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This is a clean story, or dirty, depending on your point of view.
I'm embarrassed to say that at my advanced age, or because of it, I've not yet learned to use bath gel -- on my own person, of course. That would be standing alone in a shower with gravity doing whatever it does. I assume it's an acquired skill, and that not having good hand-eye coordination (can't putt) is not a disqualifying factor. Maybe I've grasped too many bars, ah, of soap.
Gel is not user friendly. This I know, a glob won't stay under your arm or sit on a flat surface while you free up a hand. In a pinch, you can't hold it between your knees.
It hides on the ledge with its spout turned down and dares you to do something, anything. And there are way too many "some-things" to do. Find the bottle, drop the bottle, open, close, pump, transfer, slather, lather, rub, touch, and not rupture your Achilles tendons on spilled gel in the process. Doing them in proper sequence with soap in your eyes is Braille without the raised letters. They don't make "gel on a rope."
Contrast gel with a bar of soap which you grasp, wet-down, and apply where needed. You can buy "soap on a rope".
My switch to liquid soap started under duress two months ago when we put in a new shower. It is mostly mine to use, and get this, mine to clean. The feeling, around here, though not necessarily mine is, "Privilege without responsibility results in a dirtier shower." May I add that I need assistance to clean my glasses?
Here's some background which goes to my state of mind, what little there is left.
I've always been a fully committed, "yellow dog" bar-soap person, no frills and no gimmicks. So how committed you ask? I love Lava soap. It may be the greatest product of our lifetime, with double pepperoni pizza a close second. The guy who thought up mixing volcanic rock and glycerin probably had run out of things to smoke, but personal frailties notwithstanding, deserves to be in the Bar-Soap Hall of Fame. For a boy (moi) born with grimy hands, then proceeded to get them grimier, it was a fistful of scratchy magic. Without it I would never have eaten at the kitchen table. "Johnny, go wash your hands."
My wife (SB) is a double bubble bather and with help from a small motor once used by Lawrence Welk has no problem making all the lather, bubbles or whipped cream she wants. On bathing style and substance she gets a 10.
Our water, piped from the nearby lake, contains minerals that when combined with soap scum turns into limestone which can be used to brick your house. Only a sandblaster and a bucket of lye can remove them from shower walls. People also drink this water which has the advantage that one's own personal internal plumbing will never leak. The gunk could patch up the hole in the ozone layer. With all this in mind I went searching for ideas to keep the shower clean.
After scouring the "Net", the only thing I can scour, I found a lot of people who have the same problems. They all get dirty and are hard to clean, ah, the shower.
The opinions of cleaning mavens everywhere is that bar-soap will scum-up faster than bath gel. This could be propaganda from the Gel Institute, Merry Maids or Martha Stewart posing as a cleaning person but I wasn't in the mood to take chances.
I stopped using bar soap immediately, bought two bottles of gel and began a new training program, which brings you up to date, almost.
Last evening I read that bathing has become less a Saturday night hygienic chore and more of a time for "physical and spiritual renewal." Some people have more candles than water spots in their bathroom and pipe-in Ravi Shankar playing "Chants of India" on his sitar. There was no mention of bar soap. It was then that I decided to stop complaining, embrace gel and cease being a soap Tyrannosaurus Rex, and go for the "physical renewal" thing, as I have a bad knee.
I told SB of my epiphany after which she offered her bath-gel expertise and the loan of two bath tools, a "loofah" and a "pouf". Strangely, the loofah, a sponge covered with rough textured material, feels a lot like Lava soap, and may be. If this works out, think I'll go for the Beechnut Better Body Butter, as a topper to Buster's Hydrating Sexy Shower Wash. I hope I can get the hang of all this.
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