Back in 2009, Sean Seypler asked himself a question that has occurred to pretty much everyone who's ever stayed at a hotel.

At the time, Seypler was a bit of a road dog. As a tech executive

in sales, he spent around half his week traveling across the US, Minneapolis, L.A. St.

Louis, all over. This is a guy who racked up a lot of nights in hotel rooms.

And on one of those trips, something caught his attention. That little bar of soap in the hotel bathroom.

There's a natural, I don't want to waste things in me and as I would use a bar of soap one time

There was always a little nag inside of me that I'm leaving it here.

So in that hotel room in Minneapolis,

after a couple of cocktails,

that nag led to asking the question.

I called the front desk and asked what happens to the soap when I'm done

with it. From the Freakonomics Radio Network this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Krakit. Today used hotel soaps. You may not think twice

about those little bars they leave out for you on the sink, but a lot of thought

went into putting them there.

Hotel amenities have evolved over the last 100 years.

Chequeton Dev is a professor at Cornell University's Nolan School of Hotel Administration and he says that the earliest

hotels actually didn't give you any soap. In fact, they didn't even give you your

own bathroom. It's an early 20th century innovation that hotel rooms came with a bath

attached. In fact, Ellsworth Stattler, the founder of the Stattel Hotel chain, often

used to use the line, a room in a bath for a dollar and a half.

So soap became the very first amenity in the bathroom.

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