Hard water vs soft water

[Magical Realist]

Once when I was a kid my family stayed at a motel in East Texas. I found out there that the water was different. If you used soap, it took forever to wash the soapiness off. My parents called it soft water. It also tasted different. What's the difference between soft and hard water? Why does one wash off soap better than the other?

[C C]

I've drank steam-distilled water enough times in the past to be familiar with the flat taste, but have never washed with it.

Due to its near lack of minerals and their ions, the soap molecules don't "stick" as well to soft water or get rinsed away as effectively by it. Soft water also supposedly lathers more than mineral-rich hard water, which might introduce more soap, thus an increased film to have to remove.