Salicylate free soaps to clean your hands, your dishes, and your clothes!

One of the first places I tackled when switching to salicylate free products was in the soap I used to wash my hands and the dishwashing liquid we use in the kitchen. I already knew that most scented products bothered me but had found a few that I could tolerate. Tolerate being the key word here.

Before going down this path, I had no idea how many products I was using contained high levels of salicylates. From hand soaps to dish soap, laundry detergent to cleaning products, salicylates are everywhere. And some can be more difficult to substitute than others.

Thankfully, soaps seem to be fairly easy to swap out for something safer.

My best friend on the quest to remove salicylates from our cleaning products was SalSearch, a search engine designed to help you detect salicylates contained in ingredients of cosmetics and care products. You just copy and paste an ingredient list from the internet and it will break down the ingredients and tell you which ones contain salicylates. One note of caution: it manually overrides the term fragrance, so there still could be hidden salicylates in products that are scented. Always opt for unscented whenever possible.

Also, since products change regularly, it’s always a good idea to check again before you buy. It never hurts to plug ingredients into SalSearch. I’ve done it while standing in the store to confirm because I’m not convinced I know all of the ways salicylates hide in products (aloe vera, I’m looking at you).

With that being said, here are the salicylate free soaps I’ve been using for my hands, dishes, and laundry. All were confirmed by SalSearch to be salicylate free.

• For hand soap, I’ve been using Everspring Free & Clear liquid and foaming hand soap from Target (US). It doesn’t seem to cause any reactions, nor does it seriously dry out my skin. Best of all, there is no fragrance floating around and sneaking up on me. I am a happy happy girl.

• For our dishwashing liquid, I swapped out our blue Dawn for Palmolive Pure + Clear* UNSCENTED dish soap. I had used the Palmolive Pure + Clear dish soap in the past but decided to switch to Dawn a while back when I was on a quest to make the best homemade bubbles for my daughter. I guess I’ll leave the Dawn for our bubble making pursuits and stick to the Palmolive for the dishes. One thing to note: there are two different Pure + Clear varieties, so make sure to grab the UNSCENTED one.

• For our laundry detergent, I switched to Arm + Hammer Sensitive Skin Free & Clear* based on the recommendation of several people in the Salicylate Sensitivity Facebook group that I belong to. This swap has made a HUGE difference in how I feel, reducing how itchy my skin is and reducing some of the random nausea bouts I would have throughout the day. It has also helped in some unexpected ways. Yesterday, I put on a pair of leggings that still had some of the old laundry detergent residue on it (I had recently washed in the new detergent but could smell the old one on the pants still) and I broke out into an red itchy rash almost immediately. ?
  
  When I was switching out the laundry detergent, I pulled aside the old scented stuff to pass along to someone from our local Buy Nothing group and had set it on our kitchen table. Unbeknownst to me, my youngest took the lid off and pushed it off the table where it was sitting, spilling more than half of the bottle onto our kitchen floor and all over her chair. Having to clean it up gave me a full blown panic attack and made my hands itchy for hours. I had to leave the house while my husband had the air purifier running so that I wouldn’t melt down again.

I’m still learning what works for me and finding safe products, but I am thrilled with how big of an impact swapping out these three products for safer ones has been. Do you have any favorite salicylate free soaps that you use in your home? What are your go-to hand soaps, dish soap, and laundry detergent? I’d love to know what has worked for you so that I can add it to my list!

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