HOW I DISCOVERED COLD PROCESS SOAP DURING LOCKDOWN & FELL DOWN A RABBIT HOLE

Somewhere between an unsuitable body wash and a random scroll through Instagram, I discovered an entirely different way to make soap. I had no idea where that little discovery would eventually lead me.

It started with a body wash I didn't like.

When the lockdown happened, something as ordinary as buying your usual toiletries suddenly became a little complicated.

Supermarkets and stores were shut or operating with restrictions, and you had to make do with whatever products you could get your hands on. You couldn't always be particular about the things you bought. You picked up what was available and hoped for the best.

I remember buying a couple of body washes during that time. Unfortunately, they didn't really suit me.

My skin would feel dry after a shower. Sometimes, it would itch. And then there was the fragrance. Some bathing products were so heavily fragranced that the smell itself became uncomfortable.

The strange thing was that none of this was particularly new to me.

I'd experienced these things for years. I'd become so accustomed to dealing with them that somewhere along the way, I'd accepted them as part of my everyday routine.

Skin feels dry after a shower? Put on some moisturiser.

The fragrance is too strong? Find something else next time.

Your skin feels uncomfortable after bathing? Well, that's just how it is, isn't it?

Except, why should it be?

I'd never really stopped to ask myself that question. I'd never seriously considered whether there might be an alternative to the bathing products I'd been using all my life.

And then, quite unexpectedly, I stumbled upon cold process soap.

A random Instagram scroll changed the way I looked at soap.

I don't remember setting out to find a better way to bathe. I was simply browsing the internet when I came across people making cold process soaps.

And I was fascinated.

Here were people making bars of soap by combining oils and butters with lye, carefully formulating their recipes, adding ingredients they wanted, and allowing the soap to cure before using it.

People across the world were doing this, and they were making some genuinely interesting things.

I started looking at one soapmaker's work, then another's. I'd discover a new ingredient, look it up, and somehow end up learning about something else entirely.

Before I knew it, I'd fallen down a rabbit hole.

What caught my attention wasn't just that these soaps looked beautiful. It was the process itself.

The idea that something as familiar as a bar of soap could be made from scratch, using a carefully chosen combination of ingredients, was genuinely exciting to me.

And the more I discovered, the more questions I had.

Could I make a soap with ingredients I understood? Could I choose the oils and butters that went into it? Could I experiment with ingredients I found interesting, or leave out added fragrance if I preferred not to have it?

For the first time, I realised that the product I used every day didn't have to be something I simply picked off a shelf without giving it much thought.

There was an entire craft behind it that I knew absolutely nothing about.

Naturally, I wanted to know more.

I realised I wasn't the only one dealing with this.

Around the same time, I spoke to my partner, Juhi, about what I'd been discovering.

As we discussed our bathing routines, I realised that she, too, tended to avoid highly fragranced bathing products. The need to moisturise immediately after a shower because your skin felt dry was something we could both relate to.

It made me think about how easily we normalise these little inconveniences.

We build routines around them. We buy another product to deal with the discomfort caused by the previous one. We find workarounds and move on with our lives.

And sometimes, we never question whether the original product is the right choice for us.

To be clear, dry or itchy skin can have several causes, and a change of soap isn't a guaranteed solution. But the experience made me curious about the products I was using and whether a different formulation might suit me better.

That curiosity was enough to get me started.

I wanted to explore an alternative, not because I had suddenly decided that everything on a supermarket shelf was bad, but because I wanted to understand what else was available.

What fascinated me about cold process soap was the control.

I've never really been a body wash person.

I didn't particularly enjoy how my skin felt after using certain body washes, and I often felt that the washing experience wasn't what I wanted. I found myself drawn to the simplicity of a traditional bar of soap.

Cold process soapmaking introduced me to something I hadn't previously considered: the ability to formulate a soap from the ground up.

The basic chemistry is fascinating. Oils and fats react with an alkali, usually sodium hydroxide, in a process called saponification. Given the right formulation and adequate curing, the result is a bar of soap.

But what really drew me in was everything that happened around that chemistry.

