One of the best ways to care for your skin and general hygiene is to... well, wash. If the soap or cleanser of your choice respects the natural functions of your skin, it will allow you to clean your skin without stripping it of its natural and necessary moisture. All my soaps are mild, vegetarian, and as sustainable as I can manage.

Black Honey Soap This soap features a generous dollop of raw honey added to the mix when the lye and oils were still quite hot-- the sugars in the honey "cooked" into a natural caramel color, making additional color unnecessary. Beeswax was added, also, to lend stiffness to the carefully formed top and to increase longevity in the shower. The scent isn't a fresh-honey scent, but rather a richer, more maple-like scent. It is not heavily scented, either way, and won't gag you with syrupy nonsense the way a lot of honey soaps out there do. $5/~4 oz.

Chickadee Soap I like to offer at least one castile or castile-type soap at all times, because they are so gentle on the skin and are therefore appropriate for just about everyone. The recipe features a very, very high percentage of mild olive oil-- and very little else by comparison. This means that the soap is a very firm soap when dry, very gentle in use... and attracts moisture like nobody's business when wet, so please keep it dry between uses if you'd like it to last. I first made this one when one of my best friends, Wendee (one of my two "chickadees" in college) had her first baby. The scent is clean and warm and cool and sort of amberlike and creamy all at once. Some people think "wheat" when they smell it, and some people think "cream"-- I just think of good, clean people and their good, clean babies. (This soap is vegan.) $5/~4 oz.

Olive Oyl Cleanser - Unscented This mild, liquid facial cleanser is a blend of nutritious olive and soothing jojoba oil-- plus a gentle surfactant that allows the oils to rinse cleanly away. This surfactant doesn't foam or strip your skin of its valuable moisture-- it merely allows the oil molecules to become both hydrophobic and hydrophilic. I like to massage the oil into my facial skin with just my fingers, and then use a washcloth to exfoliate before or as I rinse. Available only in unscented/natural for now. Toying with the idea of adding a geranimot and/or tea tree version. Let me know if either of those interest you. (This cleanser is vegan.) $5/~2 oz.