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Alternative for unwanted soap

Counted roughly 18 soap containers. Hard to believe the third and fourth photos of all the soaps mashed together combined with the tiny B&B Halloween bats flying around likely represent $250 - $300 worth of product.🙂. Definitely not the impression of a premium shaving product with a pleasant aroma that these soaps were sold as.

Suggest that these photos be made required viewing for anyone requiring a cold turkey cure for SAD.🤣

Kidding aside no reason for @Leverspro not to get some utility from a no longer needed product.
Bats?! Oh yeah. It's that time year. There is a setting for your profile to turn themes off if you so choose.
It's true. Those empty tubs represent a lot of cash. Most of them were just O-ring shaped scraps at the bottom of the tub that I just didn't have the patience to wear down to zero. But there were a few premium priced duds (for me) that really disappointed me (mostly in the scent dept) that I won't get into here. Lovely smelling utility room today!
 
How long did you dry them?

If you dry them out fully, they should be good for more than 3 normal showers.
I don't know. I'm fairly impatient. A few days maybe? I also stuck them in one of those soap mesh bags so they didn't crumble all apart as easily.

Believe me, I hated the soap I did this to so was super glad they disappeared as quickly as they did. ;)
 
But I shave with bath soap scraps which costs little or nothing. He takes expensive shaving soaps and turns them, maybe, into some sort of ugly bath soap. It’s the opposite of what I do. It’s a waste of expensive soaps, of which he has, by his own admission, too many. Is he a victim of SAD?
 
A guy who has posted as frequently as you do about being cheap, not spending money unnecessarily, and avoiding high cost items ought to appreciate a thread where unused soap is turned into a useful item without spending money.
Sorry, you’ve got it wrong. See above. If he turned his Wolfman into a hammer, he wouldn’t be frugal, he’d be a wasteful fool.
 
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luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
Sorry, you’ve it wrong. See above
He has them. He doesn't like them for shaving. Would it be better to throw them away?
Barring having a time machine to go back in time and avoid purchasing them to begin with, this seems like a pretty frugal thing to do.
This would be much easier if you could just provide us a list of things which you find acceptable to spend money on, and which activities you find are acceptable for repurposing or saving money on so that we can all avoid mentioning any that you disapprove of.
Till then, I guess we'll just have to risk it.
 
He has them. Would it be better to throw them away?
Barring having a time machine to go back in time and avoid purchasing them to begin with, this seems like a pretty frugal thing to do.
This would be much easier if you could just provide us a list of things which you find acceptable to spend money on, and which activities you find are acceptable for repurposing or saving money on so that we can all avoid mentioning any that you disapprove of.
Till then, I guess we'll just have to risk it.
No need to try and please me. I won’t be offended. People are and should be free to spend their money on anything they want to. And I can think what I want about it.
 

Hannah's Dad

I Can See Better Than Bigfoot.
Nice job @Leverspro ! I often combine ignored/unwanted soaps with used ones to create different scent creations.

I combined B&M Four Horsemen samples recently - mixed Death with Hallows (really close scent profiles); Plague and Famine mixed well together to create ‘Flague’, added my sample of Miur Woods to Fougere Gothique (love what it added to FG!).

This is my way of using soaps I might not otherwise use, without them being resigned to the shower.
 
Bats?! Oh yeah. It's that time year. There is a setting for your profile to turn themes off if you so choose.
It's true. Those empty tubs represent a lot of cash. Most of them were just O-ring shaped scraps at the bottom of the tub that I just didn't have the patience to wear down to zero. But there were a few premium priced duds (for me) that really disappointed me (mostly in the scent dept) that I won't get into here. Lovely smelling utility room today!
What typically causes a soap to be a dud for you? Have you ever tried mixing specific soaps together that offset each others weaknesses to get an optimal blend that works well? For example mixing a soap that lathers well with one that's hard to lather but provides great slickness. I've had a lot of success doing that with lower cost soaps creating blends what punch well above their weight.

While I've added higher quality soaps such as Mitchell's Wool Fat and Tabac to my rotation I've found that the core shaving performance of my best blends (lathering ease and quality) is at least as good as anything else I use. Key benefit of the higher quality soaps is that they work well as is, can provide a more pleasant scent and a bit better post-shave feel. Note that scent is not a big deal to me, for all my soaps, that I keep in open apothecary mugs, the scent dissipates over time.
 
