Intentional Living: Why We Ditched Detergent-Based Soap

Have you ever wondered why your skin feels tight and dry right after you wash it?

We used to chalk that up to "just how soap is." Turns out, it wasn't the water. It was what we were washing with.

Most bar and liquid soaps on store shelves aren't actually soap at all — they're detergents, built with the same class of cleansing agents used in dish and laundry soap, just formulated to be gentler on skin. They can strip away the natural oils your skin needs to stay balanced, which is part of why it can feel tight, dry, or irritated afterward.

Real soap — made the old way, from saponified oils — cleans just as well without stripping your skin bare in the process.

This swap came out of the same season of questioning as everything else for us — Jordan pushing us to look closer, our own digging into what we were using, and wanting to make choices that felt right for our family for the long run. It's been one of the more earlier changes in our journey, part of that bigger push over the last several years.

What Changed

• Detergent-based bars and body washes → naturally saponified bar soaps

• Fragrance-heavy formulas → soaps made with simple, recognizable ingredients

• One-size-fits-all soap → paying attention to what our skin actually needs

A Simple Way to Start Looking

If you're curious where to start, flip the bar or bottle over. True soap will usually list oils and fats — things like olive, coconut, or tallow — saponified with a lye solution. If the ingredient list reads more like a chemistry set than a kitchen, it's likely a detergent bar dressed up to look like soap.

We didn't overhaul every bathroom in the house overnight. We used up what we had, then replaced it with something better once it ran out. That's been the pattern for almost every change we've made — small, steady, sustainable. Now our showers are stocked with our tallow soaps and the hand soap at our sinks are made with castile soap and essential oils. Easy swaps that provide a cleaner option for our families. 

Have you ever noticed a difference in your skin after switching soap or skincare?

What's a swap you've been curious about but haven't tried yet?