Is there any evidence that one is better than the other at washing away germs?
Soap is soap.
How do you wash bar soap? I don’t want to reuse soap when someone used it to wash their hands and then did not “wash” it.
The soap may not have bacteria on it when “used” but it’s not exactly clean. I switched to liquid hand soap a few years ago and will never go back. I wash my hands much more frequently now (before the virus outbreak).
Why are you sharing bar soap with others? It’s not necessary to do so.
Alton Brown’s take on it.
The way you would wash bar soap is to stick in under the water when you are lathering up your hands. That way any residual germs on the soap would be washed away just like the ones on your hands.
At worst, the germs sitting on the soap would end up as part of the lather on your hands just like the germs from your own hands, and all will be rinsed away when you rinse your hands.
Worrying about “dirty” bar soap is silly nonsense. People used bar soap for decades, if not centuries for hand washing and everything was just fine.
I don’t buy the “it was fine for our ancestors” logic, as it often conceals outdated or incomplete information.
However, most people give the bar a quick swipe through the running stream to rinse it before putting it back in the soap dish or wherever. This should rinse off any residual grime.
Besides, soap is generally an unfriendly surface for microorganisms and is hostile to life. You won’t find mold or bacteria colonies growing on even the dampest of soap bars.
It was years ago that I saw this but in an episode or “Friends” Chandler says to Rachel, on her about to use the shower, to be aware of what has transpired when the previous used was in there and the way the soap is used and says “Which bit do you wash first, and which bit do you wash last”?
Rachel looks suitably disturbed.
I think of this almost every time I am in the shower. I live here on my own so I know how the soap is used 
I invariably have “Soap Gets In Your Eyes” to the tune of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” when showering too.
I also switched to liquid soaps for both hand-washing and showering a few years ago. It was not for sanitary reasons so much, but for convenience and other reasons. I don’t know about a bar of soap holding onto germs so much, but if one has poison oak I think it is possible to share that with a bar of soap. :eek:
There are other things like hairs that can remain on a bar if someone does not rinse it off well. Of course, if you are sharing a bar of soap with someone, you probably live with them as well and already share plenty of germs in other ways.
I always have, and nobody taught me to do that it even suggested it. It was just natural and common sense. I imagine my first thought process as a child was like this:
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I lathered up with this bar and now some disgusting-looking grey foam is all over it, which is the suds mixed with whatever grease or dirt I’m trying to remove. That looks gross.
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Let’s rinse that off. Ooh the bar looks fine again.
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Okay I’ll just do that every time now.
I imagine every bar soap user goes through a similar thought process at some point (probably the first time they ever use one).
Missed the edit cutoff as the board response was so slow.
I can’t use squirty soap, only bar soap due to the perfume they insist on adding.
Only one type of bar soap too, medicated, orange and smells of Phenol (it isn’t Phenol is banned for domestic use)
Normal soaps, shampoos, conditioners, laundry detergents and cleaning liquids and sprays are banned from the house, otherwise I would need an ambulance to drag me off to hospital with each use (yes, it has happened).
Even hospitals are fraught as most patients are drenched in perfume, after shave, deodorants or have been smoking.
A bloody minefield (
Oh man, I was actually just about to start a Pit thread about this. Why the hell do they do this? The purpose of soap is to clean yourself. When I’m done cleaning, if I smell a strong aroma coming from my hands, then they AREN’T CLEAN. I’m not allergic but I detest floral odors and similar things. They can actually make me nauseated. And the bizarre variety of things they put in soap. Just looking at the first page of “hand soaps” on Amazon, I see coconut, spearmint, rosemary, honey, jojoba, mango, pomegranate, tea, lavender, coriander, cucumber … is this soap or a trendy restaurant menu?
I’ve switched back to bar soap. My husband gave me some nice French soap for Christmas, and I started using it. I really liked the soap. Since I started using it, I’ve realized that bar soaps are lower maintenance. I don’t have to buy dispensers or throw them away. Now I have an array of French soap that I can choose from. 
I do have a question about the foaming soaps. I’m thinking they’re not very effective.
My reasoning is, I went to one of those Living Essentials parties and we made our own foaming soaps with tea tree oil or something. The thing that got me is that in order for the dispenser to work, you have to dilute the soap with water so it comes out foamy.
Now, I have long since used up my tea-tree oil soap and was using Dial or Meyers or Soft Soap in the dispenser, but realizing I have to cut it with water makes me question its effectiveness as a cleanser.
Most commercial soaps are way over concentrated. You can dilute the hell out of it (like rinsing out the last bits from an almost empty bottle) and still get a lot of suds and degreasing power.
I hate it when people dilute liquid hand soap. With the normal stuff, you dispense a pump’s worth into your palm and it sits there until you rub it around. But when it’s been watered down, it runs right off your hand before you have a chance to do anything with it. So I never water it down.
That’s what a washcloth is for.
You (and least for the "you"s who use washcloths) don’t rub the soap all over yourself; that’s just for handwashing. For showering, you rub the soap on the washcloth, and you rub the washcloth over yourself.
Then you wash the washcloth.
Bar soap is generally cheaper, doesn’t produce a chunk of plastic waste for every bar, and is actually cleaner than pump bottles. Nearly everybody rinses off the bar soap before sticking it back in the soap dish; plus which, as has been pointed out, the surface of a soap bar is a really inhospitable place for pathogens. How many people wash off the pump handle of bottled soap every time after they use it? and plastic is a relatively hospitable place for, among other things, covid-19; which can apparently live several days on plastic.
As I remember the episode, Chandler was speaking to Joey, who was using Chandler’s soap.
There are people who do that???