Although every year brings new products and entirely new formulas to our range, there is no denying that everything started with soap.. Despite the passing years we still love soap bars just as much and still want to share that love with you - so allow us to remind you briefly why our natural soap bars are simply GOOD :)

What are the features of a natural soap bar?

The ingredients, the effect and the economy - these are without doubt the most important features of a natural soap bar. Ingredients: in producing natural soaps we use natural ingredients of plant origin: oils, butters, plant extracts and essential oils, sometimes helping ourselves along with a cosmetic fragrance (if a particular scent, cucumber for instance, cannot be obtained naturally - here we compromise ;)), and we add clays, dried herbs and flowers. Effect: natural soap cares for the skin and cleanses it beautifully. It can soothe any irritation, work antibacterially and smooth the skin (especially in the case of exfoliating soaps). A well-composed recipe additionally lets us achieve good lather and a hard bar, so that it does not soften quickly on the soap dish. Economy: stored properly (on a draining soap dish), a natural soap can last even several months of regular use!

How are Ministerstwo Dobrego Mydła soaps made?

Since the very beginning of Ministerstwo, our soaps have been produced in an artisanal way, according to traditional soap-making principles. The whole process of making a soap bar is surprisingly similar to cooking! Mixing the ingredients (among which you will find shea butter, cocoa butter, sweet almond oil and rice bran oil, to name a few), pouring the mass into wooden moulds, cutting the blocks into bars, decorative stamping and, in the case of Lavender and Rosemary, threading them onto strings - we do all of it by hand. Well, perhaps with a little help from a blender and a drill ;)

Two months of holiday is a must!

Natural soap belongs to that group of products which mature by resting. Alongside the right proportions of fatty ingredients, it is precisely a suitably long stay in the drying room that gives every bar its proper hardness and its lathering ability. That is exactly why around two whole months must pass from producing a given batch of soap to handing the finished bars over to you!

Which natural ingredients go into Ministerstwo's little soaps?

The oil base of our soaps consists of plant oils and butters (including our beloved unrefined organic shea butter, olive oil, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, castor oil and cocoa butter). We also use palm oil - YES, although we are working on a bar without it as well. We do make sure, though, that it is oil certified by the RSPO, so that we can be certain the plantations our palm oil comes from work with respect for people and the environment. Depending on the particular recipe we also use other oils in making our soaps, along with dried herbs (calendula, lavender, rosemary), macerates - that is, herbal oil extracts - natural clays (Cambrian blue clay, pink clay and white kaolin), and essential oils of the very best quality.

What makes our soaps gentle? Can a gentle soap for washing hands and body be used in daily care?

The caring properties of traditional sodium soaps are not an easy topic. Soap is a lipophilic product, meaning it binds fat molecules and degreases the surface of the skin on our hands and body. It is therefore unable to add lipids to it, that is to increase its hydration level, but fortunately the ingredients can be chosen so that it does not dry the skin out and cleanses it as gently as possible :) Our bars are characterised by a high content of natural glycerine and a superfat of a few percent - which means that 3% of the oils and butters (or 6% in the case of Rice and Calendula) do not undergo saponification and instead care for the skin while washing and limit how much it dries out. This lets us obtain a gentle soap that washes beautifully and cleanses the skin of everyday grime (which answers the second part of the question above ;)).

Efficiency = economy!

A simple ingredient list and carefully chosen proportions of natural plant oils and butters - thanks to this our soap recipe produces a bar that cleanses the skin effectively while neither crumbling nor softening quickly on the soap dish (provided that the dish drains ;)). The optimal compromise between softness and hardness, together with the ability to produce a creamy, dense lather, makes our soaps very efficient and able to serve you longer than their drugstore counterparts. How long a single bar lasts of course depends on the number of people using it and how often it is used (and also on whether it will be used for hands and body, or perhaps only for washing hands), as well as on proper storage - in a place free of water, that is on a soap dish with holes or on a rack. In that case one 100 gram bar can last one person more than a month :)

One soap, several generations?

Properly stored, a traditional soap can still be usable even 50 years after it was made! As fascinated soap makers we of course have such historic, long-lived specimens in our collection ;) As responsible producers, however, we make sure our bars serve you as well as possible, lathering beautifully and keeping their colour and lovely scent - so we give them a shelf life of eighteen months, always stated on the carton :)

Ecological, compostable packaging

And since we have mentioned the cartons, you should know that all our soaps are packed in ecological cartons made of paper produced from corn pulp. This makes the packaging biodegradable - once you take the bar out, you can put the flattened carton either in the bin for paper waste or in the organic "bio" waste, so that it can be composted :)

How do you choose the right natural soap for yourself?

