I distinctly recall, from living in various places as a youngster, that sometimes the water very easily washed off the soap, and sometimes it didn’t. I recall that people called the water that easily washed off soap “hard”, and the water that didn’t “soft”, and remember that there was a sort of rougher feeling from the water called “hard” if you rubbed your skin when wet. But now I’ve had folks tell me that it’s just the opposite – soft water easily washes away soap, and hard water does not. Which one was “hard water”, and which one was “soft water”?
hard water can make soap scum.
And that hard-water soap scum tends to be sticky, and leaves a coat on things that may take some scrubbing to get off. Thus, the infamous “ring around the bathtub”.
Same with washing dishes. Where I live, I can’t just wash dishes and then rinse the soap off. When rinsing, I have to actually wipe the soap scum off with a Scotch-Brite. This is HARD water.
ETA: Likewise when I take a shower. If I soap up and just rinse, that doesn’t make me feel very clean. I have to scrub with a washcloth while rinsing too in order to come out feeling clean.
What people confuse is being clean.
With hard water when you rinse off soap scum is left on hour skin. You rub the skin and there is friction.
With soft water the soap is washed off and the skin clean. You rub the skin and it slippery. People think it is slippery not because it is clean but they think soap is still on the skin.
“Two factors contribute to that slippery-when-wet feeling you get after soaping up with soft water. First, soap lathers better in soft water than in hard water, so it’s easy to use too much. The more dissolved soap there is, the more water you need to rinse it away. Second, the ions in softened water lessen its ability to ‘stick’ to the soap molecules, making it more difficult to rinse the cleanser off your body.”
This. When I was around 10 my parents got a water softener and it just didn’t feel right after getting out of the shower. I got used to that and when I moved out and had hard water again, then THAT didn’t feel right.