About Marilyn

Made the Way It Should Be

Marilyn Nicholas started making her own home and body products because she didn't trust what was on the store shelves. The ingredient lists were too long, the chemicals were too hard to pronounce, and the products weren't working the way they were supposed to.

So she went back to basics. She learned cold-process soap making. She rendered tallow the way frontier women did. She figured out that eggshells could become calcium supplements, that simple powder formulas could clean dishes and laundry better than anything in a plastic jug at the grocery store.

Monroe's Prairie Living is what happened when her neighbors started asking for what she was making. One order became ten. Ten became a business. And the business has never strayed from what it started as — products made by one person, with her hands, using ingredients she'd put in her own body.

"The old ways work. They always worked. We just forgot about them for a while."