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The Why and How
It all started with a little girl, a boo boo and a passion.
Hi, my name is Marita Len and for all intensive purposes, I am the "owner" of The Long Rose. I say this loosely, as the company has evolved over the years due to input from a consortium of professionals, consumers and muses.
The little girl is my daughter. Boo boos are something that she manages to encounter on a daily basis, but the difference is, her skin is so sensitive that Band-Aids can only be used sparingly. She breaks out, has skin reactions and that becomes another boo boo.
During the first year of her life, she had diaper rashes, allergic reactions and rashes on top of rashes. I tried all of the usual approaches, took all of the advice from everyone else who has ever had children, used the "stuff" on the shelves in every drugstore, grocer and specialty store and, of course, none of it worked. I started looking at natural products, because they are better.....right?
Wrong.
After delving into a maddening rabbit hole of "natural this" and "organic that", what started as the Mad Hatter's Party began to unravel into the sad reality of what is actually in skin care products on the shelves today. And the dance of deception that companies, natural or not, perform to get the attention (and the wallet) of the consumer.
I spent hours (quite literally 12 to 16 at a time) researching ingredients, processes, packaging and medical journals. The more I unraveled, the more disturbed I became. I proclaimed to everyone around me at the time, to their dismay, all of the dangers hidden within mainstream body care.
No one cared.
The more I proclaimed, the more people looked at their watches and sighed. I became the, "Wow, really? Well I gotta go______________(fill in the blank with any excuse to get away..sew buttons on ice cream...bathe the iguana...poke my eye out....whatever.)"
My husband said I was too preachy.
For a while I stopped. Even now I tone it down.
Some.
I decided to take it further. I met with many of the "Natural" body care companies' chemists, owners and spokespeople. I asked question after question and listened intently to their answers. I watched, I learned, I observed some more.... and I got angry.
Particularly frustrating are those body care companies that market Baby or Children's Products to be 100% Natural, Safe and Effective. These were the companies I had trusted to help my daughter and they had failed.
I started making my own products. For my daughter and husband, mainly. Other people took notice and liked what I was doing.
Long story longer...The Long Rose LLC became what it is today.
Preachy? Maybe.
Passionate? Definitely.
I feel strongly that if consumers knew exactly what is in that drugstore soap, lotion or "ceutical", how the chemicals interact with human cells and that no organization is monitoring what goes on to store shelves, they would be outraged.
Consider this....skin is the largest organ of your body. What you put on your skin gets absorbed into your body. Depending on the compound, anywhere from 70-90% gets absorbed. Once inside,compounds can be absorbed into your cells. Some of these compounds are not meant to be contained within a cell. Some get expelled from the body via the usual routes. Some get stored within body fat and over time, accummulate, causing the body to struggle to keep up with ridding itself of these toxins.
Imagine that you continue to put these compunds onto your skin, for the course of your life time. After 50 years of bioaccummulation, what are the odds that you may reach the "high dose" level that researchers claim when testing a compound for toxicity?
It's something to consider.
Our Soap Story
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The Long Rose uses the old fashioned cold process method of making our soaps. Most of the commercial bar soaps you find in grocery stores, drugstores, etc...are not soap at all, they are detergent bars, originally formulated for laundry. The cold process method of making soap utilizes a calculated system of combining fats and oils with sodium hydroxide (NaOH or lye). The volatile reaction is unique to soapmaking and even has its own name.....saponification. This reaction produces a natural emolient within the soap called glycerin. Commercial manufacturers extract the glycerin (if the saponification process ever happened at all, as most commercial bars are just a soup of chemicals, dried and pressed together). Glycerin is a sought after commodity in the cosmetics and body care industry.
We don't extract the glycerin, it's in all of our bars, helping to moisturize your skin. After the oils and lye are put together to start the saponification process, it doesn't end there. The mixture is poured into molds to continue the reaction for roughly 12-48 hours, depending on the soap recipe and mold size. The slabs are then unmolded and the soap is cut into bars. The bars at this point are still continuing the saponification process so we allow our bars to cure for at least 1 month (preferably 2). This transforms the soap into the gentlest cleanser you can put on your skin, glycerin and all!
Many customers report that skin problems they were having prior to using our soaps significantly reduced or disappeared altogether! It isn't magic, it's just what skin SHOULD be using.
There are many handmade soapmakers out there, but very few can actually make the claim that their soaps are truly all natural. There are different grades of oils and different ways of processing them. We use food grade oils; organic oils when possible. This is more expensive, but we feel the end result of the products are worth the extra price. Some of the more delicate oils are added after trace, when the soap mixture isn't as hot. This maintains as much of the oils' healing properties as possible.
Another big difference between our soaps and many of our competitors is that we do not use colorants. Many soap makers use micas, minerals or dyes to enhance the colors of their soaps. Other than making the product appear more attractive, these additives are not skin beneficial, and some may even cause irritation to very sensitive skin.
In addition, the majority of our soaps use 100% pure essential oils, not fragrance oils. Fragrance oils are many times the #1 cause of allergies and skin irritations. Fragrance oils are man made chemical versions of scents that are found in nature, but are either too expensive to use or cannot be extracted. Common fragrance oils used in soapmaking are almond, strawberry and any fruit (other than citrus, which can be extracted easily as an essential oil), cucumber, melon and so on.... Another very common scent used in soapmaking is vanilla. Most soapers use a fragrance oil, as actual vanilla oil is roughly $300 an ounce. Our soaps are actually made with vanilla essential oil.
Very few of our soaps contain fragrance oil, but we ALWAYS disclose this on the label, even if it's only a drop. We would want to know, and we feel the consumer should know too. |
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