You can indeed.
You can think about it what you please all you want.

However, continuously posting critiques here about what other people do with their money?
Not so much.
We’ll, there’s a lot I’d like to say in response to that but for the good of the order I’ll keep my trap shut. But after 64 years of living and 50 years of wet shaving I may have an opinion or two worth sharing. And I shall. Feel free to disagree
 
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Hmm, @Lane101 scent is a key differentiator for me. There are a lot of soaps that work well, but if I don't like the scent I move on. What I have given some thought to is using an unscented soap that performs well (like, say, Canada Shaving, but many artisans produce unscented options) and relying on after shave to suite my desire for a lingering scent. I like the smell of lime, but some of the limes I've tried have been horrible, in my opinion.
@Hannah's Dad Those Horseman blends must be interesting! I've enjoyed the discussion on the omnibus thread and there was no B&M in this purge. Great stuff.
 
I don't think I'll use them in the shower, only by the sink for hand/face washing. I'm still looking for good, hard, triple milled soap for the shower. The artisan soaps I've tried melt like butter in the shower, and they cost $8-$10 a bar.

My least favorite shaving soaps end up in the shower
and I use them to wash my hair.

And I noticed that they lather up incredibly quickly,
in the situation where it doesn't matter.
I just scoop them out and press them with my hands like snowballs.
I have a bunch that I am not going to shave with.
When the piece in the shower gets small enough
I scoop out another and press them together.

I use regular bar soap to wash the rest of myself.
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
We’ll, there’s a lot I’d like to say in response to that but for the good of the order I’ll keep my trap shut. But after 64 years of living and 50 years of wet shaving I may have an opinion or two worth sharing. And I shall. Feel free to disagree
After 64 years of my life, 50 years of wetshaving, and over 13 years on this forum, I have opinions too.
One of them is that people who can't seem to get with the culture here wind up moving on.
I'd rather you contribute positively than move on, but it's your call.
 
My least favorite shaving soaps end up in the shower
and I use them to wash my hair.

And I noticed that they lather up incredibly quickly,
in the situation where it doesn't matter.
I just scoop them out and press them with my hands like snowballs.
I have a bunch that I am not going to shave with.
When the piece in the shower gets small enough
I scoop out another and press them together.

I use regular bar soap to wash the rest of myself.
That's interesting! Shampoo bars is another thing I've kind of given up on. I will totally try one of these pucks as a shampoo bar.
 

Mike M

...but this one IS cracked.
That's interesting! Shampoo bars is another thing I've kind of given up on. I will totally try one of these pucks as a shampoo bar.
I always use shampoo bars, but never thought of using a shaving soap as a shampoo bar though it sounds quite sensible now that I hear it. I have 3 Edwin Jagger soaps that I am not terribly happy with so once my current bar runs out I may give that a try
 
Rainy day here and shut in. I turned to a little drawer cleaning job that I vowed not to do while I could still be doing things outside. But I wanted to deal with a drawer full of unwanted tubs of soap. I won't go into the various reasons why the tubs were not getting used, which varies from tub to tub, but I'll chronicle with pictures here what I did with them. I turned them into bars intending to use then as hand soap, not really knowing if it would work. I came to realize that there was no way I was ever going to finish most of these soaps and I didn't want to bin them.
So, I emptied the drawer of about a dozen victims. This on the day that I switched out my preferred Summer soaps with my Winter preferred soaps. Only four soaps made it to Winter storage. View attachment 1547191My intention was to use an old cheese grater to grate the pucks, but I found that most of the soap was too soft to grate. So, I had a pile of soft and harder soap. View attachment 1547192I grated what I could. Even the blue and green stuff! View attachment 1547194Then I pressed it all together so there was no chunks. View attachment 1547195I had intended to use a muffin pan to form the pucks, but the final product was so soft that pucks could easily be formed by hand. I used floss to cut the pucks off a formed log. View attachment 1547197View attachment 1547198View attachment 1547199Hoping they will dry out nicely for bar soap.

This is my second drawer purge in six years of wet shaving. My first one was three years ago and I combined all my scrap soaps into one container. Affectionately known as "clown puke" around the forum. I still have that tub and use it on weekends when I shave the back of my neck.
Not sure what I'll do next time.
I'm shocked at what you've done.

I feel that I have to try some of that though. My curiosity is massive. 😁
 
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