Ask the Soapman

Good morning Soapman, I have tried using the Liquid sunshine at full strength and at half strength in our dishwasher and it seems to be leaving a coating of white residue on the dishes. Please advise as to how to eliminate this unfortunate result. Thank you. Kindest regards, Tina Montes Hi Tina, I used liquid sunshine in our dishwasher for years. The coating is soap scum, a mixture of minerals in the water and soap. You can use less soap, you can filter your water. Still, some surfaces seem especially prone to mineral re-deposition. Pots and pans and knife handles…

My customer is saying that 40/50 lavender essential oil has a lot of bad stuff in it and that it is not the real thing; I have never heard of this before. They wanted to know what kind is used in the bars that have the Lavender before they would consider buying from me. I never told them you used 40/50; they assumed that it could be that since it is a very flowery or perfumed type option that apparently a lot of soapers use? I have not heard of this. What a great question. Most customers are not into…

Hello there. I have written before asking you about homemade laundry soap using your Liquid Sunshine, and you kindly took the time to explain in detail how to work with it. At the time, I was struggling with a landlord’s front loader that wasn’t rinsing effectively and cloth diapering my daughter, all-the-while dealing with my husband’s skin allergy to artificial perfumes in many detergents. I just couldn’t handle the trial-and-error of trying to use soap that won’t rinse completely and leave a residue after a while. I finally had the chance to use washing soda along with our usual “more…

Are all of your skincare products 100 percent organic? Great question! Vermont Soap is a USDA-inspected organic processing facility. Nearly every product we manufacture under our brand (we also make stuff for other companies) is USDA-certified organic. Our moisturizing and skin care products carry a USDA organic seal. Green Gold, shea butter, Coco-Lucious, and Honey Love are all sealed products. Our bar soaps (except for a couple of colored ones), gels, foamers, and nontoxic cleaners are also USDA certified organic, but because they are soaps, they do not carry the seal. They still have the certifier statement on them attesting…

Hi again, I also read “if ingested drink milk or water” on the bottle (baby wash and shampoo). Are you for real? When a baby takes a bath it splashes water everywhere, in his eyes, on the floor and even in his mouth. He has toys which he has in his bath and puts in his mouth. To use this product is therefore impossible and not safe, that is what we think. We have bought soap that was just the opposite before we bought yours, could be ingested and contained only of eatable ingredients. However,we wanted a product that was…

Do you source your Palm Oil and Palm Kernel Oil organically and sustainably? There seems to be some controversy over the use of these ingredients. Any words to help us feel better about the use of these oils? Thanks for asking! You can find information about our sourcing practices under Corporate Responsibility under the About Our Soap tab. Here’s a link: Responsible Sourcing Vermont Soap is proud to support the greenest palm oil available in the country! Check it out. All the Best, Soapman

We just purchased the Yoga Mat Cleaner Cube Container. Do you have directions how to safely pour from the container into the 16 oz spray bottle? Thank you. Sure thing! Place cube face up with the round white cover topside. Remove round white cover revealing portal. Reach into cube through portal and remove the dispenser. Pull bladder nipple through the portal. Remove the inner seal inside. Screw dispenser cleanly onto nipple. Stand cube up with dispenser facing you. Put something under the dispenser to catch any mess. You are ready to go!

Do you really think the new organic deodorant needs to be reapplied after 6 hours? And what’s with that scent? Most people do not need to apply Sage Lime organic deodorant every six hours. Use it as you would any other underarm deodorant. The Soapman uses his underarm stuff once in the morning, and once more when going out for the evening. Our toughest tester required an application every six hours to stay fresh. This statement is coming off the label next time we print the label. The scent was a touch off last run. We are tweaking it! This…

What is the weight per bar of your soaps? Now THAT is a very good question! Handmade process bar soaps contain a lot of water; about 33% to start. The soap looks kind of like pancake batter at this stage. Once they are hard enough to handle (3 or 4 days later) and cut, they contain about 25% water. Our formula and process handmade palm oil based bar soap is good and ready to use at about 12.5% water content. This takes 4 weeks of curing under ideal circumstances. The curing process allows the soap to finish slowly as it…

Do you still carry aromatherapy refreshing spray — country lavender? Dinah We sure do Dinah. It is in a bigger bottle (better value) but the scent is pretty much unchanged. Here is a link.