Wetshaving

My Obsession In Numbers - 10. March 2026

• Brush: Omega Roma Colossea 31 mm  
• Razor: Stando Perun  
• Blade: BIC Chrome Platinum  
• Lather: Wickham Soap Co. - Magnum  
• Post Shave: OAM - Oli del benessere - Sensitive Skin toner  
• Post Shave: Lavera - Men Sensitive ASB  

Just one pass on the head and one WTG pass on the face (except the moustache area). A really comfortable shave overall!

Sometimes things don't really work out like we intend them to. Today I thought I might already try trimming my henriquatre into a Van Dyke - but the results proved to be terrible. It's weird, but due to my sideways-growing facial hair on the chin, the goatee part is always looking skewed. Ok, lesson learnt - this simply isn't a feasible style for me. At first, I wanted to buzz everything off in frustration. Luckily I remembered that my moustache is growing at glacial slow pace in comparison to my other facial hair, so I still left about 1,5 mm of moustache stubble to give it a little kickstart after shaving everything else (mostly to even things out - even the detail trimmer can't come close to the results of a razor). I must say, it isn't as bad as I feared. My face fat is not as pronounced as I thought; of course I would look even better if I'd finally start working out again and lose some more weight, but it's just OK for now.

As for the fun part today, since I currently have a bit of paid time off from work, I decided to go through all my soaps and aftershaves to see if any else of them had turned... sour? moldy? stale? I don't know the right english word. Unfortunately, almost all of the alcohol-free toners had and even 4 other soaps were a case for the trash can. All my own fault, as I left two in an open container after the lid broke and another in an old plastic box that wasn't designed for shaving soap, but bath soap. This was a nice opportunity however to count a tally of all the soaps I had, group them into different rough scent categories and reorganize them in my cabinet. I think this doesn't warrant a standalone post, so if you don't want to read hobbyist/collector rambling, you can collapse my post by now:

All in all, after having to purge 5 soaps in total (yesterday's SW VoA and 4 today - A&E Amber Rose, Moon Soaps Union, Le Pere Lucien Cedre-Patchouly and SV Stella Alpina) I now arrive at a tally of owning 46 soaps in general. Means I originally once had over 50. Which is way too much for my tiny apartment, so I am definitely not on the immediate lookout for replacements! 

My most represented brand is Southern Witchcrafts, even after getting rid of VoA yesterday I still have 5 unique soaps by them. Second place is a three way tie between Wholly Kaw, Declaration Grooming and HAGS. I'm tempted to give it to WK, as one DG is unscented and basically just my body shaving soap for the shower. And one of HAGS soaps is a stick that's at about 30% left. Anyways, Third place is yet another tie, this time between four different artisans! Stirling, Noble Otter, A&E and last but not least Chiseled Face. So you could say my Top 3 is pretty evenly split, except different soaps owned don't account for most used soap. I reckon this title would go to CFG Ghost Town Barber since I also have it for a few years now and it's basically my Ol' Reliable.

As for Scent categories, I went with pretty broad typology: Cold weather scents (autumn/winter), Warm weather scents (spring & summer), Fragrance/Dupes, Universal/Everydays and finally Bold/Stinky. I left out the DG Unscented for obvious reasons. Unsurprisingly, most of my soaps fall under the "Cold Weather" category - 14 soaps, to be exact. But surprisingly, Warm Weather follows closely behind with 13 soaps. Third place goes to Fragrance & Dupes with 9 soaps. Perhaps a bit weird, but I have 5 soaps in the Bold/Stinky category! These are: Chiseled Face Groomatorium's Midnight Stag, as well as Gearhead, plus WK Cuero Oscuro, Stirling Texas on Fire and Meißner Tremonia Strong'n'Scottish. The latter is, perhaps due to weird scent memories, my least used soap - I used it exactly once and it smells like Räucherkammer or Wurschtkammer to me (basically, a tiny room in my grandparents' house where they kept cured/smoked ham and sausages - my mom is currently involved in selling the old house and let me tell you, you still don't get this smell out after all those years!). Universal soaps like Barbershop scents make up only 4 soaps of my collection. While this was a fun activity, it's also a bit frightening - assuming a price of 20€ per soap, and this is pretty lenient since a lot were more expensive, it adds up to 920€ for 46 soaps. Judging by the amount of aftershaves I had to purge and the razors and brushes I own, I probably have spent around 1200 to 1500€ on wetshaving as a hobby (including soaps, brushes and razors I forgot somewhere, PIFed or gifted others). I'm in the hobby for almost six years now, so this still seems like a reasonable amount in comparison to all the tobacco and vape products in the same time (I took up smoking again during the pandemic 2020). Yet, I must say that sometimes the FOMO came close to the Nicotine cravings.

I apologize for the lengthy post! I hope it's at least readable, since the current app doesn't support freaking Markdown FFS 🫤