How It All Began…
Welcome to the Dozenstead, where our family of 12 (home of a dozen!) shares with you our wholesome products that we enjoy ourselves! Just a short three years back, our sweet 21-month-old, was quite sick, requiring a two-week hospital stay under urgent care. God spared our baby girl, and taught us so much. We had always taken seriously what went inside our bodies, but this event, encouraged Mama to assess what else we could do to take care of our bodies more naturally. This included looking at what we had been using on our bodies, such as our shampoo/conditioner, hand soap, laundry detergent and dish soap. Being a larger family, for both economy and health, we have always tried to make things homemade and natural. And this time was no different! One of our new homemade commodities became shampoo bars, besides other soaps. This was wonderful, because we could not only clean our bodies with healthier and longer lasting ingredients, but at the same time, strengthen our bodies in the way they were created to be. Of course we have learned so much along the way, since we made our first bars and started using them for ourselves. Praise God for guiding us! We have been able to make them completely natural and we love to use them daily for our own children of all ages.
About Our Soap
At Dozenstead, all of our soaps are cold-processed, which uses the process of saponification: the chemical reaction of oils, sodium hydroxide (lye), and water, resulting in soap. A curing time of about 4-6 weeks follows, evaporating excess water, developing a crystalline structure, to produce a hard, lather-rich, long-lasting quality soap ready to be used.
The soap we make –our family is also comfortable using. This is why we use raw ingredients: honey, dried herbs, and dried spices. We use only essential oils in place of or in addition to these raw ingredients. No fragrances or preservatives.
We use certain oils and butters, or unsaturated and saturated fats to give our soaps the variety of properties to nourish, cleanse, and moisturize. We do realize that although soap is to clean and wash off our skin, it is inevitable that our skin would absorb to a degree what we apply to it, therefore, we careful research and consider what oils and ingredients we use to make our soaps.
