A Soap Story

This week I achieved perfection for the first time. It was an amazing feeling to accomplish something so difficult after so many years of effort.

For someone who grew up in a cost conscious environment with parents’ attitudes shaped by The Great Depression, it was the ultimate achievement. For believers in “A penny saved is a penny earned,” it was winning the lottery. And for those of us who were lectured to ‘clean our plates’ at dinner because of the starving children in Indian and China, it was a moment of celebration.

For someone who worships efficiency, it was the Holy Grail. If you believe in environmental conservation, it was the ultimate “green” moment.

First, I should provide some context.

For my entire life, I have used bars of soap to clean myself. As a baby, my mother used soap in my baths. As an adult, I continue to prefer bars of soap when showering or bathing.

I feel very much in the minority in this regard, however. My sons use bath/shower gel; my ex girlfriend used a particular and expensive gel; my gym only provides gel (the bulk variety with a heavy dose of artificial scent). When I stay in hotels, they often provide miniature soap bars but multiple bottles of bath and shower gel. The consumers appear to have turned to gel and abandoned soap bars.

I am not sure why this has happened. To me, gel is like shampoo. I shampoo my hair but why would I want to shampoo my body? Years ago, I regularly shampooed the family dog; but he had fur. He also did not appreciate it and went into escape mode whenever I approached with the shampoo and a bucket of water. I tried to shampoo the family cat one time; it took weeks for the claw marks on my hands and arms to heal.

I prefer plain soap. Most soaps have many added ingredients. Some make you smell like strawberries or other ‘pleasant’ scents. I do really not want to smell like a strawberry. A friend gave me a present that included a few soaps. One makes you smell like cucumbers. I don’t want to smell like a cucumber either.

Only mad scientists can understand other listed ingredients in soap. One of the gift bars has ingredients like hydrogenated rice bran – sounds like I should be eating this instead of washing with it. Other inclusions are: coconut stearic acid, glycerine, sodium hydroxide, zinc oxide, citric acid, and perfume. What happened to plain soap?

After an extensive search, I found a relatively plain soap. The actual brand is called ‘Simple Soap.’ I just do not understand why simple soap costs more than complicated soap. Maybe they put all the ingredients in the soap and then take them out. It is confusing.

The increasing consumer preference for gel may make my accomplishment increasingly rare in society. Maybe it will stand as an eternal record.

Perhaps, I overstate the importance of my feat. It is not a miracle. An image of the Virgin Mary did not appear in my soap bar. My soap did not wash away poverty or feed anyone. I still tend to sink when I swim too many laps at the local pool. The accomplishment is much more modest; it is just remarkable to me within the narrow confines of my daily experience.

Everyone who uses bars of soap understands that the bar slowly decreases in size as it is used. Eventually, the remaining piece of soap becomes too small to use practically and is discarded. The challenge for all of us soap bar users is when to discard the diminishing residual bar.

Soap does not cost much money, especially, if you buy the perfumed variety. So continuing to use the ever-vanishing bar is not just a money saving technique. It is more about being efficient and not wasteful. Perhaps, it is a moral statement committing to use environmental resources wisely. Or maybe it is the legacy of the Great Depression, or maybe something else. Regardless, the challenge of washing with a residual fragment of soap is, for me and fellow bar washers, a common occurrence.

Eventually, I discard the residual soap fragment and start over with a new, full sized bar. Sometimes, I drop the fragment on the floor of the shower and it disappears down the drain. Occasionally, I will toss the fragment in the toilet; that requires walking from the shower carrying wet soap and then rinsing my hands of the offending soap. It is usually easier just to leave the soap in the soap dish and let the fragments just accumulate; after a year or two all are discarded when I throw out the disgusting soap dish.

But today the “miracle” happened. I used a bar of soap until it was no more. 100% used; no soap fragment remained to be discarded. I looked in disbelief at my hands as I stood in the shower that morning. I looked at the shower floor; I looked at my body to see if a fragment had latched on to a leg or arm. The bar of soap had completely dissolved with no trace remaining as I finished my shower. I had achieved perfect efficiency with no waste. The starving children in India and China will be pleased.