Now I’ve got myself a soap clock. Back in January, 2008, I bought a 16- pack of soap at Costco. After bringing it home, I was inspired to write a post called “How many more bars of soap will I buy before I die?”
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As of today, the last bar of soap from that pack is almost gone. My house has several bathrooms, and I tend to use one of them, almost exclusively, and that’s were that pack of soap was located. Therefore, I can attribute most of the soap use to me. Therefore, I used 16 bars of soap in about 42 months, meaning I use a bar of soap every 2.6 months or, conversely, I use .38 bars of soap per month.
[2]Now, going to the life expectancy tables [3], I see that I will likely live till age 93, but that seems awfully generous. This clock [4] says I’ll only live until Thursday, February 7, 2030 (19 more years). And here is a detailed calculator [5] that takes into account many factors, and it tells me I’ll live until 83, which means I’ll live 28 more years. 28 years = 336 months. Sounds like a good average.
All I needed to do was translate years into bars of soap, and that is accomplished with simple multiplication: 336 month x .38 bars/month = 127 bars of soap. If I keep buying big 16-bar value packs, I’m only going to buy 8 more packs of soap before I die. This makes soap a precious commodity, indeed. On the other hand, anything you regularly use (pens, eggs, birthday cakes) can serve as a clock.
In case you think I’m obsessed with death, you’re probably right--this is one of the sites that fascinate me. [6]
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