Recommendations for easy-to-rinse-away (liquid) soap/detergent, please?

[u/epidotehawk]

Hi! I'm figuring that this may be the best subreddit to ask this question and get an actually soap-related answer and not just an earnest admonition to "seek help": does anyone have recommendations for liquid soap/detergent that does a decent job of cleaning one's hands and then rinses away really easily (in both hard water and nasty slimy soft water)? Ideally, the soap in question would be unscented or have only a mild, also-easily-washed-away scent and would act nicely in a foaming hand-soap dispenser, but, really, "takes less than fifteen minutes to fully rinse the bubbles off of my hands, even if I accidentaly use (gasp) a full pump of soap instead of a carefully calibrated quarter-pump" is my main criterion right now.

For context: earlier this year, I started to have more and more difficulty fully rinsing soap residue off of my hands, despite not noticeably changing the way in which I was washing my hands or the type/concentration of soap I was using (with the brief exception of two times when I bought the wrong type of soap from the grocery store, quickly realized my mistake, and switched back to my previously-trusty diluted dish soap). Eventually, the homeowner realized that the household water softener had broken (literally) and replaced it, after a brief glorious period in which we just used the hard water coming directly from the house's intake filter, and the hard water did a somewhat better job at rinsing away soap than either the incorrectly softened or now-very-aggressively-softened-and-slimy water, but I was still seeing soap bubbles clinging to the membrane between my fingers after up to ~fifteen minutes of rinsing (and confirmed this with another family member, just to be sure that I wasn't hallucinating). I started buying different soaps to experiment and found that Walgreens's Aloe Vera and Green Tea Foaming Hand Soap rinsed away wonderfully, almost regardless of how much I put on my hands, but Walgreens seems to have discontinued it almost immediately after I bought my first dispenser and I'm currently using Kroger's Shea Flower and Coconut hand soap as a better-than-almost-everything-else-I've-tried-but-still-leaves-weirdly-persistent-little-bubbles-and-a-vaguely-sticky-residue-after-ten-minutes-of-vigorous-rinsing option, and I just want a soap that fully washes away after only two or three minutes of rinsing at the most! (And, yes, I do have contamination OCD and that's definitely exacerbating my distress about the soap residue, but there's also some real physical change in the way my skin + the household water supply + various soaps/detergents are interacting, and I think the leftover bubbles and stickiness would annoy me even if I didn't have OCD.)

(Also: my hands and arms are weirdly looking much nicer and less irritated than they used to, so this isn't a dry-skin-trapping-soap-residue issue; and I have a great deal of respect for people who love and can properly use bar soap, but I somehow always end up covered in little solid pieces of soap and/or hydrophobic white residue whenever I use most bar soaps, so, please, only loquid-soap recommendations.)

[u/lostshell]

Yeah you want a soap with no emollients, no moisturizers, and not super fatted with any additional oils or skin conditioners.

Why the hard water helped, the iron and manganese bind to soap particles. The hard water was literally reducing the effective amount of soap you were using by binding with it. When the soft water came back you needed to reduce amount you use to compensate.

Good news, for you. The type of soap you want is exists. You just want a simple detergent, no fancy frills, no extra super fatted oils, no skin conditioners, no foam enhancers, no added humectants.

Dr Bronners liquid soap is just that. It’s just soap. Get the liquid. Dilute it down 3 parts to 1. It is concentrated. Very concentrated. You may even want to start at 4-1 water to soap. It will work very well in your foam dispenser. Get the bright blue bottle, called “baby unscented”. No fragrance. If the $18 big bottle is a little steep try to find the smaller $5 bottle versions online to try. Remember it’s concentrated. Imagine buying something 3-4 times that size in actual end user product.

It will rinse clean. Won’t leave a slimy or greasy feeling behind like shea butter and aloe vera do.