The whole idea of soap more or less tickles me. First of all, it's this hard waxy bar that, when you apply water becomes a soft, lathery goodness. How do they do that? I mean I know how they do that, we made soap in high school chemistry but I don't really remember and plus that soap looked dirtier than me and how am I going to wash myself with something that's dirtier than me?

"Rabbit trail" as Mr. Skipper used to say. But seriously, I mean soap smells so good and it gets you clean? That's so amazing! Or is the degree of cleanliness just masked by the pleasant smell? Do you feel clean if you use odorless soap?

Well speaking of clean, then you have to consider how you use the soap. I like to use the bar of soap directly on my body, but some people think that's gross, especially if you share soap with someone. But really, it's soap isn't it? Doesn't it kill off whatever bacteria or third world country disease that touches it? Am I just too naive about soap? I guess using a washcloth as a go between does sound a little "cleaner", but for some reason I never jumped on the washcloth bus. That's why, if you ever take a shower in my bathroom I never offer you a washcloth. I don't think I actually have any.

I would be remiss if I didn't also mention liquid soap. Certainly a large percentage of the soap buying public has made the switch to liquid soap as every major brand now offers some form of liquid soap/body wash. Liquid soap/body wash poses a slight problem for me since I'm not acclimated to using a washcloth. As a self-proclaimed "soap conservationist", I think liquid soap/body wash is kind of wasteful because it encourages people to use more than you need and it isn't self-contained like bar soap.

For the longest time the most challenging aspect of using bar soap for me was figuring out how to best use the bar of soap when it became too small and fragile to effectively clean my body. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a soap conservationist, so I never felt comfortable just throwing the soap, no matter how small, down the drain. I then developed this method of "converging soap bars". Whenever it's time to start a new bar of soap I spend up to 1-2 min at the beginning of my shower melding the old bar to the new bar. This way, I don't waste the last little bit of every bar of soap I use, just the little bit of the last bar of soap that I use.

Well, those are my thoughts on soap. Of course, in the context of this article "soap" refers to shower/bath soap. Hand soap is a completely different issue that may have to be addressed in the future. Next week, the evolution of toothpaste and the utensils used for teethbrushing.