Tuesday Flashback: Ignorance. Perception. Reality.

On October 19, 2011, I posted about the ignorance of this disposable-society, the perception of price, and the reality of the products we buy.

I wanted to post this post again, so that everyone who may have missed it the first time around could go back and read it, and be reminded of its message.

Ignorance. Perception. Reality. by Dream Weaving, October 19, 2011

Think once again about everything you own.  How much of it is special to you? How much of it can you tell others about – who made it, what it’s made of, how it was made?

I’m willing to bet there isn’t much.

If you find yourself without a single thing you can do that with – look through the shops I’ve featured, or head over to Zibbet and see if you find something there that takes your fancy.  There are some wonderful artists there who post their hard work in the hopes that someone will find and purchase it, knowing they have just purchased a hand-crafted work of art that they can name the maker, the material, and know a little about how it was made, rather than saying “It was made in <Other Country> by some machine… I have no idea what it’s REALLY made of…”

In fact…
I shall stand on a soapbox for a moment (rather literally).

Up until a few months ago, I was a fan of Bath and Body Works.  I used to purchase their bottles of lotion and bodywash for $8.50 back when I started purchasing (now it’s $12.50, for the same sizes, or they were in December 2012).  I loved their musky scents, since fruit and most flowers just didn’t work for me.
They stopped making nearly all of the musky scents, focusing exclusively on fruit and flowers.

Also, I NEEDED that lotion and body cream I used.  I stepped out of the shower, my skin felt tight and parched.

I got tired of it, and the last straw was when I found out that my favorite scent, which I finally got my bathroom decked out in, was discontinued and only online in limited stock.
Enough was enough.

Some time ago, back in July of 2009, I showed off some soap from a woman named Heidi on Etsy.  I thought back to the sample she sent to me of her shea-butter Cherry Blossom soap, and remembering that my skin felt lovely after, and the little sample of Lavender moisturizing cream (only half gone in 2012) was still just as wonderful as the day I’d gotten it.
I went back and got more in one of my favorite BBW scents.
… and finished off what I had left from Bath and Body Works, never to purchase from them again.

I asked Heidi for suggestions to replace my favorite (Now DISCONTINUED) scent.  She offered suggestions, and I found one of her scents that I fell in love with.
I promptly replaced ALL of my soaps and lotions with her products.
… and found that HER products last twice as long as BBW’s did, and my skin is so much healthier and happier.

The ingredients aren’t listed on BBW’s products – or rather, not on all of them.
The ones that do have the ingredients listed are unpronounceable chemicals, and the list would eat half this blog post.

Heidi’s ingredients… well let’s say if I didn’t know it was SOAP I’d try to eat it.

I also decided to try to hook my family on her work by giving each of the girls a bar of soap and a jar or bottle of her lotion/cream.
My nieces are allergic to shea and cocoa butter, and I asked if Heidi had anything without them – she told me she has products that fit that, and they could be made in any of the scents her shea-butter products were!

… What’s that BBW? If I have allergies, I have 1-2 scents to choose from?  BZZZZZT. Wrong answer.

My bathroom is decked out with bar-soap, body cream, mini rose hand-soaps, and sugar scrub in two scents (summer scent and winter scent), and body spray in my summer scent, and I just got hand-soap for the upcoming holidays in a fall spicy scent and a winter evergreen scent, shaped like snowflakes!

My bath products all match!
And for each “set” (Bar soap, whipped soap, body cream, sugar scrub and hand-soaps) I paid as much as I would for JUST one bottle of bodywash and JUST one tube of body cream from BBW. Mm. Let’s see here. FIVE products that were HAND CRAFTED that last longer than the TWO I could have gotten that were made somewhere with who knows what for the same price?
Perspective!

But Bath and Body Works is a HUGE name brand!!
Ignorance!

My skin, my mother’s skin, my sisters’ skin, my nieces’ skin all are healthier after using Heidi’s products, and we have to purchase them less often than we did BBW’s stuff.
REALITY.

Want to take the challenge?
Heidis Handmades
The Bubbling Cauldron
She just opened her shops on Zibbet, but I’d also bought her things while she was on Etsy as well. (I prefer buying things on Zibbet – the artists do not have a percentage of their sales taken from them by the listing site.  Etsy not only charges per listing but also takes away 3.5% of each sale from the artists.)
She has all kinds of goodies for men and women and children alike, and she’s not shy about sharing her ingredients right in her listings.

I shall step off my soapbox now to let you go and look around at the things you purchase and ponder about where they came from and who made them, and whether they’re really worth the price you paid.

Thanks everyone for reading!  See you Thursday for my next feature!