The Joys of Making Your Own Soap
Author: Mary Published Under: Home
Soap and the process of cleaning the body is nothing new and has in fact been around for many thousands of years. Since water alone is often not enough to clean the body or work areas, we rely on soaps to help make sure we are clean.
The actual word soap is derived from a Roman Legend, which describes animal sacrifices that occurred at the top of Mount Sapo. It was said that when the rain came and washed away the animal fat and wooden ash, it created a soapy mixture that flowed into the Tiber River.
There have also been a number of early records of mixtures of animal or vegetable oil with salts that were used in cleaning. Pompeii, which was a city that was covered in Lava actually had what is thought to be the first soap factory.
It was the Romans who had the most interest in soap and cleaning, with Roman Baths being a well known and documented occurrence. However, after the fall of Rome, interest in soap and bathing was sharply reduced and did not begin to become popular again for several hundred years.
While there were soap maker guilds, which specialized in making soap, in Europe, France, Italy, and Spain, making soap at home was still very important for many years.
Today, soap and soap making is more popular than ever, but it has lost much of its natural beauty, being instead replaced by synthetic chemicals and scents. All to often, the focus ends up being on anti-bacterial soap or extra-moisturizing soap, but this is often not the best choice for a healthy lifestyle.
For instance, in the case of anti-bacterial soap, this often kills too many germs. The human body needs to be exposed to some germs in order to maintain a healthy immune system and it is important to note that anti-bacterial germs only kills most germs, not all. As a result, we are creating some germs which could be classified as super-germs, because they can not be killed by anti-bacterial soap. Of course, with that said, anti-bacterial soap does in deed have its place, only it is often too heavily relied upon.
Making your own soap is incredibly easy and uses what are, for the most part, normal kitchen utensils. For example, the most exotic utensils required to make soap are a double boiler and a pestle and mortar, with neither of these really being a necessity, but only making the work a little easier.
By making your own soap, you can not only control what goes into your soap, using only natural ingredients and scents, but you can also save a great deal of money. It is important to note that you are not just limited to making hand soap or soap bars, but liquid dish washing soap and even laundry detergent is very easy to make and can be very inexpensive.