Pay attention to the ingredients, keeping allergies in mind if you are prone to irritation and sensitivities. Think about which parts of the body you will be using the product on - if it is meant for daily hand hygiene, choose a gentle soap without abrasive additions such as ground nut shells or coffee grounds. Let the effect of the bar guide you and choose one with soothing properties if your skin is delicate and gets irritated. If you need a proper "scrubber" to stimulate circulation in the skin of your back or lower body (thighs, buttocks), choose an exfoliating soap and use it at most 2-3 times a week so as not to irritate the skin with intensive scrubbing.

How do Ministerstwo's soaps differ? Choose the soap for you!

Every soap bar in our range cleanses the skin beautifully and works well for the care of hands and body, which usually does not make your choice any easier ;) To help the decision process along, we customarily divide them into a few categories.

Types of soap:

• scented and unscented soaps - the latter, narrow group includes the gentlest, more heavily superfatted ones, suitable for sensitive skin: Rice (a hypoallergenic soap bar) and Calendula, along with the most deeply cleansing, detoxifying Charcoal - all without artificial colourants;
• the scented ones are in turn divided into those fragranced with natural essential oils - Lavender, the herbal soap Rosemary (with essential oil and dried rosemary leaves, plus Cambrian blue clay) and Carrot (with added bergamot and sweet orange oils) - and those perfumed with certified cosmetic fragrances, such as our bestselling Hibiscus soap, whose ingredients include French pink clay and hibiscus flower extract;
• soap-scrubs - among them the strongly exfoliating Cucumber and Coffee soaps, the massaging Choco-Mint, Spelt and Cinnamon, and Pineapple, enriched with exfoliating fruit enzymes - and the non-exfoliating ones.

Longing fuels desire ;)

In Ministerstwo's range you will find (for now ;)) 15 kinds of soap, though the truth is that for most of the year 14 of them are available to you. The fifteenth is a special exception, available only seasonally in winter... which makes it immensely desirable during the remaining months ;) We are talking about Red Pepper - a wonderfully creamy soap bar smelling of pine forest and Christmas, which makes us count the days to November every year, despite the prospect of rainy weather and afternoons shrouded in darkness! ♥

Questions and answers

Is a soap bar suitable for washing hair?

Although at Ministerstwo we consistently recommend soap bars as a product for washing hands and body, the answer to the question above is: yes indeed - natural soap can be used for washing hair. What should you bear in mind, though? A soap bar is by design a product with an alkaline pH. It opens the hair cuticles well and removes impurities from them well (it also cleanses the scalp beautifully). Unfortunately it does not close the cuticles again, and while this is no problem in the care of short hair or dreadlocks, if you have long hair those open cuticles will give a feeling of stiffness and cause the hair structure to break. In that case remember to use, every now and then after washing, a so-called rinse prepared from one tablespoon of wine or apple cider vinegar combined with a glass of lukewarm water. Such a rinse closes the cuticles, making the hair smoother and softer.

I have acne-prone skin - can I use Charcoal soap to wash my face?

This is quite a frequent question :) Charcoal - an antibacterial soap bar - is tempting to try out in the care of problem skin. Allow us, though, to tell you a little more about it. Soaps (both bars and liquid ones) are intended mainly for washing hands and body, because of their higher, alkaline pH, which can sensitise the delicate protective barrier of facial skin. Facial skin has a slightly acidic pH, which is why it needs gentle care - products with a pH lower than alkaline are recommended here. Because soap has an alkaline pH, it raises the pH of facial skin, which can result in dryness, an unpleasant feeling of tightness or else overproduction of sebum and breakouts. Of course this is a highly individual matter, as we have a whole group of customers who cannot imagine washing their face in daily care with anything other than soap (including charcoal soap), but here we always kindly remind them of the need to use a toner or hydrosol in order to bring the skin's pH back down to its proper level.

Are Ministerstwo's soaps glycerine soaps?

Yes! Our soaps are genuine, natural glycerine soaps, because the glycerine they contain is a 100% plant product, formed during production as a by-product of saponifying oils and butters :)

Herbal soap - do you have one in your range?

Yes, and more than one ;) The first that comes to mind is our classic - a square soap hung on a hemp string, with dried rosemary leaves, rosemary essential oil and blue Cambrian clay. Next, the chocolate-mint one with dried mint leaves and peppermint essential oil, with added cocoa and antibacterial bamboo charcoal, which cleanses the skin beautifully. Then Lavender, with essential oil and dried true lavender flowers, enriched with soothing calamine and hung on a hemp string, a nod to classic French soaps. There is also the gentle, natural Calendula soap with an oil extract of calendula flowers, in which we additionally suspended its dried petals.

We wholeheartedly recommend soap bars to whole families :) Which little soap will you choose for yourself? :)