Teach Soap

As long as you do not use water or a watery ingredient (or a humectant) you do not need preservative . It will last at least as long as the shortest shelf life oil/butter you have, all things being equal. In other words, if the oils were stored correctly by the vendor and by you, as long as the product doesn't sit in direct light, doesn't have massive temp changes, doesn't come in contact with water etc. Since it is for you, don't worry about the date, just when it smells bad, toss it.

Given how bad his hands usually become, if he is not proactive with the balm and with using good soap, he will get that way again. Gloves and regular skin care will help a lot, if not fix the problem!

Good luck!

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy

Not to lengthen the debate, but I think it's more a matter of commercial soap being more drying than handmade soap being more moisturizing. Either way, we all know it's better, right! So the reason doesn't matter.

But I do think there are things you can put in a handmade soap to the benefit of his skin- milk and oatmeal, for example, help soften the skin, even though they are in a wash off product. You could also make an exfoliating scrub. I know it would be a hard sell to get my husband to use something like that, but then again if he needed it bad enough I think he would. An nice gentle scrub made with clay (a gentle clay like kaolin), ground oats, and a moisturizing oil would be good. Maybe some sugar as well if you want it a little more course.

And the balm/lotion recomendations are all good ones. All the butters have their benefits- I make a balm that has shea, cocoa, kokum, and mango butters in it that people seem to love. Just try out what you have access to. Start out with things you already have on hand for soaping (liquid or solid oils), then add if you feel inclined to. And cracked hands are usually NOT a fungus like cracked feet.

I must say that I had horrible hands in the winter. They would start to get super dry around the end of September (and it's still summer here at that time) and by end of November they were cracked and bleeding and would stay that way until Spring. I tried everything to get rid of it because it is painful. Once I started making my own soap and using that exclusively, I no longer have bad winter hands. I haven't suffered from that in 4 years. I don't use lotion since I have fish tanks and never know when I will have to stick my hand in the tank for one reason or another. I don't know if it's because handmade soap is more moisturizing or if it is because there are no detergents and surfectants in it but I do know that it works.

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Haven

I don't use any preservatives in my lotion bar. Basically, a lotion bar is a giant stick of lipbalm, so if you have a lipbalm recipe you like, you can use that. Most people use a roll-up container, like a deodorant container. For my personal use, I actually just save deodorant containers and re-use them.

For heavy-duty moisturizing, I love lanolin, but it does not absorb fast!