The Science of Bar Soap...

I used to use the Lever brand - real cheap at Sam's Club. If you use a strainer in the tub or shower, you find the soap is scientifically formulated to clog up such strainers after one use.

PS: how much would you have to be paid to use that 'recycled' mass of soap from the bottom of the dish?

i'm gonna save this one, and get crackin' on another.

eventually i'll have enough slivers saved up to make a whole bar.

and then one day i'll use it, and perhaps realize the awesome cleansing power of cloned soap...

This is how soap reproduces in the wild...

it's really just an interesting phenomenon...

A while back I was saving the unused ends of bar soap and then adding water, mashing them up and forming them into new bars of soap. it was fun for the first few times and then turned into work with very little pay-off. (Soap is pretty cheap). It's neat that your seemed to have formed of it's own volition. Like God, it willed itself into existence.
OK, now I've gone too far. Your blob of soap isn't really anything like God at all...

(or is it?)

I never went quite that far, but when I open a fresh bar, I kind of stick the old sliver to the new bar. If they're both wet, it usually works well.

Yeah? I do that! the first couple of showers they don't seem to want to stick, and then they kind of melt into each other and become one. It's so nice to have kindred spirits! People in the real world tend to roll their eyes at me a lot.

Well, I admit I don't share little tips like that with anyone I haven't known for awhile.

I don't use bar soaps anymore. They are too dirty. Really. I have seen mold on bars of soap that have sat for a while. I would not use that gunk that was on the bottom of the tray.

(I do use Fels Naptha bar soap- softened to a wall paper paste consistency and then watered down- to spray on my roses)

What do you use for bathing? I have a liquid tea tree oil soap, but it's a bit pricy for daily usage.

RP, you literally made me sick to my stomach with that picture.
Basically, that's a piece of hardened soap scum.


I would have been cleaning that thing out after every bar.

I make my own foaming soap with Dr. Bronner's Castile liquid soap.

I have several foaming soap dispensers. 20% Dr. Bronners Peppermint Soap (or whatever other scent you like, and 80% water.

Use it for both hand soap and in the shower. Very sanitary.

BTW, I also make my own daily shower cleanser spray.

3 cups water
1/2 cup peroxide
1/2 cup rubbing alcohol
1 teaspoon Dr. Bronners or dish soap (I like Dr. Bronners because it smells fresh. Either Citrus or Pepperment.
1 tablespoon dishwasher rinse agent.

Hint add the water first or the suds will go all over.


Works super well.

I am so humbled. I knew it was a mistake to admit to salvaging soap slivers. Maybe I can get someone to delete that post.

I'm odd, as many on a2k know. I have close to no sense of smell, multiply tested. This, of course, has been a complex worry in my life (2 mercapton ethanol? Have Jo measure it..). I can't smell gas, for example. Or roses, a difficulty for a landscape architect, in my second career.

In recent books I've been reading, I notice a lot of detail used now about aromas, and much more. I'm glad about it, almost understand, but don't.

Bar soap, um, I'm still using stuff from hotels/alberghi.

What can I smell? garlic, a source of joy.

I don't give a **** what you do with your soap roger.

I was sharing what I do, and how well it works as far as keeping the entire room it's in cleaner.

Since soap is for cleaning, I like to keep it clean, and all the areas that soap collects via steamy air, collecting as soap scum.

I hate cleaning in general, bathroom in particular, so I try to keep it from getting messed up in the first place.

Adds, I spent fair time with dr.brommers too.

I'll keep that in mind.

My grandmother has a 'soap saver' like this...



Do Americans make jokes about not dropping the soap in the shower when you are in jail, like we do in Britain?

I haven't touched bar soap in at least 20 years. When I had skin cancer I started bathing and washing my hair with borax. I prefer it now, so never went back to bar soap.