I've basically had the same experience that graeme has wrote about in his comments earlier: people have actually complimented me on my smell without knowing that I don't use soap, and I've been in a long-term relationship (3+ years) without me telling my partner that I'm not soaping and them not saying anything to me.
I think it's also important to point out that I still shower or bathe every day (and additionally after I work out), so I'm still getting clean.* I just don't use soap, just lots of water and scrub the hell out of my skin with a washcloth.
*Yes, here we could parse out what I mean by "clean" but you'll just have to trust me on this one.
Much of this discussion has been on soap, and for me personally using soap every day everywhere just dries out my skin, so I use soap daily only in 'strategic locations' (on a meta note, I can't believe I'm actually having a conversation about this). But what I wonder from all the people in this thread saying they don't use soap with a 'naturalism' based argument (if I'm understanding them/you on the reason correctly), do you also not use deodorant? Because you can wash/rinse 3 times a day, even with soap, but (sorry for gross visuals) armpit sweat is going to smell over the course of a day, especially the sort of sweat the comes from stress and not 'just' from being warm. And that smell comes from bacteria too, 'natural' bacteria.
I've basically had the same experience that graeme has wrote about in his comments earlier: people have actually complimented me on my smell without knowing that I don't use soap, and I've been in a long-term relationship (3+ years) without me telling my partner that I'm not soaping and them not saying anything to me.
I think it's also important to point out that I still shower or bathe every day (and additionally after I work out), so I'm still getting clean.* I just don't use soap, just lots of water and scrub the hell out of my skin with a washcloth.
*Yes, here we could parse out what I mean by "clean" but you'll just have to trust me on this one.