How Discovering Hidden Ingredients Led Me to Embrace Natural Soaps

Several years ago I started learning more about healthy living. This can mean a lot of different things depending on who you are. For me, it started with eating a little better to lose weight after having a baby (my first baby, who is 9 now 😭). As I was learning to look at labels I realized that there are so many unnecessary ingredients in foods. Even simple things that seem like they should only have 1 or 2 ingredients had 5-10. For me, this is where my natural product journey all began.

My interest in healthier products grew from foods to cleaning products, and then to products that went on my skin. When I got pregnant with my 2nd baby I took a dive into researching products that go on our skin. I did not want to start this baby’s life by putting toxic products on her. Surprisingly, A LOT of products that are marketed to babies actually contain toxic ingredients and are greenwashed! So terrible, right? Us mommas just want to choose safe options for our babies and those companies are out there lying to us.

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Endocrine Disruptors

When I started learning more about ingredients that I was not interested in having in my products, one of the most alarming things was the presence of endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disruptors are things that interfere with the body’s hormones. In short, they can really screw up our bodies and have a huge impact on our fertility.

The most surprising thing about this is that there are endocrine disruptors in so many everyday products. I remember thinking to myself “There’s no way these things are in products people use!” I was so wrong. There are endocrine disruptors in food, beauty products, toys, packaging, and more.

Fragrance

I know it is a lot to take in when you’re just starting to learn about more natural living. If there is one thing that I would encourage you to look for (and avoid) in your ingredients list it is the word “fragrance.”

The reason to avoid fragrances as an ingredient in your products is that companies can put so many different things (natural and artificial) in their products and label them fragrances. This is not regulated and many of those ingredients are harmful. To me, a company that is being transparent will disclose the ingredients that they use to make their product smell a certain way. Then, customers can feel safe in using those products knowing exactly what essential oils or other ingredients are being used for this purpose.

Why Use Soaps with Natural Ingredients

Why use natural products? That’s easy! By choosing to use natural soaps and other household products I am dramatically lowering the number of harmful chemicals in my home. I’m decreasing the endocrine disruptors and other harmful ingredients that my family and I come into contact with.

I choose to use simple and natural products because I am familiar with their ingredients. I don’t have to research the 15+ ingredients on a label or try to see past the greenwashing.

Another reason that I choose to use natural products is because they are GOOD for your skin! Tallow-based soaps and skin care benefit your skin because of all the natural vitamins that are in it. It fights dry skin without harmful ingredients that actually dry out your skin more! Tallow, along with other natural ingredients like organic oats, honey, and essential oils have a variety of benefits that you’re not going to find (without paying a price) in manmade ingredients.

Ingredients in Baby Products

What really gets me is the fact that there are so many baby brands that are filled with harmful ingredients. All a momma is trying to do for her baby is keep him/her healthy and safe. We TRUST these brands to help us do that and unfortunately, even the most well-known brands have ingredients that irritate skin, disrupt baby’s hormones, or cause respiratory issues.

I use only the most simple and safe products for my baby and that includes my handcrafted Unscented Tallow Soap! Some essential oils are said to be safe for babies but I choose to use unscented just to be sure since she’s so little (only 5 months old at the time of this post). I also use my Unscented Whipped Tallow Balm on her for any dry skin, cradle cap, or diaper rashes. It’s gentle and it works with her cloth diapers too. If you’re interested in cloth diapering, check out this post when I reviewed the Grovia Newborn Diapers.

It’s Time for a Change

Soap is such a simple thing to make. Why are there so many ingredients in store-bought soaps? Our unscented Tallow soap has 3 ingredients (tallow, distilled water, and lye). Soap does not have to be complicated or have a million ingredients. There are other oils you can add for specific reasons but when you walk into a store and turn a soap bottle around you see so many ingredients that don’t need to be there.

I’m happy to bring simple and safe soaps back into my home and hopefully yours! If you want to learn more about the ingredients we use be sure to check out this post about lye (sodium hydroxide) and why it is used to make soap.