Primary Ingredient difference between shave soap and hand washing soap?

We were at Safeway yesterday (first grocery trip in 10 days), and the liquid soaps were totally gone.  Soap bars were about 98% gone as well!  Since I have a massive supply of shaving soaps and creams, my wife asked if they could be used if we run out of regular sink/shower soap?  I said of course.  Then she asked "what is the primary difference between shaving soap and regular sink/shower soap".  I thought it might be glycerine, but since many sink and shower soaps are glycerine based...that cannot be the only thing.  Does anyone know what makes shaving soaps and creams different?

Use one of your harder soaps. We ran out of liquid soap in the bathroom here and I grabbed a little 1 oz sample I had. Been lathering the hands with it for about 2 weeks. Lathers better than the liquid soap.

Who'd ever thought our insane amount of shaving soap could be potentially life saving?

To answer you original question. The primary ingredient is potassium hydroxide. (Lye) A hard bar soap generally won't have any in it. It will only contain Sodium Hydroxide. SH makes soap hard. PH makes soap softer. A liquid soap would not be likely to have any Sodium Hydroxide.

As though rereading ‘Fight Club’ for the zillionth time....

Just buy Marseilles soap iff Amazon, Fendrihan, and many others carries it, etc. You can make dishwashing and laundry detergent with it.

There are tons of bar soaps online. Treat yourself to some Valobra, Per de Provence, Martin de Candre, etc.

My hand-soap the days of quarantine.

Man wish I could locate a couple of those blue containers for housing my rescue dog remains.

How’s it going in Greece?

Man wish I could locate a couple of those blue containers for housing my rescue dog remains.

How’s it going in Greece?

I hope you find them Dan, but I'm sure you already know that shipping these is a pain in the neck and most people will avoid it. No matter what, good luck in your search!

Things are going good so far. As of today, we have 2192 cases, official at least, and 103 deaths. Greece is a small country of approx. 11 million people, but the government was pretty serious on the new virus from the very beginning. The country is in quarantine since mid-March, all stores are closed except from the super-markets, mini-markets, pharmacies etc. You have to send an SMS or fill in a form to get out of your home. There are fines for the offenders. Pretty much what now happens to most countries. The good thing is that the government implemented tough measures pretty early to control the virus outbreak and they did a good job. People in Greece seem to follow the instructions. The really bad thing is that our economy is about to experience another massive hit due to the tourism which represents about 25% of our GDP. Experts are talking about declines of at least 50% in bookings. It's a domino effect after that, thousands of unemployed (35% of the country's labor works direct or indirect for the tourism industry), surge in the unemployment rates and so on.

Time will tell.

I know that the US are experiencing a really difficult situation at the moment and I hope that you come out of this even stronger.

Was thinking exactly that regarding Greece, particularly the way EU has abused the economy mercilessly (and China picking off assets on the cheap) am very concerned for the future of the birthplace of Western Civilization and Western Culture.

Suspect the story will end even worse for the US than Greece as US is hopelessly indebted with a completely disconnected ruling elite and seething resentment of a heterogeneous population sharing no common heritage nor interest other than extracting as much as possible as quickly as possible. Truly see a French Revolution redux as possible, particularly with the looting of the Treasury by the elites in 2009 being recapitulated. Interesting times indeed and almost certainly going to culminate in another global war.