I love fancy soaps. Handmade with goats’ milk, sprinkled with dried lavender, scented with essential oils--wrap it in a pretty package and I’m sold. But, inevitably, after a few showers those bars don’t look quite so fancy anymore, even if they still smell good. The soap dish gets scuzzy, cracks begin to run through the soap as it dries, and my showers feel less like self-care and more like just another part of my routine.

C’est la vie. Things that are shiny and new and presented in a beautiful way are so appreciated, but once that newness wears off we don’t value them nearly as much. Even if we try to stop ourselves, we feel this way about so much in life. Relationships, gym memberships, new clothes--they lose something with familiarity and use.

Texture is the way something feels. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that the old and the familiar is what we truly treasure. When I’ve got a collection of soap slivers that no longer fill me with the pleasure they once did, I slip them into this bag, reminding myself that looking at something differently, feeling it differently, can make it new again--and, if not quite new, even more beloved.