Bar soap is superior to liquid soap

[Twistybranch]

• feel you have it in your for hands longer and have to scrub longer to get the squeaky feeling off the skin- thus feels cleaner
• less waste of packaging
• less waste of product. I feel you use so much more than needed with liquid soaps and bar soap lasts an age
• much much cheaper than liquid soap (standard bar soap vs standard liquid soap, not the fancy stuff)
• looks pretty in a soap dish
• can get really beautiful smelling and looking handmade bars
• hands feel softer

I do keep liquid soap in the bathroom too (for guests to use) but I never see bars in peoples bathrooms anymore.

You're not buying the right one

I didn't use the liquid soap. My quote indicated that like a PP I use bar soap but put out liquid soap for guests.

I touched the soap bottle to move it. It never occurred to me that it could be contaminated and I didn't wash my hands after shifting it a few inches along the basin.

It was these people who popularised the famous Salem painting most older Welsh people have on their wall.
Salem (painting) - Wikipedia

I love bar soap. No one else in my house agrees with me. So I'm able to get lovely posh, handmade bars of soap and it's mine, all mine! 🥰

I often get some gorgeous soaps at Christmas as my family know I love it

This was a brilliant idea, @ThatOneUncomfortableEyelash .

You aren’t the first to have this thought. One of my undergraduate lecturers told us sbout similar experiments conducted - and published - in the 1960s or 70s.

I am not a fan of bars of soap,

As they can look dirty. Fine at people's homes but not in a toilet in pub etc.

As to the dregs, add a bit of water. I do hate it when pump dispenser tubes don't touch the bottom which is silly as can't get to the bottom. DM has a few caps from various toiletries which she swaps when the bottom of the hand cream with pump is at its end. Puts a cap on - and rests it on its lid. If she doesn't have a cap which fits, rests the bottle upside down in a plastic pot or beaker.

Do you mean one of this plasticy netting things?

I don't understand why people like them?! Urgh!!

The idea if shower gel and a "netty thing" makes me recoil!

Natural bar soap and a nice flannel or natural sponge - lovely!

Sounds amazing, do you have a recipe? I’d love to give it a go.

I like bar soap in theory, especially really beautiful posh bars - they look beautiful when new and obviously less packaging waste is great.

But the reality in my experience tends to be that it often goes soft and slimy and I find soap dishes messy and annoying.

I do have bar soap in my bathroom, but I find liquid soap nicer to use to be honest.

I have liquid soap in the kitchen and for that I buy one that comes in a recyclable aluminium can with a reusable pump - you buy the can, open the ring pull top and put the pump on top. Obviously still more packaging than a bar of soap, but at least aluminium is (infinitely) recyclable and the pump isn't a disposable one like on a plastic bottle.

I don't personally notice any difference in softness of hands between bar and liquid really. I think it just depends on the individual product ingredients. Some bars seem moisturising, some don't, same as with liquid.

I do really love beautifully wrapped, old school soaps from old-fashioned pharmacies, especially French ones, with a lovely vintage kind of feel to them. But I'm less fond of an average bar from the supermarket.

Someone up thread mentioned the magnetic holders and that’s what I came in here to mention. My granny had them in her house when I was small. Just a magnet that you pushed into one side of the soap bar, and a metal thing coming out of the wall above the sink that you attached it to. No mess and no mushy soap.

They make your shower gel last longer.

Personally, I use a loofah or often just my hands.

@Twistybranch When I did A level Biology {Years ago!} I did a project on hand washing, using a 'safe' bacteria the tutor bought in for the purpose, and I tested different hand washing washes.

Povidone iodine, Hibiscrub, and cheap white bar soap and a few others.

What was astonishing was how effective the white bar soap was...an old bar, found in the college loos.

It definitely was quite impressive in my few tests on it.

Surgical scrubs were the best, but second place was the bar soap.

The unwashed hands, or just plain water were gross. They grew forests of bacteria on the agar gel.

At home I have liquid soap though, as soap dishes can get so messy.

Pears Soap, oldskool was lovely.

"Some bars seem moisturising, some don't, same as with liquid."

The bars that are moisturising (like the Dove one) aren't real soap.

Probably traditional soap is alkaline and good at washing away bacteria.

Which bar conditioner do you use please? I use soap and shampoo bars but haven't found a conditioner I get on with yet

Have you tried really natural olive one like Nabulsi soap? I found it so gentle, the moisturise with aveeno.

@UnaOfStormhold Lather?

Bet you live in a soft water area...where we are, the water is so hard it almost gives you a black eye if you look at it in the wrong way.

So limestone rich.

Soft water creates a magnificent lather.

I use unscented goats milk soap on my face and find it isn't drying at all
https://capure.co.uk/products/goat-milk-soap-unscented

You can get it from Amazon too

We have an ongoing dispute over this in our house 😂

I prefer liquid, it's just nicer and less messy. Put off bar soap for life by seeing soggy bars hanging around grubby sinks, and childhood memories of the cracked one with black bits in it that my dad used for his wash after work!

Agree with PP faith in nature is a good liquid one, doesn't dry my hands out and can be bought in larger quantities to refill economically.

DH prefers bar soap, for no reason other than it's what he has always used. It makes such a mess and a bar lasts him less than a week so it's not cheap either. He's in charge of scrubbing all the soap residue off the sink/slime out of the plughole, and unblocking the pipe every so often... 🤢

If I lived alone I might use nice smelly bar soaps sometimes, but I don't like sharing them. When I am given the occasional posh one as a gift DH uses it up straight away!

I only disagree with your first bullet point, op.

I use lovely, locally made palm free bar soaps.l, one for each sink and everyone in my home has their own personal bar for washing.

The only time I had a soap bar that cracked, it was made with palm oil. As for grubbiness...if one's hands are so dirty as to make the bar dirty, just rub the bar under clean water before placing it back in the dish 🤷‍♂️

Use free draining soap dishes that are cleaned every week so you never get that build up for soggy soap at the bottom.

@oakleaffy that's really interesting. I don't know if it's widely remembered now but in 2020 scientists found soap was really effective for killing covid-19. Bleach, anti bacs* etc didn't but bog standard soap did.

• obviously, of course, because they're anti bacterials not anti virals

https://www.frenchsoaps.co.uk/
Do some lovely palm oil free soaps, which you can also buy in guest/travel sizes for when you have people to stay. They also do ones on a stick so you don't have to worry about soap dishes .

A friend gave my some beautifully wrapped organic, palm oil free, soaps for Christmas which I'm a recent convert to as well https://www.emmassoap.co.uk/

I prefer bar soap. I find shower gels don't really do the job for me any more. Possibly perimenopause? Anyway, they smell nice for an hour or so but then I start feeling grubby again. The bar soap is much more effective at keeping unwanted smells away for longer.
It's also cheaper and lasts for ages.

I don't like the idea of using someone else's bar soap or other people using mine. I have liquid soap for guests and individual towels (flannel sized) for them to dry hands.

Think I should have tagged @ThatOneUncomfortableEyelash not oakleaffy sorry!

Last try! Soap removes the natural oil your skin secretes which is designed to keep you clean. Odour from bacteria can then penetrate into your skin making it super hard to clean. Of you stop using soap the bacterial odours stay on the surface of your skin so water can wash it off easily. Is it so hard to believe capitalism can sell us products we don't need? It takes a couple of weeks for your skin to recover so don't give up if it feels weird at first.