When we came to Korea, we inherited an apartment full of beauty products. I don’t know who the junkie was but they left us a ton of half-full bottles of shampoo, a small mountain of bars of soap and a cupboard loaded with lotion. Much of it was pretty awful and I could completely understand why it had been abandoned. Rice Day shampoo, in particular. That I used for hand washing clothing because after two washes it was turning my hair brittle. Worked great on my clothes anyway.

About 6 months into our stay, I unearthed a three-quarters full bottle of Nivea Body Wash and stuck it in the shower to use up. We were still working through the stockpile, though it had diminished. I’m normally a little hesitant to try any kind of liquid soap because I’ve had problems with rashes in the past, though that was always with gel liquid soaps. Still, between my own bad reactions to gel soaps in the past and my more recent experiments with Rice Day and other orphaned products in the apartment I was not expecting success though I figured at least I would have another hand laundering soap available.

My husband didn’t even try it. The next time he showered he foraged out another bar of soap from the stockpile.

I used it once and didn’t develop a rash. It had a pretty nice, faint scent. The bottle was easy to handle even with wet soapy hands. And it worked well with the scrubby cloth I use in the shower. It also didn’t leave a scummy feel after I rinsed off. In fact, I wasn’t sure I had rinsed it off. My whole body felt a little slippery even after repeat rinsing.

So I used it again. Hmm, still no rash, my skin feels clean though a little slippery. Husband won’t touch it, but that’s his prerogative. He’s still scarred by the Great Nivea Hand Lotion Experiment. He winces when he sees Nivea on store shelves.

Flash forward six weeks. My husband and I are summoning the courage to climb out of bed and face our hordes of wild Korean children and he says, "You skin feels great. What lotion are you using?"

I said I wasn’t.

"Well, you’ve got to be using something different."

Um, Nivea Body Wash?

"Really? Your skin is really soft."

Now, I’ve thought about it and I’m pretty sure my husband has never commented on the texture of my skin, aside from my face, in 15 years of marriage. I had noticed that the soap worked well. It got me clean and my skin was recovering from that sand papery feeling it had started to acquire at the end of the winter. My face hadn’t felt tight as it dried as it is sometimes wont to do. Maybe this Nivea stuff wasn’t like the other stuff. Maybe this Nivea stuff works. Hmm.

I’ve still got quite a few showers left in my bottle of Nivea. I tend to use a dime-sized gob and it lathers me up just fine. The not feeling quite rinsed off thing is a little disconcerting, but if it makes my skin feel like this, then I’ll learn to deal. It’s still working fine and I might just have to buy {gasp} a bottle of my own. Give it a try, I think you’ll like the results.

Ingredients: Triple Purified Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Glycol Distearate, Sodium Cocoy, Glutamate, PEG-7 Glyceryl Cocoate, PEG-8 Dimethicone Copolyol, Cetyl Alcohol,Fragrance, Glyceryl Laurate, Laureth-4, Hydroxypropyl Guar Hydroxypropyltrimonium Chloride, Citric Acid, Acrylates/C10/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, EDTA, Sodium Hydroxide, Phenoxyethanol, Methyldibromo Glutaronitrile




Recommended: Yes