Extending the life of a disposable razor is one of those rabbit holes that YouTube will happily let you go down as long as you want. In one of the comment sections, I saw someone claim that his razor lasted for three years, and that the plastic that held the blades broke, making that the only limiting factor against a blade last indefinitely.
This was not my experience. But I wanted it to be. I'll admit that I had this comment in mind when I bought a ten pack, thinking "will I really be able to make this last thirty years? Could these be the last razors I ever need to buy?"
With the ardor of a cheap-skate, I adopted the following strategies: 1) using some old denim to run the blade backwards (called stropping, I had learned), 2) drying the blade and putting it in a Ziploc bag 3) ritualistically removing the gunk from between the blades, either through blowing or picking it out using, say, the lead of a mechanical pencil 4) using vegetable oil as an extra lubricant when I shave (I use regular bar soap to make the lather I shave with. I am still on bars of soap I collected from hotels when I used to go on more trips.)
I think that items 3 and 4 might be the potential causes of failure, particularly number 3. I think picking at the blades so much messed with the geometry of the cutting action. Toward the end, my blade would not cut certain parts of my chin. I extended the life one more week by taking more than one pass, alternating going with and against the grain, but eventually -- April 20th, to be exact -- I found there were places I just could not shave with the blade.
I am happy to remove some time-wasting rituals now that I have found that they are not just unproductive, but in fact counter-productive. Such is the way when you go past the minimum effective dose.
Now I only dry the blade after use and seal it up in a bag to prevent moisture coming in. I am holding off on using denim to strop the blade because there is a school of thought that it can actually speed up the process of dulling the blade. Also, to make a confession, I am probably going to be happy with how long the blade lasts either way.
After all, let's examine what the real stakes are here. According to one apostle of frugality:
I know this might all sound crazy to you. But if you’re used to using a zillion dollar Gillette or Schick and you can stretch it for weeks or even months, we’re talking about real dough you’re saving. This is just 1 example of a way to make a difference in your wallet. That money feels better in my wallet than in Gillette’s or Schick’s.Let's put a more specific number on this than "a zillion" . . .
If you run the numbers on buying Mach 3 razors, it's about $2 a cartridge. If I get sixty days out of it, that's already just three and a third cents a day. At ninety days, it's a little over two cents. How much cheaper does a shave need to be? Do I really need to get to 200 days, just so the cost moves down below a penny a day? This is very much a case of diminishing returns.
I'm happy to extend the life a cartridge a bit, especially if it is easy to do, but it's not going to make or break my finances. The real games are still debt, housing, transportation, and food. The savings from one home-cooked meal a SEASON could pay for that season's blade use.
Still, all this reading, thinking, and experimentation gives some meaning and interest to something as mundane as shaving.
