Mushy bars of soap: testing a countermeasure

  • April 4, 2021
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Contrivances Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Partially modified and original, unmodified vertical soap holders side by side and a bottom-up view of the modified holder.
Two of the same type of plastic vertical soap holder: one unmodified and one partially modified to try to defeat the mushy soap problem.

We’ve mostly switched from body washes in pump bottles to old-timey bar soaps as part of an effort to reduce our exposure to certain likely harmful but incredibly ubiquitous ingredients of modern shampoos, conditioners, body washes, and other personal care products. Smooth sailing thus far. Except for the mushiness problem.

The plastic countertop soap dishes we’ve gotten have ridges intended to keep the soap bar a millimeter or so above the rest of the dish surface. Those ridges are a bit on the wide, long, and numerous side, however, and the result is that the parts of the bar that contact the ridges stay moist longer than the rest of the bar and those areas often feel mushy the next time one grabs the soap.

Modified regular soap holder.
Another, non-vertical soap dish augmented with silicone nubbins.

I wondered whether reducing the contact surface area might let the soap dry and firm back up faster. After some thought, I sent away for several sizes and form factors of silicone nubbins (sold as dust plugs, appliance feet, and for various and sundry other uses). Of the types that I purchased, the ones shown installed seemed like my best bet.

Tools and materials used.
The silicone plugs/nubbins/whatever I’ve used, in the seller’s packaging, along with two hand drill handles with chucks holding, respectively, a carbide chamfer and a HSS (?) brad point wood drill

The nubbins aren’t situated precisely. After eyeballing and marking their locations with a Sharpie (the black dots above the highest line of installed silicone studs are not-yet-drilled locations for another layer of ’em), I used a “brad point” drill and some elbow grease to make the holes. Then, to tidy the holes a bit and make press-fitting the nubbins easier, I went over the holes (from above and below) with a chamfer chucked into another hand drill handle.