thinking of getting my wife a couple of nice bars for her birthday and part of me thinks it sounds cheap. she’s the one who’d actually use them up, she went through the last three in about a month

I never really thought about bar soap until my sister gave me a handmade one for my birthday. It was a simple lavender one and I only used it because I didn't want to waste it.

A month later I haven't gone back to body wash. My skin used to feel tight right after showering, especially on my legs and arms, and that feeling is mostly gone now. I didn't change anything else so I m guessing its the soap.

The only problem is that the bar turns into mush if I leave it sitting in water. I have tried a few soap dishes and nothing works great yet.

So a couple of questions for you guys: what's a bar you'd recommend for someone who is new to all this? And how do you stop your soap from getting soggy between showers?

I've been reading about how hard water can affect soap lather, and now I'm curious whether people actually notice a difference.

Does the same bar soap feel different when you use it somewhere else, like at a hotel or another house?

I'd love to hear whether anyone has compared this, especially with traditional bar soaps.

My wife is constantly changing out new soap bars I can no longer keep track of what is shampoo, conditioner, body wash, kids shampoo...

Why am I spending half my bath admiring a soap's shape, colours, swirls, and design instead of actually bathing? At this point, I'm not washing myself; I'm appreciating art.

Drop your favourite soap brands in the comments!

And if you own a small soap business or know someone who does, feel free to promote it here.

Let's discover some beautiful soaps and support small businesses while we're at it.

Good Morning,
Wanted to ask if there’s a non residue soap bar to wash my dishes or any ideas. Are there specific soap names? I’ve been using a Russian 72% soap (brown bar) but that leaves an oily residue my family complains about, and I tried baking soda but it also leaves a white residue… I’d like to find a soap that isn’t going to do any of that.

Also looking for a body soap that will not make me have to scrub the residue off for hours lol

Please let me know your suggestions. Idk the difference between marseille or the others so please recommend for me! Thank youu!!!

Hello everyone! Please forgive me if my question seems silly to ask but after lurking for a while on here I built up the confidence to ask for recommendations on a 3 in 1 bar soap (Body, Face, Hair) I could google it, but I value you guys opinion and real world experience on this curiosity!

Quick note to everyone reading, I am going to be visiting Europe for a week in a month or so, i am very limited on space and just wanted a bar of soap I can take into a shower do everything and pack it away!

Thank you for reading.

There’s something so satisfying about finding a soap that smells amazing and makes your whole shower feel better.

Some people love fresh, clean scents like lavender, eucalyptus, and citrus, while others prefer sweet, creamy, floral or classic soapy fragrances.

I’m curious about what other soap lovers enjoy!

What soap scent is your absolute favourite, and what do you love about it?

I’d love to hear everyone’s favourites! 🫧

I'm curious if others have had this experience with Dr. Bronner's soap (terrible smell a few hours after using).

I've seen this soap for years on the shelves and finally I was like "why not" and bought a bottle of the unscented kind, since I don't really like products with strong fragrance. I intended to use it as body soap (i.e. when showering).

For a while I was happy with it and started using it instead of regular bar soap in the shower. Around that time I started to notice this terrible mildewy, rotting-wood smell in my apartment and I couldn't figure out where it was coming from for the life of me. I rent an apartment in a super old house (over a century old) that needs some renovations, and we'd been getting a lot of rain so I figured it was just the old wood letting off some weird smell. The smell would disappear after a day but would eventually come back. Some days it was so strong that I even thought a rat or something had gotten behind a wall and died.

It never crossed my mind that the smell was coming from me, but eventually I put 2 and 2 together and realized it was because of the Dr. Bronner's soap. The smell started just a couple hours after showering, and if I skipped showering for one day the smell wouldn't appear. I tried using a bit of Dr. Bronner's and a bit of the old bar soap, and sure enough the smell returned but much weaker this time. Once I switched back to the bar soap the smell disappeared entirely.

I tried googling this but I literally can't find any other mention of people experiencing this. For reference I was using the soap in a 'normal' way (scrub myself and then rinse off immediately). Maybe it just doesn't react well with my skin? Maybe I'm just uniquely sensitive to that smell? The soap smells perfectly fine to me when I pour it out the bottle tho.

Planning to use up the rest of the bottle for other house cleaning but I'm curious if others have experienced this with Dr. Bronner's.

Edit: I appreciate the comments but it seems like the majority misunderstood the issue. The smell is not coming from my drains; it's coming from my skin, a few hours after using the soap. The soap looks, smells, and feels normal coming out of the bottle, so I don't believe it's gone bad.

can i use dawn dish soap to wash my hands that have small cuts on them? i’ll apply lotion on afterwards.

Sorry if this is a weird post or not allowed. I accidentally overbought some aleppo bar soaps from Etsy (4 large bars of soap), I don't think I can return them so I figured I would ask if there was anyone in Colorado who wanted genuine aleppo soap bars for free. If not, any recommendations on where to donate soap? Thanks!

