Everlasting Soap

The chore of cleaning the bathroom is just that, a chore. It is both in the physical and metaphorical sense a chore and something I in no way relish doing. I love a clean bathroom, who doesn't, so I see it as a necessary evil and on balance worth doing. I usually start with the shower and bath working my way round to the toilet and then the sink. If I was pushed to decide which of them I liked or maybe least hated doing most it would have to be the sink. I have not just plucked this out the air, the sink has one major advantage over the others, soap.

A bar of soap in our house seems to last forever, this is not because we are dirty it just does. I guess that shower gel has stolen much of the soaps thunder. The soap sits next to the taps waiting for dirty hands to pounce, to squeeze and rub and lather it up before placing it back on the dish. I like the way soap goes through a life cycle, and unlike shower gel whos level you can observe declining after every use it recedes at a rate almost too slow to observe. Like the life of a tree it only changes when no one is looking. Then one day you notice it is round instead of square, then its flatter than it used to be, the colour has lost the intensity it once had and it enters the winter of its existence. You would think that once it got to this stage that would be it, its days would be numbered you could even estimate how much longer you thought it had. But we have everlasting soap or so it seems, perhaps even made by Willie Wonker using technology based on his gobstopper machine (the only invention not to harm a child) for it seems to go on and on. Even when whittled down from small to tiny then to a mere nubin if it will not fit between the spaces in the plug hole it's not done. But like most things there are a couple of exceptions which sometimes offer a respite to the situation they are, The big cheese loosing all patience then discarding it in the bin and secondly having guests round and dazzling them with our bountiful soap supply, these are the only times it is permissible to prematurely replace the soap. 

It is said that it's the little things and starting a new bar of soap is one of mine. Firstly it has a new scent which is in pleasant contrast to the previous bar whos familiarity has numbed me to it. But best of all the feel of its sharp corners and 90 degree sides. It looks so nice placed in the center of the holder its geometry creating a zen like harmony against the porcelain. Everything else looks so sloppy against the uniformity of the perfect edges. This new bar has not yet conformed to the rigors of ergonomics and at the same time shuns form and function in favor of looks and style. This one small thing can be compensation enough for cleaning the whole bathroom as I know that I can be the first person to use it.

All I need to do now is find a way to use soap quicker or clean the bathroom less.