It doesn’t last!

That’s what she said! Oh, wait….wrong blog. Oops!

Seriously, though….this is one of the reasons people give for not wanting to try handmade soap - “It won’t last as long as store bought.” Fair call, I usually think. We do seem to go through a lot of soap in our house…partly because I rarely use full bars at home - I mostly use the end bits. And also, when Darryl, bless him, really likes a soap, he lathers it up more than usual because he loves the way it feels. It goes without saying that there’s a lot of lathering going on in our bathroom! So, I’ve never really had a good counter argument to the “it doesn’t last” objection.

Until now!

During my recent hiatus, Darryl and I took a Princess cruise around southern Australia and New Zealand. I, of course, packed soap because a) we don’t like to use the liquid soap supplied in our stateroom, and b) I make the best soap, right? I packed six bars for our three week cruise, hoping that would be enough to see us through.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to anyone who hasn’t cruised that when you’re on a cruise ship, you spend plenty of time in the hot tubs and the swimming pools. This trip, we made particularly good use of the hot tubs, seeing as New Zealand refused to give us any nice weather! And swimming, for us, generally translates into extra showers during the day. Would two bars a week be enough?

Well, to my surprise, we used less than three bars between us…for the whole trip!

So that’s at least two, sometimes four showers a day. And each bar of handmade, “it doesn’t last” soap, easily lasted us a week! I had spares to give away to some of the lovely staff who made our trip fabulous, despite the horrible weather.

I’m so pleased to have a story to share next time someone claims that handmade soap doesn’t last. As long as you don’t leave your soap sitting in a pool of water, and you let it dry out in between uses, it has a similar life to store bought soap. And, it’s so much nicer!

Oh, and if you’ve never taken a cruise, do it! It’s absolutely the best way to holiday!