Which is better – Handmade or Natural Soap or Commercial Soap?

Answer from different people may be different. But in short answer is yes. Soap industries started from Natural Soap and started using more chemical to fulfill the market demand. Here, you can read the details how and why handmade or natural soaps are good. Even you can buy handmade/natural soaps from E-Chauraha.Com.

So, what’s difference between soaps. Natural Soap, Chemical free soap, handmade soap !!!!! Soap is Soap. Isn’t it.

Before we proceed, let’s take a look of Soap’s history:

An excavation of ancient Babylon revealed evidence that Babylonians were making soap around 2800 B.C. Babylonians were the first one to master the art of soap making. They made soap from fats boiled with ashes. Soap was used in cleaning wool and cotton used in textile manufacture and was used medicinally for at least 5000 years.

The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) reveals that the ancient Egyptians mixed animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to produce a soap-like substance.

According the Pliny the Elder, the Phoenicians used goat’s tallow and wood ashes to create soap in 600BC. Early Romans made soaps in the first century A.D. from urine and soap was widely known in the Roman Empire

The Celts made their soap from animal fat and plant ashes and they named the product saipo, from which the word soap is derived.

Soap History

The first concrete evidence we have of soap-like substance is dated around 2800 BC., the first soap makers were Babylonians, Mesopotamians, Egyptians, as well as the ancient Greeks and Romans. All of them made soap by mixing fat, oils and salts. Soap wasn’t made and use for bathing and personal hygiene but was rather produced for cleaning cooking utensils or goods or was used for medicine purposes.

Soap Facts

Soap is a product for cleaning made from natural ingredients that may include both plant and animal products, including items as: animal fat, such as tallow or vegetable oil, such as castor, olive, or coconut oil. Soap supposedly got its name from Mount Sapo in Rome. The word sapo, Latin for soap, first appeared in Pliny the Elder’s Historia Naturalis. The first soap was made by Babylonians around 2800 B.C. The early references to soap making were for the use of soap in the textile industry and medicinally.

Soap Making

Soap making history goes back many thousands years. The most basic supplies for soap making were those taken from animal and nature; many people made soap by mixing animal fats with lye. Today, soap is produce from fats and an alkali. The cold process method is the most popular soap making process today, while some soap makers use the historical hot process.

Detergent History and Facts

Did you ever wonder when the first detergent is made? How detergents are made? What are famous brands of detergents? Read about this useful cleaning substance that is used in cleaning dishes, laundry and other surfaces.

What is Bad About Commercial Soap?

Have you ever heard about Synthetic Detergents, you can call it Commercial Soap (not all, but majority)

Detergents emerged in Germany in 1916, and during WWII, the commercial soap we know today came into being. Detergents are synthetic cleansers (often petroleum-based) that extract the natural oils your body requires from your skin for healthy skin and can contribute to skin disorders and rashes.

Commercial Soaps Have more than just Soap in them.

Even if you find a real soap bar in the supermarket, maybe it’s not all that nice for you. Many commercial soaps contain dyes, colorants, fragrances, lathering agents, preservatives, and other “things” that we cannot pronounce based on chemicals. These additives will wreak havoc and pollute our drinking water on our delicate skin and hair.

Some commercial “soaps”, toothpaste, and body washes also have some commercial “soaps”

Commercial Soap Lacks Glycerine.

You wouldn’t think they would spend time extracting from it with all the effort commercial soap manufacturers put into adding ‘things’ to their product… but they do. Glycerin (that’s the chemical reaction we call soap making) is a naturally occurring byproduct of the saponification process.  Glycerine is a moisturizer that pulls moisture from the air into your skin, leaving the skin soft and moisturized.

Commercial soap manufacturers typically remove the glycerin from their soap, and sell it separately, or use it in a second product—moisturizer. Yup, they take one good bar of soap, extract the moisturizer, and then sell it to us as a second product (both of which may contain harmful chemicals).

But Now we have Better alternatives: Handmade and Chemical Free Soaps

What is Handmade Soap?

Handmade Soaps are made of Natural ingredients which are good for you skin and have no side effect. These ingredients contains vitamins, nutrients which are essentials for the healthy and glowing skin and don’t have any reaction to sensitive skins types.

In order to make soap, fats and lye are combined in process of saponification. You can take lye, some fat (animal or vegetable, whichever suits you and available), heat it up and. This is how to make soap. To make it more flavored and skin friendly, you can add some move natural ingredients in to it.