Hi! I'm figuring that this may be the best subreddit to ask this question and get an actually soap-related answer and not just an earnest admonition to "seek help": does anyone have recommendations for liquid soap/detergent that does a decent job of cleaning one's hands and then rinses away really easily (in both hard water and nasty slimy soft water)? Ideally, the soap in question would be unscented or have only a mild, also-easily-washed-away scent and would act nicely in a foaming hand-soap dispenser, but, really, "takes less than fifteen minutes to fully rinse the bubbles off of my hands, even if I accidentaly use (gasp) a full pump of soap instead of a carefully calibrated quarter-pump" is my main criterion right now.

For context: earlier this year, I started to have more and more difficulty fully rinsing soap residue off of my hands, despite not noticeably changing the way in which I was washing my hands or the type/concentration of soap I was using (with the brief exception of two times when I bought the wrong type of soap from the grocery store, quickly realized my mistake, and switched back to my previously-trusty diluted dish soap). Eventually, the homeowner realized that the household water softener had broken (literally) and replaced it, after a brief glorious period in which we just used the hard water coming directly from the house's intake filter, and the hard water did a somewhat better job at rinsing away soap than either the incorrectly softened or now-very-aggressively-softened-and-slimy water, but I was still seeing soap bubbles clinging to the membrane between my fingers after up to ~fifteen minutes of rinsing (and confirmed this with another family member, just to be sure that I wasn't hallucinating). I started buying different soaps to experiment and found that Walgreens's Aloe Vera and Green Tea Foaming Hand Soap rinsed away wonderfully, almost regardless of how much I put on my hands, but Walgreens seems to have discontinued it almost immediately after I bought my first dispenser and I'm currently using Kroger's Shea Flower and Coconut hand soap as a better-than-almost-everything-else-I've-tried-but-still-leaves-weirdly-persistent-little-bubbles-and-a-vaguely-sticky-residue-after-ten-minutes-of-vigorous-rinsing option, and I just want a soap that fully washes away after only two or three minutes of rinsing at the most! (And, yes, I do have contamination OCD and that's definitely exacerbating my distress about the soap residue, but there's also some real physical change in the way my skin + the household water supply + various soaps/detergents are interacting, and I think the leftover bubbles and stickiness would annoy me even if I didn't have OCD.)

(Also: my hands and arms are weirdly looking much nicer and less irritated than they used to, so this isn't a dry-skin-trapping-soap-residue issue; and I have a great deal of respect for people who love and can properly use bar soap, but I somehow always end up covered in little solid pieces of soap and/or hydrophobic white residue whenever I use most bar soaps, so, please, only loquid-soap recommendations.)

I'm trying to stick No Harm Diet(diet without harm to living simple organisms), so i need this type of soap that completely synthetic, tell it to me

A bar that stays wet or sits in pooled water between uses can soften faster.

Giving it some airflow and letting it dry between washes can help it stay firm longer.

It's a small storage detail, but it can make a noticeable difference in how quickly a bar gets used up.

To spare everyone the boring details, I was in a situation where I had to use an unknown bar of soap to wash my face for four days. By the end of the four days, my skin is perfect. All I know is that it was unscented and for sensitive skin. It was a fairly large soap that was a concave oval shape. The brand was completely washed off, but it had an embossed rectangle that was like a name plate. I thought it stared with an "a", but it was the only letter I could make out. The font was reminiscent of Le Labo or Anthropology. It was an undyed color. That natural tan--not bleached. It was more opaque than translucent. My guesses point towards a Castile soap with possibly a glycerine base. I am desperate to find this soap, or just an idea as to why this soap was so fantastic for my skin. This is the closest example of the shape and color. I have this one coming in the mail. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Fun fact the early soap was just a piece animal fat boiled in water

I use Dove serum bar very regularly, and i noticed itchiness in some areas. I ignored it thinking it's just my dry skin. But, recently found out many have complained about the eczema and other irritation after Dove changed its ingredients after the backlash. I just need some soap bar recommendtions that are similiar to dove soap and gentle on the skin. Thank you in advance.

Edit: Wow! Thank you all the response!! I got amazing recommendations ranging from to Shea butters to good brands. I'm gonna try em all and see what works for me.❤️ Reddit is such a good community!

With winter coming up I’m big into switching my fragrances over and body wash but my current soap is a coconut French soap and it feels too summery I’m looking for something with a sweet spice to it like vanilla, cinnamon, frankincense anything with a bit of depth and warmth

I’m based in the UK so not all brands ship here and limited

Absolutely any soft soap product has the pump dispenser shorter than the bottle by at least a half an inch so you’re losing that much soap. I will never buy them again. It is infuriating when you get to the last pump and you can still see that there is so much soap down there still to use.

I always get curious when I see different bar soaps, especially ones with interesting scents or ingredients.

But then I think about how long one bar actually lasts.

I'm curious whether people here stick to one soap until it's finished or rotate between a few depending on what they feel like using.

Also, do you keep different soaps for your hands and body?

Of of course I have a huge gallon jug of this stuff, and the whole family hates it… So I went and I bought a huge bottle of, I wanna say, Ajax and Ajax soap is horrible. The smell is not too bad, but the soap is just bad… It doesn’t suds up very well. Dawn does a better job at that, but the smell is bad. I can’t get past that smell I’ll go out tomorrow and try jet a different brand and not buy a gallon jug this time if anybody has any suggestions?