Switching To Bar Soap

And other eco friendly product changes

Photo by Aurélia Dubois on Unsplash

Recently my husband and I decided to switch from body wash to bar soap, and it has had somewhat of a domino effect on how we approach buying products for our home.

It started out with a conversation about the soap dish that came attached to his shower caddy and how no one uses bar soap anymore. This (eventually) prompted him to buy some bar soap, and I began to be served articles about how liquid soaps (ie body wash, shampoo & conditioner, laundry detergent, etc) are bad for the environment in that they use a boat load of water (and chemicals!) to produce them (um hello! the world is in a water crisis!), and then you have to ship those heavy containers all over the world, and in plastic containers, nonetheless. The more I read, the more I wondered how I had remained oblivious to this aspect of it all this time. I mean yeah, we were recycling all our plastic containers, but we weren’t giving it much thought beyond that.

Anyway, my husband picked up some bar soap one day and a few days later, I did the same. And guess what? You get just as clean with bar soap as you do with body wash, and it comes in biodegradable packaging, AND uses so much less water to produce. Win win! A few days later I was online shopping for shampoo & conditioner bars as well as liquid laundry detergent alternatives. In the end though, I ended up at HomeSense buying products there, so that I didn’t have to purchase them online and have anything shipped. A habit I’m working on breaking.

In fact, I’m LOVING all the soap options out there, and I’m probably buying too many, if I’m being honest. I still need solid go to’s for shampoo & conditioner though. Currently I’m using Garnier’s Whole Blends coconut shampoo bar along with what’s left of my Pantene rose water conditioner. So I haven’t actually used a conditioner bar yet, and I’m not sure how that will go, as my hair is a tangled mess without it, or with not so great products.

I also picked up some Nellie’s Laundry Soda (powdered) and we used it this weekend on a few loads of laundry. It seems to do a good job, the clothes come out smelling and looking clean. We didn’t have any powdery residue issues or stinky clothes issues. We did, however, have a few shirts shrink up in the wash. These are shirts that had already been washed, and we always use cold water cycles, so I’m not sure if it was the change in detergent or just a fluke. We’ll keep an eye on this development.

So yeah… we are open to any recommendations you guys have for new eco friendly products to try. I’d like to not be ordering things online, and would rather be able to pick them up in a store locally, if at all possible. Let me know in the comments below what products you’re using and what products you’d recommend we purchase or stay clear of. And until next time… be loving, be kind, be better!