Anyone else angry about the disappearance of cheap BAR soap?

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just go to Dollar Tree or Big Lots. plenty of cheap 3 packs there. i especially love the Pure & Natural or whatever it's called now that Dial took it over. also like the Yardley English Lavender and this one Mexican brand called Rosa Venus. big old fashioned pink bars of soap. that one you can get at Family Dollar.

yes, soap, plain bar soap without fragrances - and true soap, rather than detergent - is hard to find. Well, they carry it in natural food stores but it can get expensive. The person above who mentioned the detergent thing was right - I learned this in a textile conservation lab class in grad school. That's why if you notice, few soaps actually have the word "soap" on their packaging. They usually use the word bar - they can't use soap unless they're truly a soap which has a different chemical composition and action than a detergent, which most of our soaps are. I love that I'm posting on a thread about bar soap...and that I have a lot to say about it! lol! Seriously, this all goes through my mind every time I have to buy soap!

And those squishy things that aren't loofahs, I can't remember what they're called either, but one of the first ones made is in the museum of modern art in nyc. It's funny, because you're looking at all this cool stuff and then you see this little thing that you've got nearly rotting in a closet somewhere sitting on a pedestal, lit and with a placard.

poufs are things you sit on

i agree with the original poster here - i loathe soap-goo and stinky soaps generally.

I prefer soap to smell of itself - that is, of not much at all.

i got in the habit of using olive oil soap bars back when i lived in Winnipeg, they have many ethnic groceries there (YAY!) that sell inexpensive, foreign toiletries.

One of my faves is: Papoutsanis: comes in a giant block. it's just saponified olive oil, and salt as a stabiliser. doesn't dry my skin out, very hard, lasts a long time. here's a webpage selling it (is this OK?)

http://www.greekinternetmarket.com/1950-03022.html

Also, in the same vein is Aleppo soap from Syria (still traditionally made by a few family factories) and Savon de Marseille (which comes in huge blocks the size of softballs, often shaved into slivers and used for doing laundry).

my two cents,

-Luke

I haven't tried places like Pier One or Cost Plus Imports lately. I had totally forgot about that possibility. That is a good idea as I used to find good European soaps at those stores ten to twenty years ago. Would love to find bars of Dettol soap or Roberts Medicated soap here in the U.S. at a reasonable price.