journey into soapmaking….then a day cream, a night cream, a lemony beeswax hand cream. I was off and running. As my experimental soaps piled up, I began giving them away and the rest, as they say, is herstory.

But, with each bar sold or given away, I had to explain why handmade soap was better. In 1979 most people were kind of afraid of it. They’d heard about ‘Grandma’s Lye Soap.’

Fast-forward to 2011…..we’ve gone beyond ‘natural’ and are heading for ‘organic.’ And people are becoming more educated about ingredients in their body care products. Maybe too far? O.K. Out with the parabens, the propylene glycol and so on. No tallow based soaps. No sodium lauryl sulphate. That was easy. We never used most of these things anyway.

But hey….now people are wanting NO preservatives…..and have read that certain essential oils are bad. That glycerine is bad. Strangely enough, I find that people who ask if we use sodium lauryl sulphate are surprised to find they are brushing their teeth with it. That there might be sodium hydroxide in their white bread.

There are countless websites touting some ingredients, while vilifying others. Many of these websites are in direct conflict with each other. Who to trust?

Well, us. Still handmake soap in small batches. Consult regularly with a natural cosmetic chemist on new ingredients to get through some of the marketing hype out there. Don’t use preservatives in many products…and those that need it….have minimal amounts of a naturally-based one. Only pure food-grade vegetable oils in our soaps and body care. Plus, we are so small, quick, and versatile that we can change ingredients on a dime…and often do. We don’t need to meet with the Board of Directors!

Also going back to some of the formulas I used 30 years ago…like our Baby Bottom Balm.

So, keep in touch for more old, new products…

Linda Quiring
Founder

About Our Author

Linda Quiring

After 30 years….I still do the fun, creative part, and invent new soaps and the other body care items. Bill has been selling for a long time now, along with Amber, our daughter-in-law who has been with Soapworks for about 15 years. Our son Gary makes soap each morning.