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cosOften when I am visiting someone and use their shower, they say that I should use their soap but I don't think to ask which bottle, specifically, is their shampoo/soap. I don't think to ask because these things are labelled, right?
Except that many times when I'm looking for bottles that say "Shampoo" or "Soap", I instead find an assortment of bottles labelled "Body Wash", "Bath Gel", "Bath & Shower Cream", "Bubble Bath", "Herbal Treatment", and host of other names. Some of these are soaps, some are conditioners, and some are neither (moisturizers, scents, bubbling substances). There's a code. I don't know the code.
Instead, I recently noticed that what I almost absentmindedly just look at the ingredients. I haven't taken an organic chemistry class or test since the 90s, but I can still spot names of compounds that seem like something with a lipid (fatty) tail and a polar head of some sort. If one of the top few ingredients in one of these frilly-named bath products is one of those compounds, then I can use it as soap. I can't read the marketing code, but I can read enough of the chemistry code to find what I'm looking for.
Edit: Conditioners seem to have a lot of fatty alcohols. I don't know why that never threw me off. Maybe because conditioners are labelled "conditioner" so consistently, I got used to it.
Except that many times when I'm looking for bottles that say "Shampoo" or "Soap", I instead find an assortment of bottles labelled "Body Wash", "Bath Gel", "Bath & Shower Cream", "Bubble Bath", "Herbal Treatment", and host of other names. Some of these are soaps, some are conditioners, and some are neither (moisturizers, scents, bubbling substances). There's a code. I don't know the code.
Instead, I recently noticed that what I almost absentmindedly just look at the ingredients. I haven't taken an organic chemistry class or test since the 90s, but I can still spot names of compounds that seem like something with a lipid (fatty) tail and a polar head of some sort. If one of the top few ingredients in one of these frilly-named bath products is one of those compounds, then I can use it as soap. I can't read the marketing code, but I can read enough of the chemistry code to find what I'm looking for.
Edit: Conditioners seem to have a lot of fatty alcohols. I don't know why that never threw me off. Maybe because conditioners are labelled "conditioner" so consistently, I got used to it.
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On land, my bathroom (I share one with my step-sister, and my step-mom likes to drop things off in it without telling me) has soaks, scrubs, fizzes, these weird little balls with oil, moisturizers, and the like. Finally I've started going to artist's markets and buying weird bar soaps that only I'll use so no one else will touch it. Pine tar soap is one of my favorites. It's black and greasy looking and everyone eyeballs it and goes "...that one's ALL yours."
In my general opinion, I know soap is soap if it's in a bar. If it's a wash, cream, scrub, oil, gel, etc. etc. etc. I usually follow it up with soap. Just in case.