Intro to Soap Reviews

It has long been my ambition to write descriptions of some of my favorite (and least favorite) soap, and as much as I'm passionate about my old favorites, I'm someone who likes to regularly try something new. Once I started trying to write about soap, however, I realized it's more of a challenge than I had anticipated to get the essence of the fragrance into words. But I have given it my best, old college try. Here I have chosen to write more about fragrance—rather than other qualities the soap might have, such as how it treats the skin—though I'm also mentioning appearance and packaging.

Recently I was “stranded for several months” in a rustic cabin in the “North Woods”—surrounded by only wild animals and the cabin owner's odd assortment of survival tools. It was a pleasure in such circumstances to experience the soap of others; not necessarily something I would buy. But because of its long discarded packaging and absence of (as of yet) Google Nose (not to mention, no internet up there), I was only able to refer to these soaps by description, so I've included these reviews early on in my list, named merely: Brown Cube, Green Cube, and Black Rectangle. The sixteen soaps listed here are more or less what I've used in the last year—sometimes a soap lasts a long time! Also, at some point, I decided to give each soap a nickname, which I've included, enclosed in quotation marks under each soap name.

I originally published all of my soap reviews at once, the way that new television shows release all of the episodes of an entire season AT ONCE, in order to facilitate “binge-watching.” I have since decided that I am not in favor of binge-anything, including reading soap reviews, so I'm going to now re-release these reviews (as if anyone fucking cares) one at a time, over time. This will give me a chance to revisit some of these soaps and revise my reviews (maybe) as well a add new reviews of new and exciting soaps... marching into the bubbly, clean, and good-smelling future!