A Real Soap Story

A Real Soap Story

The tale of how Soulful Blends began

Something just felt so right about exploring life outside the ‘mamahood’ once the twins turned two and a half. I was in Australia at the time, visiting my family when all these ideas about Soulful Blends starting to swim around in my head! Nick, myself and the girls had been through so much change in the past two years both with moving to the middle east, and radically adjusting our lifestyle so the idea of starting something new again was almost too much!

While visiting my sister (the very talented Lanie Lane) and her equally talented beau, Jez Mead, at their cottage in beautiful country Victoria, ideas and concepts started to become all that more real. One night over good food, wine and a bit of singing around the fire, I poured my heart out about my passion for an all natural approach to living well. Jez wrote it all down. I still have that piece of torn cardboard with his notes and doodles hanging in our ‘lab’ (more about that later). I wonder if Lanie and Jez even realize the relevance and importance of that night– well I guess they do now! A little switch of motivation for something I believed in turned on that night, and its been keeping me going ever since!

With that realized, in conjunction with our existing health kick well and truly established, we figured it was time to start experimenting with natural alternatives to home and body products. Once we returned home to the UAE that summer, we hit the books to find out everything we could about soap.

Ever looked at the ingredient list on store bought cosmetics and soaps…? Yeah, I can’t pronounce most of them either…. As it happens, I’m married to a scientist who has come in pretty handy for translations! Needless to say, as we move toward a less toxic lifestyle, soap as we knew it had to go. In its place, castile soap. But even then, we found that some shop bought castile soaps contained some nasty ingredients. Not to be disheartened, we took on the challenge to make our own.

Okay, so maybe it’s because I’m not the scientist in the family that I experience it this way, but making liquid castile soap has been by far the most challenging and complex thing we’ve made so far. Here’s my crash course on how soap is made. The short and simple list of ingredients on our bottle is as follows: “Saponified extra virgin olive oil, Pure Essential Oils & Sea Salt”.  Saponification is a term used to explain the reaction between an oil and an alkali (so in this case, lye and extra virgin olive oil). While an alkali is used to create saponification, none of it remains in the final product. The final product is neutral (for soaps) with a pH reading ranging from 9.5 – 10.5. A little secret for all the Dove users out there; you know their advert that tells you their product is PH ‘5.5’ as a selling point… well that stuff isn’t soap. It’s a synthetic detergent! True natural soap will have a PH reading ranging from 9.5-10.5. I’ve discovered that most of the ‘soap’ out there is in fact synthetic detergent based solvents. I know, its so disheartening when you find this stuff out, because it really makes you question what else out there isn’t what it appears to be on the outside.

So, our eyes have been well and truly opened here at Soulful Blends and we’re diving in headfirst with new and exciting projects. When it comes to what we put in and on our body we need to know what it is, and if we can make it more naturally. We’re making it our mission to find out, and we love the journey so far!

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