Thread: Organizing the chaos...

In now having collected far too many razors, brushes, soaps, and creams I stumbled onto a way to 'organize' the experience and figured I might as well throw it out there so others may benefit or even ask me how it took me so long to figure out

Basically what I am doing is grouping regionality into kits or stacks. Each stack has one soap from say Germany, 3 creams also related, an aftershave pairing to each cream, a razor from the same region, and a brush on top as well related. My typical week involves 3 shaves and so for each week I dedicate to one stack, mixing each shave a different cream from the stack with the common soap using that brush and blade. Puts me on a rotation through all my blades, brushes, and product that currently lasts 5 weeks since I have 5 piles (and counting) every day a different shave experience. I is a fun rotation so far, always a new experience. Currently they are grouped as I say according to region, perhaps next year I will shuffle the stacks according to a new criteria like fragrance.

Anyways, I am sure others have been doing something similar but it just came to me while I was wondering how to make order out of the chaos and I thought it might be worth sharing.

I sort my music geographically, but I don't think that hard about my shaving gear. Some days are soap days, some soaps are hot-weather soaps, some days are cream days, most days I don't use aftershave lotion... but sometimes I do... and I just reach for the razor I feel like using at the moment, unless there's one I need to test.

I can't remember the math for figuring out all the possible combinations of different numbers of items, but remember that the number of combinations gets really big really fast. Sounds like you have a fun system for cycling through them all.

So, do you ever hit a combination that you want to repeat? Kinda like that batch of chili where it's worth trying to remember the ingredients and actual amounts because the balance was just perfect?

Originally Posted by roughkype

I sort my music geographically, but I don't think that hard about my shaving gear. Some days are soap days, some soaps are hot-weather soaps, some days are cream days, most days I don't use aftershave lotion... but sometimes I do... and I just reach for the razor I feel like using at the moment, unless there's one I need to test.

I can't remember the math for figuring out all the possible combinations of different numbers of items, but remember that the number of combinations gets really big really fast. Sounds like you have a fun system for cycling through them all.

So, do you ever hit a combination that you want to repeat? Kinda like that batch of chili where it's worth trying to remember the ingredients and actual amounts because the balance was just perfect?

I do have my favorites for sure. So far my favorite combination (which I have actually never used together) I think would be:

+ Proraso pre
+ Martin De Candre Soap + a touch of Castle Forbes lavender cream on it (no glycerine)
+ Swartzweissslosskeramik? Classic scuttle
+ Plisson Limited Edition Super in Horn
+ Kanayama 80000
+ Filarmonica 13 Doble Temple (or maybe the Henckel Friodur)
+ splash of Dominica Bay Rum
+ smoothed over with I Coloniali

I find it amusing all the time how folks come up with these schemes to use their shaving supply inventory. Some are really unique and must have required a lot of thought and most of us went through that stage at some point. For most of us who have been doing this for some years now in the end it all comes down to what you feel like using either day by day or for a few days and then pick something else. Nothing bad about the scheme routine but it's just part of the process.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

I find it amusing all the time how folks come up with these schemes to use their shaving supply inventory. Some are really unique and must have required a lot of thought and most of us went through that stage at some point. For most of us who have been doing this for some years now in the end it all comes down to what you feel like using either day by day or for a few days and then pick something else. Nothing bad about the scheme routine but it's just part of the process.

yep, i can believe it... us new guys are still excited about all the options and eventually we sort out how they fit into our persona as that changes from day to day. later we just grab for what we know we want when we want it.