I am assuming that when you use bar soap you rub it in your hands and then rub it on your body. To use shower gel, instead of rubbing it in your hands to get soap on them, you squirt the shower gel in your hands, then use it just like soap. Same principle as the hand soap that you see in public restrooms, squirt a little into your hand, wash hands, rinse, only apply it to whatever body parts you’re washing.
Basically this, but I use my chest hair.
What?
Um, sort of?
When I was a little kid, I thought liquid soap was pretty cool. Mostly, I think, because of the novelty: I only encountered it in public restrooms. But also because it was in some sort of dispenser, and you had to push a button or pull a lever to make it come out, and pushing buttons to make things happen was So. Cool. (This was back in the dark ages before things like home computers, when human beings were still so amazingly primitive that they still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea, so there weren’t as many opportunities to push buttons as there are today. And yes, it was also a thrill to push the button to call an elevator or get a WALK signal to cross the street.)
Nowadays, I find liquid hand soap slightly annoying, because about half the time, about half the soap bloorps through my fingers before I get a chance to rub it on my hands. And yes, the novelty has long since worn off.
Showering with it sounds even worse, because I not only have to hold it in my hand, I have to carry this slippery liquid to the other parts of my body and rub it onto them, preferably without spilling most of it.
Analogy time: Washing with bar soap is like writing with something solid, like a pencil or crayon. Showering with shower gel and a sponge is like writing with a quill pen or painting with a paint brush. And using shower gel with no “devices” is like writing using finger paints.
On the internet nobody knows whether you’re a dog, but everyone knows whether you’re a jackass.
I would bet that what some people don’t realize about showers is that not all people execute them the same way.
The assumed method is that a person turns the shower on and simply stands under it directly, with the water simply pouring all over and running down one’s head, upper body, and the rest. And that at any one moment, a person’s whole body is constantly under running shower water.
Not everyone does it that way. If you DO do it that way, and attempt to use shower gel casually as you would use bar soap … yeah, the shower gel will be rinsed off your hands before you get much soaping done.
Now then. Another way some people shower is to position one’s body, the shower head, or both so that only desired body parts are being wetted at any one time. This is even easier if one uses a removable shower head and a hose as opposed to a more fixed-position shower head.
I use shower gel frequently, and never use a sponge or loofah or cloth. Trick is, my hands are not in the running shower water as I soap up. I’ve stepped forward a bit and turned by back to the shower head. All the running water is hitting my upper back and running downwards while my hands are easily lathering up most of the rest of me. Shower gels do differ in viscosity, and runnier brands can require a little extra care to keep it from spilling out of your hands. Still, it’s a snap to apply.
More on personal shower differences: I dislike water splashing on my face (no, I don’t swim). But I’ve always loved a good shower. How to reconcile? I learned long ago how to shower my entire body – including applying/rinsing shampoo in my hair – without getting water on my face. It’s really easy and familiar for me – but I’m sure that for people who do it another way, my way seems really weird.
In recent years, I’ve learned to tolerate running water on my face for maybe a five-count because it’s handy to wash my face in the shower. Still, I have to have a towel hanging in the shower (far from the running water, it stays dry) so that I can wipe the water off my face ASAP.
…
So anyway, that’s one shower gel success story 
I wish to join in solidarity with OP and Thudlow, as I am also baffled by how someone could use shower gel without going through an entire bottle after every third or fourth shower.
Nope. I turn the water off, rub the soap bar directly on my body and lather it up from there. Attempting the same thing with gel seems to use up nearly half the bottle for full-body coverage, and even then the resulting lather is unsatisfying compared to what I can get using a bar of soap that will last for weeks. I never use a wash rag or a sponge, those just seem awkward to me.
Tis is a total WTF thread for me 
. Why don’t use the useful hint by **Nava **to turn off the shower when soaping your body? That’s the natural way for me. So how I take a shower:
Turn on shower and make your body wet.
Turn off shower.
Apply shower gel out of the bottle to my dominant hand. Lather the body (with both hands). Rub diligently everywhere, especially the stinky parts (you know them all).
Turn on shower again. Rinse your body.
Step out of the shower and rub yourself dry with a towel. (I added that piece because obviously to some people taking a shower seems to be a mystery)
Balancing the hot/cold taps and getting the water temperature just right in our shower is a bit of a pain. Plumbing differences may account for different showering strategies, it seems.
Also, I never actually thought of doing that. Taking a step away from the shower strikes me as far, far simpler and more natural. Others’ mileage will vary, of course.
Maybe also the frugality and the more recent ecological concerns of German people are a factor: nobody in his right mind here would want to waste the water in the first place.
From the standpoint of the manufacturer that’s a feature and a not a bug.
Where I live (SE Louisiana, USA), water is virtually free and seemingly ever-replenishable. It’s not treated as a limited resource locally. It’s all I’ve ever known regarding home use of water.
I used to have a showerhead with a valve built in, so you could shut off the water up there, without having to rebalance the temperature. But the handheld showerhead I now have doesn’t have that feature.
See, water is not really scarce in Germany (I could do with a little less rain), and it’s not even extraordinarily expensive (though the purification of sewage has its price), but there’s the general opinion that water is a valuable natural resource and therefore not to be wasted. I was brought up with that mindset. (Think: see the poor babies in Africa with no water, and YOU don’t turn off the water when brushing your teeth!). Seems to be a cultural thing.
I think I see the problem: do you usually have removable showerheads? Because I have (and that’s usual here), and when I turn on the shower I take off the showerhead, aim it to the bottom of the shower next to my body, balance the temperature and then take my shower. If the showerhead is fixed and you have to balance the temperature every time after you have turned it off, then I understand the dilemma.
Are you looking for compliments on your manly chest or sympathy for your bald head?
Is this how most people use soap? I feel like I’m in some sort of bizarro world here where people are confused by shower gel and soap themselves up by rubbing soap onto their hands and then their body parts instead of directly on their body parts.
Why can’t he get both?
(from a person who also uses chest hair to form a sudsy repository of shower gel)
I’ve done it before, but it uses a whole lot more soap, even if you use it with the water not getting on you at all. It always takes me at least two squirts to do my whole body. But, if I use one of those scrunchy shower sponges, I could cover my body multiple times with one squirt.
I don’t marvel that people can do it that way. I just would think they’d not want to constantly be buying new soap. The same soap lasts months with daily washing. I’d be out in a week or two just using liquid soap directly.
It’s not even the fixed head, as mine isn’t fixed. It’s that usually the only way to turn the water completely off is to turn either one giant nob all the way down to cold and then off (like a volume knob on an older car radio), or turn both the hot and cold knobs all the way down and off. There just usually isn’t any way to turn the water off while keeping the temperature set.
That said, I have turned off the water completely while showering before–primarily when there is a shortage of hot water. I can shower in tepid water, but, if it crosses the threshold to cold, I can’t keep the water on me but for a split second, not long enough to rinse off thoroughly. So I would do this if the hot water was running out, due to being the last one to shower.
(US soaps foam up a lot, so it takes more water to get it off. That’s also why we rinse our dishes more than many others.)
Is that just that you face away from the shower when doing your hair, and tilt your head back like you’re getting your hair washed at a barbershop? Because that’s how I do it.
Though I do turn back around for the rest of my body. It’s not the splashing that I don’t like. I just don’t like the sensation of water running over my face while my eyes are closed. I still splash water on my face to rinse off the facial soap.