Keeping It Simple: Hand Soap

One of my biggest eczema problem areas are my hands, so you'd think I'd be more mindful about what hand soaps I use at home. For as long as I can remember, I've just been stocking my bathrooms with sweet smelling foams without thinking about what's in that chemical soup.

Last month, Into The Gloss' Trace Barnhill asked readers "what's you're favorite hand soap?" One of the commenters, Mara, wrote something that was a wake-up call for me.

"I use CeraVe Foaming Facial Cleanser decanted into a bottle from MUJI. It's relatively inexpensive, pH balanced, fragrance-free, has ceramides (lipids found in healthy skin), hyaluronic acid (humectant), and cleans well."

I have been obsessing over ingredients for months now and had yet to investigate the product I use most on a daily basis. Lo and behold, one of the first five ingredients in my current hand soap was one of the worst offenders when it comes to skin irritation for me: fragrance. Also in the top five is Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) which is in the shampoo that I use and that's fine but I am not doing my skin any favors when I expose it to SLES at least six times a day.

I didn't go and toss out all the hand soap but once the one in our master bathroom was empty, I replaced it with Dial Gold. It's super affordable, surprisingly hydrating, has a ph level of 5.7 (according to Dial's own product catalog, anyway), and the clinically clean smell is inexplicably comforting. Now I just need some super cute soap dispensers to keep me from missing those silly "gentle" foaming hand soaps that smelled like a "winter cranberry".