Traditional shaving has many benefits. Many of those benefits are listed in the title of this blog post. My plan is to go into the benefits of traditional shaving piece by piece.
Traditional Shaving Saves Money: If you have looked into getting a traditional safety razor (double-edge, or DE), single edge razors, or even a straight razor, for shaving you may be put off by the initial up-front investment of getting a razor. Especially if you look at the cost of getting a Gillette Mach 3 or Schick razor. However, one does not need to start with a higher end DE razor to get a good shave. There are plenty of options available for the cost of a brand-new cartridge razor. The RazoRock Quick-Change razor is available for $9.99. If you want to spend a little more, say in the $20 or so range, there are plenty of options available here. Something to keep in mind is that if you decide to turn wet shaving into a hobby, there are also premium razors available. You may find that a higher end razor provides a better shave based on your growth pattern and how course your growth is.
Figure 1RazoRock Quick-Change razor Figure 2Rex Supply CO Adjustable Ambassador
Another factor is the cost of blades themselves. If you look at the average cost of a pack of cartridge blades, they tend to sell five blades for about $25 a pack, or $5 a blade! And cartridge blades are recommended to be changed after every three to five shaves. If you look at a 100 pack of double-edge blades, you can get a pack of 100 blades from between $9 to $27. That calculates to pennies per blade, and a blade generally lasts between one to five shaves.
You can also get a shaving brush to use with the soap and brush. There are plenty of options available for shaving brushes that also range in price. Brushes range from $9.99 for a synthetic brush, all the way to a high end high mountain white badger brush.
Traditional Shaving Reduces Irritation: If you are like me when I started shaving way back when, I knew nothing about beard growth pattern, shaving with, across, and against the grain. I always shaved north to south for the first pass, then south to north on the second pass and maybe a little extra to try and get a closer shave. I always had ingrown hairs and irritation on one part of my neck and I could never figure out why. I would only shave every few days to try to lessen irritation. It wasn’t until I learned how to map my beard growth (post forthcoming on beard mapping) that I realized I was shaving against the grain (or against the growth) on the first pass while shaving. This was causing the irritation and ingrown hairs on my neck. Once I learned the growth pattern of my facial hair, I was able to adjust how I shave which has reduced irritation and ingrown hairs. While I still get some irritation, that is generally caused by using a blade to many times.
Lessens Environmental Impact: One of the great things about traditional shaving is that most of the gear used can be recycled, rather than thrown away. With using a cartridge; they get thrown away, there is no way to recycle those blades. With using either a double-edge or single edge razor, those blades can be recycled (assuming you have a place to recycle sharps blades, most normal recycling centers don’t take used razor blades ore needles). Most soaps and creams come in plastic tubs or tubes, which can be recycled once empty, unlike the foam or gel that comes in a can. If you get a soap or cream that comes in a metal tin, there is also a high probability that the tin can be recycled. Or you can keep the tin or plastic tub and place samples or refill pucks into the tubs and reuse the containers (that is something I’ve done a few times myself).
Final thoughts: Over all, switching to traditional shaving has many benefits. Since switching, I have found that I also enjoy the act of shaving more, it is no longer something I did out of necessity, it is something I enjoy doing. Something else to think of is there are a variety of scents and artisan and non-artisan products from which to choose. If you have thought about making the switch, now is a great time to do so. There are plenty of options out there, as well as introductory blog posts and videos on our YouTube channel.