Thursday, March 20, 2014

Night of Household Items #2:
Lather Leaves

Continuing with tonight's theme...

#2: Lather Leaves


This small booklet of Lather Leaves was produced by General Soap Company of Chicago, Illinois. It measures 2¾ inches by 4 inches. The directions call for the user to simply "wet hands and use one Lather Leaf as a bar of Soap."

I'm not sure how old these are. I reckon they could be from anytime from the 1930s through 1950s. Many seem to date specifically to World War II, and you can see how they would have been useful in the field. There are a lot of different covers, too. Here's a collage of covers taken from eBay listings.


The question is: Do they still work after more than a half-century?

I am here to answer these types of science and history questions for you! In the name of research, I proceeded to the sink, tore off a single Lather Leaf, got my hands wet, and began to scrub them with the Leaf.

Nothing happened. A tiny spot of suds formed on one of my palms after some vigorous rubbing, but that was it. My hands did not get soaped up or cleaned by a Lather Leaf.

"You have wet paper," my wife said.


And so there you have it.

UP NEXT: The wide world of snap fasteners

1 comment:

  1. This is awesome. Thank you. I just saw these in the show Cheers Ave was wondering if they would still work.

    ReplyDelete