Saturday, October 8, 2011

Pump The Bacteria Back To Hell While Keeping Skin Soft With Softsoap!


The Good: Goes on easy, Seems to kill bacteria, Leaves skin feeling clean, mild scent
The Bad: Does not get off ground-in dirt
The Basics: Softsoap liquid soap is easy to use and effective at cleaning the hands - without drying them out - and as far as I can tell, killing bacteria.


Sometimes, we all need a change in life. After years of using Dial liquid soap (reviewed here!), I decided it was time to stop living off what a former housemate had left behind and strike out for something new. Yes, it was a simple quest and when buying a new liquid handsoap, I had only two criteria: 1. It needed to be antibacterial (living with a germaphobe for years certainly ingrains that!), and 2. I wanted it to be some other color than Dial Gold. I found my happy medium with SoftSoap Antibacterial Hand Soap. I bought the faintly purple one that came in the "Aquarium Series" pump (it has fish on it, which fits my bathroom's decor) so it met both my criteria.

Softsoap AntiBacterial Hand Soap is a light lavender gel that comes in a 7 oz. bottle. The bottle is smooth and it has a simple push-to-dispense pump. The pump makes it ridiculously easy and it dispenses a quarter-sized dollop of liquid hand soap onto my hands, which is good because I have big hands. Even so, the smaller pump bottle lasted me about a month. There's a 50 oz. refill that I'm eyeing that ought to last me a year and odds are, I'll pick one up because I enjoyed this product that much.

As far as the pump goes, it allows easy access to the liquid soap without making a mess. I like it better than liquid soaps with a flip top lid because when my hands are dirty, I don't like the inconvenience of having to hold the soap bottle with a dirty hand and flip the top with another dirty hand. The softsoap pump is pretty light, so I can dispense it by simply pressing down on the pump with the very tips of my fingers. But, as I have large hands, the pump probably dispenses a bit much for children.

The Softsoap Antibacterial Hand Soap does not have any form of grit or anything to do deep cleaning of the hands. As a result, I found it worked best for me for general daily use and not, for example, when I came in to wash my hands after working in the garden. This soap is not ideal for ground-in dirt, but it works well on mildly soiled or greasy hands.

However, even with the size of the droplets dispensed by the pump, I got pretty good mileage out of the Softsoap. The reason it lasted as long as it did certainly has to do with the lather quality. With the quarter-sized dollop the pump dispenses and with patience and "proper" handwashing technique, the Softsoap lathered up nicely.

One quarter-sized droplet of Softsoap liquid soap is enough to more than sufficiently clean one's hands when one uses a little water and rubs their hands together. Actually, I've discovered that because the Softsoap is a little more watery than the Dial liquid soap, less water is needed when the soap is first applied to the skin (it takes about as much to wash it off after the hands are lathered up, though). The product forms a consistent lather that quickly coats the hands within ten hand rotations (i.e. ten times you rub your hands together to form a lather). The resulting lather is white and I tend to rub my hands for approximately twenty seconds before rinsing the lather off.

The Softsoap Antibacterial Hand Soap has a consistency of your average shampoo, perhaps just a little more fluid, and when it lathers, it bubbles up nicely into a coating which needs to be washed off. Properly rinsed off, Softsoap does not leave a residue. I've found it rinses off fairly easily, with all of the lather dissipating in less than eight seconds under running water. The liquid soap leaves the hands feeling clean.

As well, the Softsoap leaves the skin smelling good. This product (the lightly lavender color) has a very faint floral scent to it that I'm guessing might be lilacs (it's indistinctly floral and it's very faint). Regardless, it's faint enough that even with normal use, no one in the family ought to object to the scent.

Like most liquid soaps, the Softsoap is pretty ineffective against sap, though. Then again, most people don't look to a liquid soap to take on sap. This liquid soap also manages to leave the hands feeling clean without drying them out. In fact, no matter how frequently I washed my hands, the light moisturizers in the Softsoap kept them both clean and soft, which I suppose means it lives up to its name. With average use, Softsoap will not dry out the skin. It does not taste particularly good and it is surprisingly mild when it gets in your eyes, but it should not be used to wash your mouth out or clean your eyeballs. Seriously, it's a hand soap.

The Softsoap Antibacterial Hand Soap also comes in various scents which I'm sure I'll try once I run completely out of what is kicking around the house. I'm fine with the vaguely floral scent and the color fits the underwater decor of my bathroom. As stated, this is an antibacterial soap and it seems to work for that. Having never checked it out under a microscope, I cannot say with any authority that it is scaring away bacteria, but I almost never get sick. Of course, consistent use does lead to the evolution of bacteria-resistant bacteria, which will breed as a result of all the anti-bacterial soaps and lotions out there.

For day-to-day use, this seems to do what it says it will, but honestly, it lacks the kick I tend to like out of a soap. I tend to want a soap that will meet all my cleaning needs, especially cleaning off my hands when I come in from gardening. This one doesn't. Honestly, it'll likely become my "winter soap," one for day to day use and skin softening when I'm not so worried filthy to begin with. And for that, it might well be the ideal.

For other soaps or antibacterial lotions, check out my reviews of:
Dove Nourishing Hand Wash
Bath & Body Works Frosting Forever 3-in-1
St. Ives Ultra Gentle Apricot Scrub

7/10

For other health and beauty product reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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