These soap dishes are crafted from beechwood by an excellent woodworker in the Pacific Northwest. He uses scrap lumber from a lumber supplier and mill in the Portland area.
To quote Chris; "My strong business relationship with the lumber supplier goes back to the days of our family custom cabinet business. I've carried that relationship into my new business. The mill is supplying me with all short mill end pieces that are worthless to them, but to me they are the perfect manageable size for what I am making. It's a win-win...much better than sending the small pieces [overseas] where they will be ground up and used for particle board and then sold back to the US for cheap cabinet and construction materials."
Chris' business model is a perfect fit for Toledo Soap Co's north star of making quality items in the most sustainable way possible. These soap dishes are beautiful, lightweight, and all-natural. They are ridged on both sides to allow maximum airflow around both the soap and between the dish and the sink. This will extend the life of your soap and your dish.
For the best experience, I recommend using two beechwood soap dishes - use one for about a month, the let it dry out while using the second one for a month. Part of going low waste is learning to work with the essence of natural materials, and a wooden soap dish is very low waste. One of the aspects of using wood though is that it should be allowed to dry out here and there. Thankfully, these soap dishes are very cost-effective due to Chris' ingenuity, and I am passing along their low cost to you.
(Alternatively, you can apply a wood wax or oil to the soap dish to help it repel water.)
Grab as many as you would like, and know your purchase is helping two small businesses while reducing waste. :)
These soap dishes are nice and compact at 4"x2.75". *Note: If you have soap dishes from the 2021 holiday season, this round of dishes is slightly bigger, and made of beech, which is slightly more red in tone. (For reference, the previous poplar offering measured 3"x2.75").