subject: Homemade Soaps: Do Something Good For Your Skin [print this page] Many people have found problems with their store-bought and commercially produced soaps: they are filmy and thick and leave you feeling sticky. They are also made with harsh chemicals that are tough on your skin. But you can't just stop washing. Instead, try making homemade soap, which will be gentler on your skin. Making your own soap is fun, and the soap you produce will do away with many of the problems you find in commercial soap.
Commercial soaps are bad for your skin and the environment: rather than being soap, they are usually detergents, which are petroleum-based products. Because they aren't really soap, they have the tendency to dry your skin with their harsh chemicals. Also, when buying commercial soaps, it's often difficult or impossible to tell whether the soap was tested on animals, and whether such tests were conducted in an ethical manner.
There are major concerns over the testing of commercial soaps and whether the animals on which the soaps are being testing are being treated ethically. If you make homemade soap, you circumvent this testing process, and you can feel good about doing your part in making the world a better place. All the ingredients in homemade soaps, if chosen properly, are very environmentally friendly.
Homemade soaps can be tailored to your specific needs or tastes. Whatever the specific fragrance is your prefer, be it lilac or cinnamon, you can include it and produce a soap perfect for you. You can also exclude specific ingredients you know react negatively with your skin.
Making soap is also a great creative project, one that lets you use your imagination as you combine ingredients, fragrances, and colors. Homemade, handmade soaps also make great gifts, and it gives you a chance to learn how to make something which is essential to our lives, but which many people take for granted.
One of the easiest soap recipes uses lye, purified water, and coconut, olive, and grape seed oils. You want to make two mixtures: one of the lye and water, and the other of the three oils. The lye and water mixture will be hot and give off fumes, so set it outside to let it ventilate and cool to 110F. The oils, on the other hand, need to be heated to within 5 degrees of 110F , the closer you can get the oil temperature to the lye/water temperature, the better. Pour the lye mixture carefully into the oil mixture, then blend in a blender until it's about the consistency of a thin pudding. After this, pour it into molds.
As you can see from the above soap making recipe, soap is generally easy to make, although there are some risks involved, but these can be easily mitigated with some research and general care and common sense. The riskiest part of making soap is properly handling the lye. This is a very caustic substance and the skin and eyes should be protected while working with it.
Learning to make homemade soap can be a fun, creative process that offers many benefits for you and your skin. From being healthier for you, to being more environmentally friendly, this skill and art is sure to be a satisfying pursuit.
