I'm in Uthed's camp... a heavy ceramic coffee mug. Works great and is cheap.

Unfortunately, I now have to use a two-part system since the DW got involved... you see, she found "a really cute sterling silver sugar bowl" that's "just the thing to get rid of that ugly coffee mug". Ebay -- $10 incl shipping.

And now, the rest of the story...

When it came she discovered "The sides curve in a little and the cake of soap won't drop to the bottom of the bowl through the neck. It almost fits. I'm going to cut a little off the sides of the soap so it will drop in."

Of course, when she did that the soap didn't fuse itself to the bottom of the bowl... so, she decided to melt the soap and pour it into the bowl.

There, "It's nice and solid now."

Well, it was nice and solid until part way through working up a lather with hot water. The silver is such a good conductor of heat that the entire bowl warms sufficiently to melt the soap enough to release the cake to just spin in the bowl when I twirled the brush.

"No problem" she says... we'll switch you to "that hard soap".

Of course, when she nuked the harder soap it turned into something about the consistency of oatmeal, so she added some of the leftover soft soap to it to "smooth it out a bit". There, "that should work ok now!"

And it did... if you could get past the esthetics of lumpy white hard soap in a sea of green lime softer soap. "The best of both worlds" she said.


Well, the pretty silver bowl still sits out on the sink counter for everyone to see... and I still use the soap it holds... the soft kind which I still melt in the micro and pour into it. I'll bet you're thinking "A lot of additional hassle to keep peace in the family"?

Well, there's a good side to this. Since the soap is no longer in the coffee mug, I now fill it w/water and nuke it to boiling while I shower -- this heats the ceramic of the mug plenty hot. Then I drop the brush in the boiling hot water while I get the rest of the tools of the trade ready. I then work some soap on the brush from the silver bowl -- since the water temp is near boiling (and the soap is the soft kind) it doesn't take much effort to get a fair amount of soap on the brush ends before the bowl heats enough to release the soap. Then, I dump the water from the mug and work up a big pile of lather in it... the lather is almost too hot to put on my face. I lather my face and put the brush back in the (still hot) mug of warm lather... when I need more lather for a 2nd pass or touchups it's there waiting to use, still warm.

Oh, I forgot, I keep the mug outta site under the sink.