I live on the road most of the time and am very conscious of my water usage. Taking low-water showers enables me to go a month without refilling my 35 gallon water tank, and that's the way I like it! So I use low-water or no-water bathing products on a full-time basis. To date, I have tried four different products. This one, Nurture no-rinse body wash and shampoo, is my clear favorite, and I highly recommend it. Of the other three products, two were wet-wipes. These don't work for washing your hair, so I don't consider those to be practical for long-term bathing use. The 3rd was a dry-wipe that you put water on...meh. I reviewed that product to discuss advantages and disadvantages so I won't go into it here. The Nurture shampoo/body wash works very well for me. Here's how I use it: 1) I heat about 2 or 3 cups of water on my stove (yes, I am also too cheap to use my water heater...it chews through the propane!). 2) I put the hot water in a dishpan and add cold to make about 2 or 3 quarts of water (I'm guessing. I just make the water the temp I want). 3) I use a cup to pour water through my hair to dampen it. This seems to help the distribution of the product through my hair and enables me to use less product than if I apply it to dry hair. The rinse water goes back in the dishpan...this is no-rinse soap, so I don't worry about 'rinsing' with soapy water. 4) I apply 15-20 'squirts' of Nurture to my hair (it comes out of the bottle as foam), applying five squirts at a time to various sections of my hair and scrubbing my hair as I would with regular shampoo. 5) I use the cup to rinse the soap out of my hair and capture the rinse water in the dishpan. 6) I use a washrag and the soapy water to wash 'non-stinky bits' and dry with a bath towel. For stinky bits, I moisten with the soapy water, apply additional Nurture, wash/rinse with soapy water, and then dry. This does not get my hair as clean as regular shampoo, but my hair is relatively dry and only needs to be washed a couple of times a week anyway. The whole process uses a minimal quantity of water -- less than one gallon per shower. My skin is quite sensitive to soap, so I don't like using the product without any water at all; instead, I use it as a 'minimal-rinse' soap. The format of the product (just a plain old bottle of liquid soap) allows you to use more product where and when you need it and less product when and where you don't, unlike a wipe with a pre-determined quantity of soap. The foaming dispenser reduces product waste as the foam doesn't spill or run, and it seems to make the product go further than a liquid. I keep trying to count the number of showers I can get out of a bottle of Nurture and I keep losing track, so I can't say for sure. I believe it is somewhere between five and eight showers. If you don't need to ration your water usage, I would not go to the expense of buying no-rinse products like this one, as standard full-rinse products are more cost-effective. For nomadic life and car-camping, though, where you have to haul every drop of water you use, this is a great product. I would prefer a re-fillable dispenser option if I could get one to reduce garbage volume. Nurture? How about it?
