My Little Obsession

When I travel to various and sundry hotels, I have this “thing” that I do.

I bring my own shampoo and body soap in 3-oz bottles. It started because the airlines make you put your all carry-on liquids or gels in 3-oz bottles.

I like my own shampoo because it’s cheap and cleans my oily hair. I use Suave Daily Clarifying because a big bottle costs about $2.49, it makes my thin hair nice and fluffy, and doesn’t smell like amorous kangaroos or a Mango-Scented Weasel.

I also carry a 3-oz bottle of Old Spice High Endurance Body Wash (Pure Sport smell). An 18 oz bottle costs $2.49 at Wal-Mart. I re-fill my little 3-oz bottle for hotel trips and so far, I’ve had to re-fill it about three times a year.

Here is my own shampoo and soap that I travel with. See? Those 3-oz bottles cost 89 cents a piece at Walgreens and I‘ve had them since, like, 9-11:


If you’ve never showered with (or showered with someone) using Old Spice High Endurance Body Wash (the Pure Sport smell), you don’t know what you’re missing. You and yours will smell nifty all day long. Plus, when you travel with your own little bottle of body soap, you’ll always get a little reminder of that soapy one you love every morning. (Even if it’s just yourself - ha!)

Hotel Soap: My goodness, there are more varieties of soaps in hotels than we could ever dream of buying for home use.

When I was a kid in the 60‘s, we had Zest. When I got to college in 1977, I discovered Coast and have stuck with that pretty much ever since. For the most part, it seems to have kept my pits & pieces clean and presentable for over 30 years.

So why is it that once we check into a hotel, we’re invited to ablute ourselves with an “Exfoliating Oatmeal-Almond Bar“? Goodness gracious, that sounds like something that should be provided in the Free Breakfast in the lobby from 6:00 to 9:00 am.

What about a “Coconut Lime Verbena Moisture-rich Bar?” Frankly, I’d love to see coconut-lime-verbena-whatever as a dessert rather than that horrid cheesecake that appears at every banquet.
Coconut-lime-verbena?? Yeah.! Bring it on! Maybe with a couple of shots of dark rum.
Please.

Now, I don’t know if you can see this, but I recently came across this “Asira Body Care Shoe Mitt”

Has anyone actually needed to shine their shoes in a hotel?

I buy one pair of black Rockport dress shoes (size 10.5 EEEEE) once every ten years and shine them once a year with Kiwi black shoe polish and an old pair of underpants. An Asira (sorry, it’s spelled with the only one small letter: ASiRA) Body Care Shoe Mitt seems a bit overboard.

Apparently, it’s shoe polisher cloth combined with a Green Tea & Cypress Shampoo; “a complete line of natural formulations from Nature’s finest ingredients designed to Refresh, Revitalize, and Re-enenergize your mind and body.

My goodness, I’m really intrigued about the need to capitalize on the letter ‘R’ in their description. I’m awfully tempted to call their toll-free number and ask them to substantiate that.
As you can see, I collect this stuff.

I enjoy collecting it so that it never goes to waste. Even though I bring my own supply of soap and shampoo, I squirrel this stuff away. The hotel staff re-supplies it every morning and I just keep collecting it.

BTW - Please leave behind a really generous tip for the maid service staff when you leave. Believe me, they have incredibly difficult jobs, work SO hard in a really efficient manner and get paid hardly anything. They’re just about the best staff in the hotel, but often unseen).

I often get irritated at how much public and private companies pay for useless corporate travel. If there was ever a corporate and environmental waste, travel expense would be at the top of the list.
It borders on being immoral if you ask me.

So, I collect these bottles of soap, shampoo and sundries as I go and then donate them to a local women’s shelter. I’ve worked in shelters before and, trust me, all these things get used. Very quickly.

It’s not a lot; I know this is just some tiny step toward alleviating a wasteful footprint;
But I’ll be damned if I have to stay in a hotel and it doesn’t cause some benefit - -somewhere, somehow.