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Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Weird and Wonderful Dr. Bronner


Does your soap share life lessons with you?

Mine does!

For about the last year, I've been using Dr. Bronner's Organic Castile Soap (in lavender). Castile soap is olive-oil based soap, and greenies everywhere tout the fact that it has few harmful chemicals and can be used to clean almost everything -- you, your hair, your baby, the floor, the bathtub, your laundry. (Click here for more about it's many uses.)

I was anxious to try it, but my first encounter didn't go well. It was a grocery-store brand, and it smelled like death.

I swore off castile soap until I visited my friends Sara and Ron, and they had some Dr. Bronner's in their shower. Yum! It smelled delicious. Not like death at all. When I got home, I got myself some.

You may have seen Dr. Bronner's at Target or the grocery store, and you might have dismissed it. It doesn't exactly jump out at you from the shelves. Dr. Bronner's is known for two things:

1) An incredible lather from only 2-3 drops, meaning that a bottle lasts a lo-o-o-ng time; and
2) The labels are covered with teeny-weeny writing. What does that writing say? Well here's a sample:

Yep. That's Rudyard Kipling's poem, If. Turns out Dr. Bronner was a bit of a kook. He believed in the "All-One-God Faith" and something he called the "Moral ABC". He used his soap labels to spread the word. Now, the labels are as famous as the soap.

All I know is, I love my Dr. Bronner's. The castile soap is great, but almost better is the hand sanitizer. While hand sanitizer isn't necessary for most folks (who really needs to contribute to antibiotic resistance in bacteria?) for someone who goes into random classrooms all the time, "hanitizer" is a necessity. Whenever I bust out the Dr. Bronner's, people say "Oh... that smells good!" as opposed to saying, "Oh... are you squirting gin on your hands?" Knock wood, I haven't gotten sick since I started using it.

Interested in hearing more about Dr. Bronner? Watch below:

6 comments:

grammargeek said...

I adore Dr. Bronner's! We use the peppermint (you know, so my husband doesn't smell like a girl), and it is one of my favorite parts of the morning.

Melanie said...

Oh...are you squirting gin on your hands? LOL!!

Catfish said...

@MG -- if you use hanitizer in the car, it totally smells drunky. I have this fear that I'll hanitize, get pulled over, and then get a DUI for having a car that smells like 100% alcohol.

fourthbreakfast said...

I've been having a lot of guilt over my drugstore shampoo. Good to know. I'll pick some up

Unknown said...

They sent us home with some Castile soap after I had my son. Hadn't thought too much about it since... will have to try some of that brand.

Ren said...

Hello Catfish!

How lovely to hear from you :) Can you believe it's been almost a year since we took the Mondo Beyondo course? And to this day, things are still coming true on my list - including the whole thing about yoga!

Thank you for posting about Dr Bronner - I've always wanted to try it. Will deffo do so now, especially with your endorsment.

Keep well and keep on blogging :)