Your choice: shower poof, loofah, cloth, other?

Thanks for your response! I use both a loofah and a washcloth and this makes me feel much better about using my loofahs. I grow and dry my own loofah gourds (really easy), and I was sort of bummed thinking that I might need to stop using them. My shower is mildew prone too, so I keep a spray bottle of white vinegar in the shower to spray everything down with (loofah too!) before I get out. This seems to prevent mildew and soap scum build up. I wish I could throw them in the washer, but I think they would fall apart. Great recommendation! :)

Bath loofahs, poofs and the like do, in fact, grow bacteria and mold that is potentially harmful to you. It is recommended that you wash regularly and replace periodically your loofahs or poofs. Time frame recommendations vary, but I think if you wash it every couple weeks, you can probably go about 3 months. But it couldn't hurt to replace it every month if you don't wash it. Just tonight, I informed a friend of the potential bacterial growth and she sorta freaked out. She has recently had some unexplained infection and had no clue how she may have gotten it. Now, just based on the fact that she doesn't know where it came from doesn't necessarily mean it was caused by her shower poof. But, she didn't know to replace it before and she now thinks that it's at least a possibility. Hope this information is useful.

I'm the same way! I use a washcloth and a loofah during the shower process. And though right now I'm using bar soap, I often use liquid, so I wondered about the whole unhygenic bar soap thing and had to look it up (findings above). I appreciate your response! :)

This seems like a good way to go. I like a fresh washcloth each time for bar soap too - just seems cleaner! But body wash just doesn't suds up right without a poof or loofah or something, and since the liquid soap in the bottle doesn't come into contact with the poof, germs/bacteria (if there are any) can't spread. Thanks for your reply! :)

Hehe, that's what I was thinking too! I mean, it is soap, how dirty can it get? Because of the previous commentor's reply, I looked it up online just now, and it looks like bar soap is fine so long as it's not being shared and it doesn't touch a lot a grossness. I also read that it's recommended to rinse it off after use. Hmm. Good to know! Thanks for your response! :)

Yes, I agree that a poof is best with liquid soap. But I'm very curious about claims that bar soap is unhygenic! A lot of other people think so too, and I've always thought that soap pretty much had to be clean, by its nature, hehe! An exception is when bar soap is shared with a bunch of folks - like for kids' handwashing or gas station bathrooms. It sits there in a puddle of everyone's grime on the side of the sink... yuck! I will have to look up more info about this online and see if bar soap really is unhygenic, if only one person uses it. Thank you for your input! :)