Well for sure, I didn't use a bar of Ivory but I did use a jar of Martin de Candre 'Rose'. Nice stuff too..
My grandfather coming back from WW2, always used the 'tag ends' of bar soap for shaving. Pressed them in a coffee mug. Edit: from what I've read, those who were well off, bought shaving soap. The poor folks 'made do' with whatever was available. This applies to the depression era people as well.
As a boy I always watched my father press the slivers of bar soap in to his diners mug for shaving: I'm sure he learned that from his father. I learned from my dad that my grandfather use to use a Rolls razor to shave. For Christmas I remember us kids buying my dad six pucks of Williams as a treat. Good memories!
Mine too. My dad, his son, always used razors and always had toilet paper stuck all over his face. My grandpa didn’t have time for that. I always found it humorous my grandpa was more accepting of newer shaving technology than my dad. That is until my dad was put on blood thinners and then developed Parkinson’s later in life and had to switch to electric. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
My wife's Aunt told me the men used cigarette papers for nicks too. No toilet paper on the farm they used the Sears & Roebuck catalog for tp.
When I was a kid they didn't have indoor plumbing on the family farm but used toilet paper in the outhouses. Most of my mothers siblings grew up during the Depression and they didn't have the money to spend on tp and made use of whatever was available. I guess with 7 kids a S&R catalog wouldn't last long.
Not that I'm that old to see the depression. Our home alway had TP, but when I would go to the Grange hall or Grandma's we would use an outhouse or connected outhouse. At least they had TP. When I lived in Africa, we usually used a drop toilet (outhouse) and had TP or newspaper. If we went into a city we would look forward to a real heated shower and a toilet that didn't gather flies.
Heaven forbid if you used a page from the section that grandfather was reading. I suppose that most in here are either too young or were too wealthy to remember using corn cobs.
We were so poor we didn't have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out. We walked to school six miles both ways. We sowed feed sacks together for our cloths. As children our corn cobs were second hand.
That was the generation who lived through the Great Depression though. Many of them learned how to live on almost nothing and never gave up those ways because they feared those times might come again one day. Why buy a special soap for shaving when you can just use the same bar soap that you use to washing your hands? Some people are still like that to this day to a certain extent. Many women use body wash or conditioner for shaving because the thinking is, "its all just soap anyways, why buy a special product just for shaving?" Honestly, now I kind of want to try shaving with bar soap just to see what its like. The only problem is I dont use bar soap of any kind.
I'm gonna throw in with... I'd bet that a lot of the thriftier folks or say, during Depression Era, also made their own soap from leftover cooking fats and oils. I wonder if this was even the norm if one didn't live near a city. It wasn't specifically shaving-formulated soap, but as others have said, many just made do.
Id say thats very possible. Back in the old days, when you lived on a farm, nothing went to waste. It wouldnt have been difficult to use animal fat to make your own soap.
I'm near 73 yo. and started out with a puck of .10 cent Williams soap, Mom supplied one of her coffee mugs that a puck fit perfectly and later on I used Old Spice. My Dad always use Williams but I did catch him adding a piece of bath soap in his mug a few times. I guess I'll admit that I did the same when low on soap. I remember the Sears and Roebuck catalog As a boy when we spent a week at my Uncles place in N.J. (no indoor plumbing) the first morning I used the outhouse and I asked for the toilet paper the answer was " the catalog is not just for reading"