Soap Dishes Are Back and Better Than Ever
Good old-fashioned bar soap is far from obsolete. In fact, more and more people are ditching the liquid stuff for reliable blocks of solid saponified fats. Why? The zero-waste community likes bar soap because it can be purchased without plastic packaging, and many varieties—like Dr. Bronner’s—use eco-friendly and biodegradable ingredients. Last year I switched to bar soap for washing dishes. My motivations were environmental, but now I find solid soap almost preferable to liquid dish soap for removing grease and food residue from my dinnerware. One problem remained: I needed a place to put my solid dish soap.
A soap dish is a nonnegotiable necessity for a bar soap lifestyle. It prevents a mushy and waterlogged soap bottom and keeps the thing from sliding all over your sink or bathtub. But not all soap dishes are created equal. Some merely provide a space to put your soap and nothing more, better ones will lift up the soap enough to provide some airflow, and the best allow excess moisture to drip away completely, preserving a pristine bar of soap.
I recently combed the internet for soap dishes (I need two, one for the dish soap bar and one for the hand soap at my kitchen sink). And in the spirit of sharing research, you’ll find some of the best soap dishes you can buy online below; they’re beautiful and functionally designed and sure to be conversation starters. Plus, find a few of my favorite hand soaps for the kitchen.