Wait, is Lye natural?

Some people are afraid and scared of soap made with lye, but if lye wasn’t used you couldn’t make soap (you would just have a puddle of oils). And, there’s no lye left over after the saponification process—it’s been turned into soap!

Lye is a liquid obtained by leaching ashes, and that’s it. Ma and Laura made it by running water over ashes from the fire pit, and many people still do today. These days, lye is purchased by its chemical names: sodium hydroxide (NaOH) used for making hard soap, or potassium hydroxide (KOH) which is used for making liquid soaps.

What Goes Into Handmade Soap?

The variety achieved from different oils, textures, shapes, sizes, smells, and more is one of the great things about handmade soaps—no two bars are ever the same as they are works of art in themselves. But beauty aside, handmade soap should be crafted with care.

The main reason why soap is better for you than commercial detergents is based on the ingredients. If you make a handmade bar of soap and then add chemicals to it, you’re no better off than the stuff you can buy at the grocery store. However, if you handcraft soap with all-natural ingredients (and skip the chemical color and fragrance part) you will have a wonderfully good for your skin bar of soap.

Each of the ingredients used in our soaps is chosen based on their effect on the final bar (moisturizing, exfoliant, odor removing, lathering, etc.).

Isn’t all handmade soap natural?

Unfortunately no. Not all handmade soap is created with high quality and natural ingredients.

Some people craft soap with chemical-based additives called “melt and pour”—mostly because they are not aware of what they are purchasing, are new to the soap making process, or just don’t know better.

Other soap makers will use a chemical-based additive to make their soaps look pretty or smell better. But, a well-crafted bar of soap doesn’t need either of those. Soap shouldn’t be neon color (or smell like grapes) if it’s truly natural. And yet, there’s a huge market for these chemical-based additives in the soaping world.

How do you know if the soap you are buying is all-natural handmade soap?

How to Choose the Right Bar of Handmade Soap

1: Check the ingredients

As with all products, read the labels. If it’s a real bar of soap, you will be able to understand and pronounce everything (now that you know what saponification and sodium hydroxide means!). The process should take about 20 seconds—there are only a few ingredients in a bar of real soap.

While you’re reading, make sure you are not allergic to anything in the soap like peanut oil, coconut, or some of the essential oils that can be present.

•             If you are vegan, be sure to check out our vegan products. (note: all of our signature soaps are vegan)

•             Those with a shea butter allergy can enjoy our selection of Shea Butter soaps and skincare products.

•             Same for Coconut allergies. We have coconut free products listed here.

2: Ask about cure time

Cure time is the amount of time it takes for the bar to fully mature, and to be a long-lasting bar of soap. A good soaper will tell you that their cure times can vary based on the ingredients of the soap, but each bar will typically take between 4-8 weeks.

3: Beware of fragrances and colours

While pumpkin spice is all the rage, you might not want it in your soap (unless it’s created with real pumpkin and spices). If the bar is bright orange, watch out and ask the soaper how they got that orange color. If they can tell you about the herbal infusions, and gel stages they worked hard to achieve, then you found a great bar of soap.

Note: not all colors additives are bad, just be sure you know what you are purchasing by doing a bit of research and talking with your soaper. We prefer to use natural ingredients like coffee, mint from our garden, other herbs, and techniques to color our soap. Others might use pigments that are “nature identical” meaning that they are manufactured in the lab to have the same molecular structure as their “natural” counterpart.

4: Natural vs. Organic

While the USDA regulates and sets quality standards for the word “Organic”, there is no regulation for the word “Natural” that helps a consumer really know if the soap is real, or safe… or not. Basically, even though a bar of soap is marketed as natural, that doesn’t mean it’s natural or good for your skin. (see tip 1: and read those labels!)

5: Try out more than one bar of soap

Everyone has different skin types, different water conditions (hard vs. soft) and will have different experiences with different bars of soap. My sister has hard water and loves how my salted spa bar bubbles for her, but my water is softer and I prefer my bars unsalted.

6: Talk with your soap-maker

Some people will find that they prefer different soaps for different uses: hair, skin, face, feet, one for the bath, and a different one for the kitchen. Talk with your soapmaker and let them know what you want your bar of soap to do. They will be able to help you find the right bar for exfoliating your feet, and one to really clean off the garlic smell after cooking in the kitchen.