Motel Soap
One of the many small pleasures I enjoy in life is using motel soap in the shower. I don’t remember when I started fusing the small bars into a larger bar. I do remember my record buildup: 23 layers!
Incidentally, Gail doesn’t do this. She uses either bars or body wash. But she has to use her Gail’s clothes account in her budget to buy it.
My motel soap is free.
I do know this practice started before 1977. Shortly after we moved into our house in Dalton, Georgia, a man knocked on our door to sell us a water treatment system. He told us that because we had well water, we needed it. He tested our water and found no impurities.
However, he said it’d improve our water quality, and we could pay for it with what we saved on shampoo and soap. It’d make our water much softer.
I told him I enjoyed getting bargains. “Please explain how we could save that much money.”
He asked me, “How much do you pay for your shampoo?”
I replied, “I buy it on sale and in quantity. Recently, I bought 12 bottles of shampoo for 69¢ a bottle.”
His next question: “How much do you pay for your bath soap?”
My answer: “I don’t pay anything. I use the soap I get at motels.”
We didn’t buy a water treatment system.
I enjoy watching the layers wear down and seeing the colors of the different layers disappear. When I can get enjoyment out of an activity like this, my entertainment budget doesn’t amount to much.
Some soap boxes have the hotel’s name on them. That often brings back good memories of our visits there.
When I retired from Berrys Chapel on April Fools’ Day of 2007, several of my friends from the third Monday workshop came that day and gave me a large plastic box full of motel soap. That was 19 years ago. I’ve only used about half of that supply. If I continue at the same rate, I have enough soap to last me until I’m 100 years old.
In my later years, I’ve become more liberal with my soap spending. I buy a cheap full-size bar of soap as the base. I then fuse the small pieces of motel soap on the top and bottom. That gives the composite more stability. Each bought bar lasts several years.
When I connect a new layer of motel soap to the present composition, I put the base and the new layer in hot water in the sink, covering only the bottom of the soap. I return in 10 minutes and push the two pieces together. After drying overnight, the connection is secure.
Motel soap comes in different sizes and shapes: square, rectangular, round, oval, flat, and curved. There’re different colors: white, black, yellow, brown, and green. They all seem to get along very well.
The closer each layer gets to the center, the big purchased bar, the smoother and stronger they become.
Sometimes there’s a bar split, usually after dropping it in the shower. Trauma causes injury.
I’ve always been able to repair and get the two back together again. This works best when the two sides reconnect the same way they broke off. No two splits are the same. There are bumps and depressions. When they match, reuniting is easier.
I accomplish this in the same way I add a new layer of soap. I have a layer of hot water in the sink, soak the connecting sides in the water for ten minutes, press them together, and rub the squishy soap into the cracks and crevices to make a tight bond.
I’ve been watching a dark brown bar of soap decrease and disappear into the white layer beneath. It’s taking several months. I reflect on growth and change. Significant accomplishments rarely happen quickly.
James Dyson, the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, said, “There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence – and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap.”
Margaret Marcuson wrote in her book, Leaders Who Last, “Change is evolutionary, not revolutionary . . . I developed a mantra: ‘Everything takes five years.’ Substantial developments in congregational life, the kind that will last, take even longer.”
Leaders often get into trouble by pressing too much, too hard, too quickly.
According to a YouGov.com study, 59% of adults take soap, shampoo, and other toiletries with them when they leave the hotel.
I asked ChatGPT, “Tell me what you know about motel soap. How many people use motel soap exclusively for bathing? What does that say about someone’s personality when they do that?”
The answer I received:
What might it suggest about personality? Several possibilities—but these are interpretations, not research findings about exclusive motel-soap users:
- Thrift: “It works, and I already have it. Why buy more?”
- Dislike of waste: “There’s useful soap left, so I’ll finish it.”
- Practicality: “Soap is soap; I don’t need a particular brand.”
- Habit or fond memories: The little bars may be familiar or remind someone of traveling.
- Simple availability: A frequent traveler may accumulate enough to meet the need.
The habit alone doesn’t establish that someone is cheap, generous, compulsive, or unusually resourceful. Someone who happily uses what is available may be expressing contentment; someone who feels distressed at having to buy soap may have a different motivation. The reason and the flexibility around the habit tell you more than the soap does.
In this case, I enjoyed AI’s tendency to agree with the person asking the question.
However, the last sentence challenged me to reflect on myself and one of my enjoyable practices: The reason and the flexibility around the habit tell you more than the soap does.
And that’s not only true about soap.
I’m not sure if Jesus would’ve used motel soap in his shower. I do know that he saw connections in many, many things. One of his teaching methods was to notice people and things around him. He’d point them out to his disciples with the implied question, “What did you learn from that?”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything. — Mark 4:33, 34, ESV
Please let me know where you find pleasure and principles in unusual places.
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