Washing with Soap, Part 1

At Craft shows we often offer small samples of our soap to people who stop by. Most folks are anxious to try our skin-pampering gift, while some are understandably nervous to try anything new on their sensitive skin. Everyone once in a while we will have someone reject our soap and say “I don’t use soap: I just wash with water.”  This is interesting to us because if you aren’t washing with soap, you aren’t washing at all. You’re just rinsing!  Soap and water work in special ways, and it’s actually pretty interesting what soap and water does and how it has dramatically changed hygiene and disease resistance since it’s use.

Soap is as a surfactant, which means it has the ability to lower surface tension. This makes it easier to remove the dirt from your body. It also works as an emulsifier. It can make grease that normally sticks to your skin dissolve in water, which then gets washed away when you rinse the soapy water off your skin. It is important to use soap because it is the only way clean your skin. Without soap, are only removing the loose dirt from your skin.

Because of how sick baby Faith has been, all of us here have to be very careful about washing our hand. We cannot afford to get her sick. We have been very persistent about washing our hands and doing it correctly.

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