The History of Soap

We use soap everyday in our continuous and dirty lives but do we even know where it came from? From dish soap, hand and body soap, laundry soaps, and even a bottle of bubbles we can find this substance pretty much everywhere.

Soap has been around since 2800 B.C and was used to clean cotton and textiles as well as being medically used for 5000 years. It was originally created using animal and vegetable oils with alkaline soaps. Other civilizations used wood ashes, animal fat, and plants, all creating a soap like substance. Nowadays soap is made up out of different oils, and animal fat, unless you buy organic soap which is made up out of healthier and all natural ingredients. For example SoapyMania includes organic ingredients such as natural fragrances and all natural glycerin.

As soap making goes back many years, many people have adapted their own soap making style, one of the older ways was mixing animal fats with lye. Today, soap is the product of fats and alkalies. The cold process method is the most popular soap making process today, though some producers still use the hot process.

Modern soap is not limited to just bars with liquid soap and hand sanitizer quickly overtaking the soap industry. In fact,a study in 2011 showed that Americans spent more on liquid soap and detergents, and experts predict that hand sanitizer sales may exceed $400 million by 2015. In the 1500’s soap was a luxury, only the rich could afford good soap, leaving the lower class dirty and no soap making materials. So now, when you pick up a bar of soap, it’s not as much of luxury as it used to be but we still don’t think about how important it is to us.