Getting a Better Shave for Less Money.
Posted by Noah | Filed under general
I’ve decided those fancy five blade razors are a waste of money. I’ve never been super happy with how they work, although shaving with one is fast, I find I still get a considerably amount of ingrown hair. But they’re also ~$18 for 6, that makes them $3 each and since each one lasts only 3 days for me before it becomes unacceptably dull that means I’m spending $1/day for the razor alone. Never mind pre-shave, shaving soap or cream, brush, aftershave or whatever else. However the typical two blade swivel head disposable razor is $3 for 10 razors, and each lasts one day, seriously don’t push. Still, that’s only $0.33 for the blade. I’ve found the shave is every bit as good, and maybe better. That said it could be that I’m more willing to do it because I know I’m not using up such an expensive blade as with the five blade system.
As a side note, I’ve also switched to using a brush to apply my shaving cream, I tried shaving soap with it but it was a lot of work and the results weren’t great. So now I spray foam into the brush and work it in. This has two advantages, one the brush is excellent at helping the little hairs to stand up in the foam, rather than be smoothed down by the hand, and two it means I don’t have to get shaving cream on my hands.
I’ve also tried a number of foams, gels, soaps and creams and have found Barbasol’s Beard Buster is an excellent product at half the price of some of the others. Although I’ve not been able to find a quality English soap to try, just the cheap $3/bar type. I have had the “freshly stropped straight razor with expensive soap preformed by a barber” shave before, and it’s spectacular. However that route is time consuming and expensive.
If you know me well you may say “But Noah, you’re not a well shaved man, and you have red bumps and pimple!”, and that’s true, but you should see what happened before I got this under control, now I get maybe 4 ingrown hairs when I shave, I used to get 50 or more when using an electric razor and when just using a 5 blade razor with foam I’d get 10 or so.
Tags: economics, hygiene, shaving