January is cold, frequently depressing and almost everyone is indoors and feeling broke. At the start of the year, the most activity I can manage is to pop on a podcast and haul myself into a bubble bath.
It’s a comfort that has made me an expert in every bath cream, foam and salt on the high street. I am practically incapable of passing a shelf without popping a new one in my trolley. And while I love a posh soak, there is something extra satisfying about using lavish amounts of product and enjoying a luxury-feeling bath without a drop of spender’s remorse.
Take Badedas Bath Gelee (£14.69), for example. Just under £15 for a 750ml bottle is not nothing, but you get a huge amount of bubble for your buck. And the aroma – room-filling, botanical – is so bracing as to be momentarily “ouch-y” in the most gratifying way. I’m never without a stock of it.
If sensitive skin means you prefer your fragrances a lot further from pine floor cleaner, I enthusiastically recommend my latest crush: M&S’s 2-in-1 Shower Cream & Bath Milk (£7.50 for 400ml), from the consistently good Skinkind range. It is dermatologically tested and suitable for sensitive skin, and should calm and soothe fractious, itchy winter skin. This is also for you if you like a soft soak, moderately high on bubbles and low on fragrance (it smells like milky baby’s scalp to me, but you may not get a whiff of anything).
A smell that could possibly be detected from a neighbouring town is Imperial Leather’s Cherry Blossom & Almond Oil Ultimate Moisture Bath Soak (just £3, or even less on offer, for 450ml). Millilitre for millilitre, this is astonishingly good value. I wouldn’t quite agree with the “ultimate moisture” tag, but I will gladly concede that it is no more drying than some bath creams that are five times the price. It has a marzipan and floral fragrance set against the retro and endlessly comforting Imperial Leather scent, and foams up sufficiently to craft a bubble beard that holds (my own highly scientific test of a bath foam’s performance). There’s a vanilla version too, if you prefer that.
A golden oldie is Superdrug’s Vitamin E and Almond Moisturising Shower and Bath Cream (£3.89 for 500ml), in a helping so generous that you can pour it out with abandon for extra decadence. Foam here is generous, but not so abundant as to feel cheap or childish, and the fragrance – creamy, clean, ambrosial – is an unfailing crowd pleaser.
