The Benefits of Old Fashioned Lye Soap: Back to Basic Goodness

Imagine taking off all your clothes and stepping naked into a warm shower. The water comforts and relaxes you. You wash away stress. Your pores open.

Now, what are you going to rub and scrub all over your body to get it clean? 

If you understand what’s in commercial soaps, you wouldn't use them. What are commonly called “soaps,” such as Dove, Zest, and nearly all shower gels, are actually synthetic detergents made of petroleum products, foaming and chelating agents, preservatives, and perfumes. They are drying and can cause allergic reactions. 

Pure and Simple

Our Old-Fashioned Lye Soap bar is simply our basic recipe formulated 25 years ago. Nothing extra is added. The bar is great for bathing, shampooing, and washing clothes. Its only scent is the pure, clean soap smell, aka unscented. 

How Lye Soap Powerfully Destroys Bacteria and Viruses

All of our soaps can wash dirt, bacteria, and viruses down the drain. In fact, soap destroys viruses, rupturing their protective fatty outer layer. That’s why we’re encouraged to wash our hands often. 

Active Cleaning

People are often surprised at how powerfully soap cuts through grease and other oils.

That's why people also enjoy our Sinkside Kitchen Soap and Burano Laundry Soap. Just like the Old Fashioned Lye Soap, they clean without detergents or other pollutants found in commercial cleaners. You'll feel good knowing our soaps are biodegradable and don't come in yet another plastic bottle.

The Benefits of Cold-Process Artisan Soapmaking

We make our soaps using the cold-process method, a refined version of what pioneers and even the ancients made.

100% Vegan & Plant-Based Ingredients for Sensitive Skin

All of our ingredients are plant-based. The blend of food-grade oils makes "the best soap ever!" 

• To moisturize, olive oil and rice bran oils
• for a rich, stable lather, soy oil
• to make a hard, long-lasting bar, palm kernel oil.  

What is Saponification? 

In soapmaking, when the oils are mixed with lye, a chemical reaction called saponification recombines the molecules into soap and glycerin. We make ours so that the transformation is gradual and thorough. It takes several weeks to cure. After a month, the bars dry and harden into our gentle soap. No lye is left. There’s actually a bit extra of the oils just to be sure.

Glycerin: The Secret to Hydrated, Soft Skin

About 9% of every bar is glycerin, prized as a humectant. Humectants attract moisture from the air. They soften and strengthen skin. It’s so good, chemists extract glycerin from soap to use in cosmetics as a moisturizer in lotions and conditioners. It remains in our bars.

How to Use Lye Soap to Treat and Prevent Poison Ivy 

Old-Fashioned Lye Soap is known to remedy poison ivy. To prevent poison ivy rashes, you need to remove the oily urushiol from your skin. Use cold water to wash—warm water will open your pores and spread the nasty oil. Any of our soaps will remove the oil, though it takes some scrubbing. Something like our Camper’s Choice Luffa will work wonders. Make sure you get it all. Take your time and be thorough. 

9 Surprising Folk Remedies Attributed to Lye Soap

• It's excellent for removing laundry stains.
• Put it under your bottom sheet at the bottom of your bed to alleviate leg cramps.
• It sucks the heat out of sunburn. 
• The lather relieves the itching of mosquito and chigger bites and also repels mosquitoes.
• Hang lye soap on trees to keep away insects that bore.
• A bar under the sink keeps ants away.
• A bit on a hook is good catfish bait.
• It keeps kids from swearing. 

Other Herbaria Varieties

All of our face and body soaps start with the same base as Old Fashioned Lye. Our other varieties have added moisturizers like shea butter or avocado oil, textures and colorants like oatmeal and activated charcoal, and scents from essential oils such as lavender or almond. 

Artisan Soap vs. "Melt and Pour": What’s the Difference?

“Melt and pour” soaps use a premade mix to which people add colors and scents. Other soapmakers use synthetic fragrances. Still others make bars that are too pretty to use. 

We Use Soap Every Day 

Use a good soap that is gentle on your skin and helps keep you healthy. We often take this miraculous invention from 5000 years ago for granted. It is said that soap has saved more lives than any medicine in history.

"Grandma's Lye Soap" 
by Johnny Stanley 1952
Do you remember Grandma’s lye soap,
Good for everything in the home, And the secret was in the scrubbing, It wouldn’t suds, and wouldn’t foam,
Oh, let us sing right out, sing out! For Grandma’s lye soap, Sing it out, all over the place! For pots and pans, and dirty dishes, And for your hands, And for your face!
Little Therman, and Brother Herman, Had an aversion to washing their ears… Grandma scrubbed them with her lye soap, And they haven’t heard a word in years!
Oh, let us sing right out, sing out! For Grandma’s lye soap, Sing it out, all over the place! For pots and pans, and dirty dishes, And for your hands, And for your face!
Mrs. O’Malley, out in the valley,
Suffered from ulcers, I understand,
She swallowed a cake of Grandma’s lye soap, Has the cleanest ulcers in the land!