clean is clean?

Scraping by is quite literal for me these days. 

Thankfully I've been on the road for the past 10 days. I'm only home for 3 and then back into hotel living for the weekend... which for some people causes anxiety. For me actually fosters relief. All the toiletries I can use... And they replenish them!

Body wash, body bars, facial bars, shampoo, conditioner. 

But that's what got me thinking... What's the difference between all this stuff? 

I dropped off my bags in my hotel the other day and washed my hands, just for good measure (you can't be too cautious when you're traveling and meeting a lot of people) and realized I had opened and used the "facial bar" and not the "body bar". 

But did it really matter? 

Upon closer inspection of the two bars they smelled the same, they looked the same, they sudzed the same... if it wasn't printed differently on the packaging, I would have said they were identical. 

I suppose the facial bar might boast more moisturizing capabilities? But does it? And what's the major difference between the shampoo and say the body wash? The likely answer is... not much. Especially at the mass produced hotel soap level. I mean, let's be honest, most hotels aren't dishing out the good stuff, which is why they don't mind giving away handfuls of the mini toiletries on a whim. 

There are hotels that are exceptions to the rules... that's an assumption of course purely based on what I've read... although I do have first hand appreciation of the toiletries at THE Hotel "Bathe" 

But for the most part, I don't think the majority of people are strictly using hotel toiletries when they travel, except for me, and most boys.

The point of all this is to divulge something I've been doing that I don't really think should be considered all that weird. A few months ago my dad sent me a box of shampoo/conditioner "samples". I've already established that the conditioner is sub par, which is what I'm most desperate for these days and I actually have enough shampoo (I hope) to get me to June 1... so I've been re-purposing the shampoo side of those sample packets into body wash!

I haven't experienced any weird side effects like faster body hair growth (TMI? ha)
And shampoo inevitably (unless your at a salon) runs down your body anyway...

But it kind of makes you wonder about marketing campaigns doesn't it...? 

Do we really need 100 different products that all claim to do different things? 

I once read of a research project that broke down the ingredients in individually sliced packaged cheese... and it was only one ingredient away from being a "common plastic" Not implying you should forgo Saran wrap on your leftovers and opt for sliced cheese... but it would probably do the trick! ha

(I know, I know H2 is just Hydrogen, and if you add just One Oxygen you've got entirely different product but you know what I mean)

Of course there's a website all about toiletries and cosmetics and their chemical components and makeup... in case you're a googling geek like me... but it's kind of like going to WebMD, you might find more than you want to know - just a warning :)

The Science of Cosmetics and Toiletries