Bathroom Soap.
 

Have you ever walked into a public restroom at an airport or a restaurant to wash your hands, only to find that no matter how much you rinse and wipe your hands, it seems that you can never completely remove all of the soap? Your hands simply keep lathering again and again every time you rub them after rinsing with water.

It is also not fun believing that the soap is finally removed from one’s hands, only to see it drying up on one’s skin underneath the hot air dryer as the water evaporates.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I realize this topic is minutiae, but it can be slightly annoying, especially if one is in a hurry while traveling.

By the way, what is with that new foaming soap that I am starting to see at more airports?

I like the automated soap dispensers that I am finding more frequently at airports. It never made sense to me to have an automated faucet with a manually-operated soap dispenser or towel dispenser.

The soap in the bathrooms located in the B concourse at the airport in Seattle has a nice coconut scent. That is better than the medicinal smell of some soaps found in other airports.

I hope nobody gets caught up in a lather pertaining to this topic and wanting to bar me from posting on FlyerTalk, but I thought it was time to come clean. After all, what I have described can rub me the wrong way, but perhaps less so to a person with a more bubbly personality.

I hate those automated faucets and paper towel dispensers. They usually don't work for me exactly when I want them to. The automated soap dispensers usually work just fine, though.

I can't stand the automated dispensers. The soap things never seem to work for me (if you see someone frantically waving his hands in the vicinity of the sensor, it's probably me), and the faucets are even worse -- I use DEN a lot, United terminal, and it seems like a quarter of the sinks just don't work at any given time. The towel dispensers are horrible, too: they seem to be programmed with what must be a paper-saving function that pauses for like three seconds after dispensing each sheet. It makes it really annoying when one needs several sheets.

By the way, while we're on the topic, I am sure that there have been many forums on this, but I must make a confession related to soap:

My name is mecabq, and I am a kleptomaniac when it comes to hotel soaps.

I take them and hoard them for no particular reason. I have enough at home to probably fill a bathtub. It's not because I am poor or frugal; in fact quite the contrary. I sort of like the souvenier value to remind me of where I've been, I suppose, and I guess that's one less thing (two, if you count the shampoos that I also take) that I have to worry about forgetting to buy. But I even use the lousy ones (like from Courtyard and the old Hyatt before they upgraded to the pleasant, creamy ginger-scented soaps) when I am at home and save the nice ones (like L'Occitane from the Four Seasons and Hermes from Le Meridien, which I suspend my boycott of French products so that I can take, and those from boutique hotels), although I have no idea what I am saving them for (maybe when I don't get to travel all the time anymore? -- let's hope that day never comes). I even have a system -- a certain pouch in my suitcase in which I deposit them each day. I am currently in the Middle East for two months, and I had to buy a new carry-on suitcase to bring home all of my lavish toiletries (among other shlock I've bought). (My suite at the Sheraton in Bahrain had some gorgeous ones labeled as from London -- a pleasant surprise. Plus two bathrooms, so double the loot!) The nicest I have ever obtained are from the Four Seasons in Chiang Mai. (The ones from the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok were surprisingly poor -- everything had a strange, almost fishy scent that did not appeal to me. Of course that didn't stop me from bringing home a ziplock bag-full.) I am planning a trip to the Burj Al Arab, which is supposed to have nice ones, too. In fact, I am sure that there is a website out there somewhere analogous to seatguru.com, which reports on all of the amenities at all of the hotels in the world to aid in the selection of a property.

I know, this is totally irrational. But I also know that I am not the only one.

P.S. I also hoard, and never use, the amenity kits that they give you on long-haul flights. Also for no reason whatsoever.

Soap that needs to be washed off with soap is just another sleazy marketing trick, like the abortive Post Office proposal to issue stamps that weigh 9/10 of an ounce. You would affix the stamp, only to find you need another stamp because the letter is now overweight.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Admitting that you have a problem is a good start.

Pick your favorites that you'd actually use and keep them. Donate all the others to a shelter or other charity that can put them all to use. Find a favorite soap, and purchase a large bar of it. Find a favorite shampoo, and purchase a large bottle.

Then stop taking the hotel soaps. Sure you paid for them, but acknowledge that you don't need them.

I love the automated dispensers in bathrooms. The fewer things my hands have to touch in a public bathroom, the better.

The only problem is those blow-dryer type hand dryers that don't work properly. You'll have dripping wet hands, and you can't get the dryer to stay on for more than 2 seconds at a time, so you are constantly waving and moving your hands around to try to turn the dryer on again...