I’ve been using Ivory bar soap for many decades.
I have some skin allergies, and am nervous about using any soap other than Ivory. When I travel, I always bring along a few bars; I do not use the soap provided by the hotel. (The only exception is hand soap in bathrooms. So far I’ve been pretty lucky; there have only been a few instances where I had an allergic reaction.)
I’m surprised that you’re not able to find bar soaps. Just looking at the Walmart website, I see Dove, Ivory, Irish Spring, etc available in store. They even have Dr Bronner’s in the Walmart near me.
I don’t really like washcloths at home because they’re gross after one use, and you hang them up and they mold/mildew. I guess that attitude transfers to when I travel and I’d rather use my hands to scrub.
Is this “dish gel”?
Is this “hand gel”?
No. It’s all soap. The “gel” thing is weirdo marketing voodoo.
I spent two weeks in Italy last month, and every one of 7 places I stayed had rid themselves of bar soap in favor of dispensers, probably a mandate against waste or something. I approve of this mostly, but I miss bar soap.
I guess I’ll have to find a bar soap travel container, though I’d be afraid it will leak and therefore need to keep it in a ziplock or something. Pain in the ass.
I’ve been using bar soaps in my travel kits for decades and never had them “leak”.
In my experience, most of the dispenser soap is fine. I travel with an unused bar of hotel soap, and almost never feel the desire to use it. If you use it and want to keep it, a small ziplock bag works fine to protect your other stuff. Let it dry before you pack it. (I shower at night, and I’m not picky about hand soap. So this may be easier for me than for others.)
Some of the little bottles of hotel shampoo i have stolen over the years can be refilled, so i don’t expect to ever run out of little bottles of shampoo for travel.
There’s also the matter of hair and deposits of dirt, grease and whatever else the unknown public restroom or motel users had on their skin. It might be overly fastidious but I’d rather use uncontaminated liquid soap from a dispenser.
Why don’t you try showering with Dawn for a few weeks and see how your skin feels.
Why would I do that? Of course different soaps are formulated different. My point was to @purplehorseshoe who asserted shower gel wasn’t soap at all.
I’ll clarify that I prefer bar soap in the shower. For washing hands or whatever, liquid soap is fine.
It may not, technically, be soap, as there is a specific definition of that. The Dove bars I formerly used were labeled “beauty bars” and not soap for a reason.
Hm. It’s a pit thread so I’m hardly going to call “cite?” but I’ve never heard anything like that. I’ll take your word I guess.
I’m about to pack for a trip to Canada. Maybe i should check and make sure i have a nice bar of soap in my bag. 
The big ass bars. “Bath size”.
You’re not finding those in supermarkets, drugstores, Walmart, Target, etc? I see the “big ass bars” of bath size soap (roughly four ounces) everywhere.
Ha! When I was a poor student, I used Dawn dish detergent as shampoo. It works great - once. It’s a little harsh for everyday use. LOL
Soap and detergent are different. Soap tends to leave a scum, detergents don’t. Liquid gels are generally (not always) detergents. Detergents can be formulated stong (as in dishwashing liquid) or weak (as in shampoo/hand/body gel).
But those same strangers have had their hands on the dispenser. And the non-soapy plastic top of the dispenser is probably a lot more hospitable place for germs than the surface of a bar of soap. – I don’t worry about it either way in a public restroom, though. I just hope the place doesn’t reek too much of artificial perfumes, whether from the soap or from cleaning fluids or, DOYC forbid, because somebody stuck a scent dispenser in there.
I use bar soap at home; and the only problem I’ve had finding it has been finding it unscented, which would be at least as much of a problem with anything in a plastic bottle. I usually can find something unscented, though, or at least some with only a light almond scent which isn’t too bad. And IME farmers’ market soap vendors will bring some unscented to the next market if asked, even if they don’t have any on the stand when I first look. And yes, I can find them in ordinary bath size. – the farmers’ market, or other handmade versions (some stores here carry local handmade soaps) do, as others have said, cost more per bar but generally last a lot longer.
If I travel I take soap with me; if I like the hotel’s I’ll use theirs, if not I’ll use my own. I have also never had a soap dish leak. The bar of soap is only damp when I put it in there, not dripping.
Since being diagnosed with psoriasis about 20 years ago, I have become an expert on soaps. For me, I can’t use soaps that use fragrance oils. They dry out my skin and make me itch. I stick with soaps with essential oils. That is why I have to be careful of what I buy at farmer’s markets or stores. I have found some soap makers don’t know the difference between the 2. I have found a French made soap, Pre de Provence, that works great for me. When I travel I will request non perfumed soap, for my last stop in Oregon the hotel gave me a full size bar of Kirk’s Castile Soap. Used it the next morning to shower and brought the rest of the home.
I was curious so I looked up the definition of soap, and got this from the FDA:
I love that second bullet, totally a tautology. It’s not soap unless you call it soap. So if it meets bullet 1 but you call it a handlamp reverse elbow bar, then by gawd that’s what it is. So according to the FDA, there’s products out there called soap that aren’t soap, and there’s products that are soap that are called something else.
Even better, the FDA doesn’t even regulate soap:
Here is the CPSC’s page on Soap, which just quotes the FDA’s definition and doesn’t really clarify further.
I haven’t been able to find a gov page that defines soap vs detergent, just manufacturer pages which assert
All I can say about either sanitary soap or sanitary soap theater is that whenever JCAHO was about to inspect a hospital, we’d be directed to hide all the bar soap and the liquid soap dispensers would get filled.
I had a kind of unpleasant experience with bar soap. My apartment had a clawfoot tub; I cannot take baths because I will be in there for two hours, and who has that kind of time to spare, so I rigged up a shower with one of those slip on faucet attachments for hair washing. Worked just fine, but one day I reached for the soap, which resided in a dish on the back of the toilet, and came up empty-handed.
After some searching, the bar was found to be way under the tub. Its edges were decorated with tiny teeth marks. Turned some of my roommates were actual rats. But it was the only soap in the house, so I used it anyway.