The very brief LUSH experiment!

For those who don't know, I make and sell soap. It's not quite Granny Clampett in the back yard mixing up hog fat and wood ash run-off, but it's the same principle: oils + lye = soap! To answer the usual questions: no, there's no lye in the finished soap, no, you can't make soap without lye, no, not even glycerin soap or supermarket bars. To be clear, I'm not melting and pouring pre-made soap into molds, but making it out of base materials. And by the way, that pre-made soap folks melt and pour into molds? Also originally oils + lye, or plain detergent like many supermarket bars, which defeats my purposes. Detergent's OK--we're talking 'cleansing surfactant' detergent, not 'where are your rubber gloves?!' detergent--but for folks like me, with skin issues, these ingredients can be problematic.

And after I reach this point, it's all weird and distrustful looks, because I'm telling someone that all soap is made with drain cleaner and their body wash is glorified Tide and ew that can't be right! (Except it sort of is.) And then I sigh and hold out a bar that smells like blueberry pie and we both stop pretending to take seriously their claims that they use only all-natural products. But anyway.

I had a little spare money last month and decided to order some products from Lush. Fresh! Organic! Vegetarian! Handmade! They are the big name in soap and sundries, the soap against which all handmade soaps will be compared by random people walking past your sales table. You think I snark, but girls take sharing their Lush haul as seriously as nerds take unboxing the latest iProduct. It's big, and I thought by investigating, I'd see why people like it so much and how my own recipes could be improved.

So in the name of SCIENCE!, let us commence! On to the next list!

#1. They're semi-transparent. Melt-and-pour, or just fancy treated for transparency? Google says Lush used to use all handmade traditional cold process soaps, but now whips out a melt-and-pour glycerin base for popular recipes.

#2. They're small. I like small, because I have small hands, but for the price, I wasn't expecting them to be that small.

#3. They smell. Holy crap, do they smell. I go sparingly on scents in my own soaps, so I forget that other people like SMELL.

#4. The cats hate it. They would not climb on the tub when I used it, and fled to the corner of the room to pout. I should retire the squirt bottle and just chase them with the blue soap when they're naughty.

#5. There was next to no lather when I used them as hand soaps, which wasn't a big deal--hard water doesn't lather well, and mine can damn near stand up on its own. But there was next to no lather when I used it with a loofah either, and that's just poor performance. Most of Britain, where Lush is HQ'd, has water that can be used as a building material; 85% of US water is hard. Is it because my order shipped out of soft water territory in Canada?

#6. Post-bath, I felt dry and tight and shrink-wrapped. I would have passed the dishwashing liquid squeaky Tupperware test. Two hours later, I itched so bad I hopped back in the tub with one of my homemade bars. The cats sat on the edge of the tub, I worked up huge mounds of fluffy lather and cursed Lush's name to the heavens. When Mom got home, she also got a bath with the Lush, which she proclaimed stinky and nasty-feeling. An hour later, she asked if we had any allergy meds left; I suggested a second bath with anything but the Lush.

The next day, Mom suggested the bathroom is a pretty small room, and, well, maybe the Lush should be moved to a better ventilated area. Like my sister's apartment.

In conclusion, the household's decision is unanimous: we hate Lush and we don't want to play with it anymore. My sister is a girly-girl and has few allergy issues, so I've offered her my mini-stash in all its less-than-a-week-old glory. I take full blame for not better checking ingredients--I let the "Fresh! Organic! Vegetarian! Handmade!" brand rallying cry blind me, and I wanted the "ooh, soap!" customer experience rather than the "hrm, that must be for moisturizing!" soapmaker experience. It was stupid, but it's been a while since I've had a bad reaction to a product. (Because, well, I mostly use my own.)

I did check ingredients as penance. Primary ingredient: cosmetic mineral oil known to cause dermatitis flare-ups in vulnerable folks. Only two base oils, neither of which should be used in large quantities for soaping, because one is very drying and the other goes rancid at the drop of a hat. Finally, it has added SLS for lathering, which shouldn't have been necessary if they had a decent recipe, didn't help anyway, and is a notorious irritant for folks with skin issues.

In short, I might as well have rolled in bees.

The lessons:
#1. It's not the product, it's the branding. In fact, this is lesson #1, #2, and #3.

#4. People love scents. Soapmakers love lather, hardness, conditioning qualities, etc. Find a recipe that my skin loves and a happy compromise on scents, and the rest will work out.

#5. Even hippies will fuck you over. That oil that goes rancid at the drop of a hat? Canola, also known as the cheapest fucking vegetable oil available on the market. They're charging $7 for 3oz of a fucking canola-based glycerin soap. Oh, fuck you, Lush. Fuck you sideways.