Simply stand your bar soap on something to raise it above the damp soap dish. At first I used a plastic milk bottle lid. It worked quite well but the lid did collect water inside itself meaning the soap stayed damp.
Then I had Lego suggested to me as a soap stand. Wow. It worked far better than the milk lid method. But when using individual bricks, they annoyingly fell apart (even if you glued them) and got embedded in the soap. Hmmm...
So my most Lego-obsessed child helped me find exactly the Lego parts I needed on the 'Brick Owl' Lego marketplace website:
1x LEGO Medium Stone Gray Beam Frame 5 x 7 (64179)
&
4x LEGO Medium Stone Gray Pin without Friction Ridges (3673)
Costing me the grand total of £2 (including p&p)!
Doing this (milk bottle lid trick, or better still the Lego trick) will make your bar soap last at least twice as long - making it a more affordable alternative to liquid hand soap / shower gel, in plastic bottles.
My favourite bar soaps include: Little Soap Company Natural Bar Soap in Lemon Zest - 100g for £2.50 (handily available from Asda), Shea Butter Friendly Soap - 95g for £2.60, Oliva Pure Olive Oil Soap - 125g for £1.69 (from Holland and Barrett) **pictured above**, Lush's Honey I Washed the Kids - 100g for £4 and Lush's Bohemian - 100g for £4. These soaps are all plastic-wrap free and palm-oil free. This makes them expensive compared to mass-produced, plastic packaged, non-sustainable-palm-oil-laden soap bars and liquid soaps. So it is essential that soap bars in our house (and yours) last as long as possible.
What to do with the annoying tail-end bits of soap which are too small to hold / use? The answer is a 'soap saver' bag (see image below). Many zero waste stores sell them, they can be either exfoliating or smooth (Peace With the Wild has an exfoliating one - similar to mine, which I got from the BodyShop years ago, &Keep sells a soft cotton version) and high-street chains are joining in too (Home Bargains sells a soap saver bag for just 49p). Put any bits and pieces of leftover soap into a soap saver bag and then rub the bag between your hands to lather, just as you would a bar of soap. The handy pull-close strings mean that you can hang the bag up in the shower - the shower head adjuster makes a good hanging spot - so the soap bits inside the bag dry out between uses (and last even longer!)
When I began my eco journey, I searched - and found - excellent soap dishes (well drained, with a removable drip catcher, made of impermeable material etc). Here are my top soap dish picks...
***UPDATE*** Amazon has a completely amazing, self-draining white silicone soap dish by Newoutset (pack of two) for £7. Using this type of soap dish, with the Lego stand on top, has dramatically cut down on wasted soggy soap. I am sure that you can get ceramic self-draining soap dishes, but with young children in the house, we need robust soap dishes!
The Amazon LOFEKEA Ceramic Soap Dish, for £12, has a ceramic rectangular base with a smart-looking white plastic, well-draining insert. For bath / shower areas I favour an all-plastic soap dish (to avoid slippy breakages) - the JosephJoseph soap dish from Amazon for £9 is very well designed to keep small bars of soap upright, it comes in smart grey/white or blue/white. Another side-of-the-bath option is the all-plastic SZDUDU from Amazon for £7, which is more basic looking and a bit fiddly to empty (you have to tap it sharply against the side of the sink / bath to get the insert to release), but the best I have found. For kitchens, Lakeland sells the over-the-sink-free-draining UMBRA white plastic soap dish, for £5, which sticks to the side of the sink with a strong sucker - tightened by a screw mechanism, BUT be warned that the mechanism is hard to dismantle and so is hard to keep clean.
The white / blue Enamel Soap Dish from Tydeco is really beautiful and looks practical (I've not tried it personally), it costs £16. Tydeco also have a grey enamel wall-mounted version.
Despite using a variety of these really well-designed soap dishes, the base of the soap would always remain damp between uses (arrgh) - disintegrating far too quickly to be cost effective.
My genius idea of pushing a plastic milk bottle lid into the underside of the soap bar (or better still is the Lego idea which I can't claim as my own), raises it above any water on the soap dish drainer, more than doubling the life expectancy of soap bars in out house .
If you struggle with soap being especially mushy in the damp and cold Winter months, then I'd advise another bit of soap-care action. 'Soap Rotation' or 'Soap Swapping' is when you have have two soap bars on the go per soap dish, so one can dry out (on Lego / on a lid) whilst one is in use (also on Lego / on a lid). Then when the in-use one starts looking mushy, swap it with the dry soap bar.
On an aesthetic note, the Lego comes in a non-shouty neutral grey (unlike the milk bottle lids). If you are wanting to use the lid method, fear not as plastic milk bottles / lacto-free / oat milk tetra packs come with lids in many different colours (including white). When I took the original photos, we were using the green semi-skimmed milk lids which we had in the house. We have since swapped to milk in glass - making our own oat milk to have on cereal has meant that buying from the milkman is now an affordable option - yay!
On a practical / safety note, small children will need to be supervised when using soaps raised in this way, as the plastic lid / Lego is a choking risk.
If you don't have any Lego in the house and / or you don't drink milk (meaning you don't have any suitable lids), or if you have zero-waste glass bottle deliveries (we have in the past and we will again one day), or if you want a particular colour of lid / bricks, then ask friends and neighbours to donate their lids to you. This dialogue will help spread the idea and hopefully encourage more people that plastic-packaging-free soap bars are affordable and practical for them.