How to Buy Soap on the Internet

New Soap

There are a lot of different approaches to buying soap sight unseen. Or rather, smell unsmelled or feel unfelt. You get the point. In some ways, it is no different than buying soap in a store, except for the overpowering odor of way too much perfume isn't present.

Choosing a soap depends on what you want your soap to do.

• If all you want is a bar of soap that gets you clean, I make that soap.

• If you want to get clean and smell good, I make that soap, too.

• If you want to get clean, smell good, and enjoy moisturized skin, well, I make that soap in every batch.

There are as many ways to approach soapmaking as there are reasons to buy soap.

There's kitchen sink soap where the maker puts as many butters and oils as they can in the recipe, along with multiple additives seemingly at random and more fragrance oil than is really necessary.

There's the synthetic soap where all the ingredients are largely unpronounceable, and have questionable pedigrees, along with more fragrance than you can tolerate in a closed room.

Then there's the intentional way. Each oil and butter is chosen for a specific reason and I use the least number of them to achieve my goals for the batch.

For example, I use Palm Oil and Kokum Butter for hardness and longevity, coconut oil and castor oil for bubbly lather, and olive oil to balance the harshness of the coconut oil with a gentle conditioning quality to avoid leaving your skin dry and itchy. Soap contains lye (sodium hydroxide) because that's how fat becomes soap. Fatty acids + Strong Base = Salt. Yes, soap is a salt

I add sugar or sorbitol to increase the lather, sodium lactate from milk processing to add hardness, Ascorbic and Citric acid to cut down on soap scum in hard water environments and help preserve the soap. I also add Vitamin E as a preservative. Finally, I add cetyl alcohol derived from palm and coconut oil to add hardness and slipperiness.

Because I use a hot process, I can add extra oils at the end of the cooking process to add conditioning features that do not get converted to soap. If my goal is a gentle soap for mature skin, I'll add argan oil, rosehip oil, and jojoba oil. I chose these based on research such as this NIH article.

Lastly, I don't use sythetic fragrances in my soap. They are either scent-free, or they have blends of pure essential oils, or one essential oil such as Patchouli or Frankincense.

If you've read this far, and you liked what you read, then the best way to buy soap on the internet is to click the 'Shop' link above and pick a soap that sounds interesting or luxurious, or just functional.

Thanks for reading.

Lee