The oils you choose. The butters you experiment with. The ingredients you decide to include. The fragrance you select, or the decision to leave fragrance out altogether.

Different formulations create different soaps, and understanding why those differences exist became a learning experience in itself.

I also found the process less intimidating than the long ingredient lists I was accustomed to seeing on commercial bathing products. I could begin to recognise the ingredients, understand their roles, and learn why a soapmaker might choose one combination over another.

Of course, a shorter ingredient list doesn't automatically make a product safer or better, and commercial body washes can be formulated to work perfectly well. What mattered to me was that I could learn about the ingredients and understand the choices behind the formulation.

That feeling of being able to make informed decisions about an everyday product was new to me.

And I loved it.

The first cold process soap I tried.

Eventually, I decided to stop reading about cold process soap and actually order a bar.

I wanted to experience it for myself. After spending so much time looking at formulations and watching soapmakers work, I wanted to understand what all the fascination was about.

So I ordered one.

And honestly, it changed the way I thought about the products I used to bathe.

I started paying closer attention to the bathing experience itself, to how a soap felt to use, and to the ingredients behind it. I became much more interested in what went into a product that I'd previously taken for granted.

It wasn't that I suddenly believed one kind of soap was going to solve every skin concern. It was that I had found an alternative worth exploring, and I wanted to understand it better.

That first purchase turned my casual curiosity into something much more serious.

I started looking into cold process soapmaking itself. I wanted to understand the formulations, the oils and butters, the role of lye, the curing process, and the thought that went into making a good bar of soap.

One question led to another.

And another.

You know how the internet works. You start by looking for one thing, and a few hours later, you're learning about something you didn't even know existed.

Except, in this case, I was genuinely enjoying every minute of it.

An old craft, an everyday product, and a whole lot to learn.

One of the things I find most fascinating about cold process soapmaking is that it connects an everyday modern routine to a much older craft.

Soapmaking has a long history. Long before the personal care aisles we know today existed, people were making soap using fats or oils and alkaline materials. The methods and formulations have evolved considerably over time, but the fundamental chemistry behind traditional soapmaking remains fascinating.

And here I was, discovering it for the first time through Instagram during a lockdown.

There's something quite wonderful about that.

We use bathing products so routinely that we rarely think about how they're made. We pick something based on its fragrance, its packaging, its price, or whatever happens to be available.

I had done exactly that for years.

But discovering cold process soap encouraged me to look at something familiar with fresh eyes. It made me curious about ingredients, formulation, and the decisions that go into creating a product we use so regularly.

It also made me appreciate how much there is to learn about something that initially seems so simple.

Making soap isn't just about mixing a few ingredients together. It requires careful formulation, accurate measurements, safe handling of sodium hydroxide, and patience while the soap cures. There is chemistry involved, and there is plenty of room to learn from mistakes.

The more I discovered, the more I wanted to understand.

And somewhere along the way, I realised that this was no longer just about finding an alternative to body wash.

I had become genuinely interested in the craft.

And that's where my journey with cold process soap began.

Looking back, it's funny to think that all of this started because I was unhappy with a couple of body washes during lockdown.

I wasn't planning to start a soap business. I wasn't looking for a new entrepreneurial opportunity. I was simply curious about whether there was another way to make a product I used every day.

That curiosity introduced me to an entirely new world of oils, butters, ingredients, formulations, and traditional soapmaking.

It changed the way I thought about bathing products and made me want to learn how to make them myself.

Eventually, that fascination became part of the journey that led to WhySoCurious.

But that is a story for another day.

For now, I think the biggest lesson from that experience is a fairly simple one: sometimes, we get so used to the products we use every day that we forget to question whether they actually work for us.

We accept the little inconveniences. We find ways to deal with them. And we rarely stop to explore the alternatives.

I'm glad I did.

Because one random discovery during lockdown introduced me to a craft that continues to fascinate me, and eventually gave me the opportunity to create something of my own.

And if there's one thing I've learnt since then, it's that there's a lot more to a bar of soap than meets the eye.

Welcome to the rabbit hole.

— The story behind WhySoCurious