How do people not know they smell?

I am autistic and my kids are autistic. They don’t like washing or didn’t when young. Washing is non negotiable, even for the PDAer.

To the people complaining about how it’s not really the smelly people’s fault and they’re probably disabled, well so am I! And a smell that I hate can sometimes stay in my nose for hours. It’s part of my sensory difficulties.

Why do their disabled needs and feelings trump mine?

Lots of my generation didn’t have bathrooms. Once a week in a tin bath filled from kettles was all some had, or a weekly visit to the public baths. I suppose some didn’t get shown at home, but once in secondary school, we were taught about personal hygiene. I was lucky to grow up in a house with a bathroom, bathed probably twice a week. Our first flat when we got married in the 1960s didn’t have one, strip washes at the kitchen sink were the norm, and the washing went to the laundrette. We managed to smell clean enough then, and it’s so much easier now, very few don’t have access to soap and water, and there’s lots of advertising about shampoo, deodorant etc.

I think part of my point was that all this seemed completely normal - Seeing you use the word ‘neglect’ now is jarring though I know now that that is what it was.

Maybe if I was not now a fifty something professional married to someone who had to teach me basic self care in my twenties (How many women can say their DH taught them to bathe every day, tie their shoelaces properly and organised their first dentist appointment?) I dread to think what my life would be like now.

Perhaps like one of my neighbours, living in one room in an otherwise derelict house with only an outside water supply and a camping stove. To some that is completely normal, and I think a lot of the people we are talking about in this thread live such lives.

It is a scary thought! Although I think I’m more likely to be guilty of over-spraying perfume 😂

This is so true.
I once had a job that required me to visit nursing homes to provide a service.
Some were fine but some smelled so bad that the smell of stale urine made your eyes water.
I learned to put a smear of TCP under my nose when I visited. After a while it wasn't so bad and the staff didn't seem to be bothered by it.
I can only say that after a while, maybe they became "nose blind" and didn't smell it any more.

Yes. many people do need help. That’s the point.

In my case, getting undressed takes a couple minutes because of disabling arthritis, stripper pants might help haha.

And anyone who says 'getting undressed and showering is a matter of moments' has never lived alone with a frozen shoulder...

My mum has a frozen shoulder - I’ve never noticed her stinking. Also you can buy adaptive clothes.

I'd say that applies in other countries, but not in the UK. I've lived on just income support, as it was then, in areas of Liverpool that were very deprived. That sort of neglect came from drink/drugs/or parents just churning out children because they knew no better. The poverty of today, in England doesn't go deep enough to be the cause of that level of neglect. Luckily schools, if doing what they should do, will implement CP/Family support, because it's either the parents needs help, re learning difficulties/MH/addiction or they are abusive, but a lack of money isn't the cause. There's help, if the parent won't access it, that's still neglect not poverty.

She then started re-using her san-pro by washing,drying and re-using them (leaving them on the radiator for all to see)

tbf, one of my pads once accidentally got into the wash and came out perfectly clean. Also we do now have washable pads anyway. So I don’t think washing and reusing sanitary pads is that bad. All the other stuff however….just no.

But if people are living on £426 a month, then as you get older, it's difficult to address your needs. You can ask for period help, but there's a lack of national help for slight incontinence, the type you can get post menopause, or before being diagnosed with bladder issues. I'm not on the breadline, but as a woman who is nearly 60, it is expensive to look put together, if you are expected to go for job interviews. Bladder issues are another aspect. That's what I meant. It's that age 50-60, when age us against you in the job market and benefits are low.

This!
My daughter's best friend is a lovely, lovely girl. Her Mum was only 17 when she had her.
Her personal hygiene was never great-other kids at school used to talk about it- and her mum didn't bother with her very much as she got older. My daughter would pick toiletries up for her and tell her they were on offer, or I'd bought them for her but she didn't like them and passed them on to her......it was her way of helping her out without actually telling her that there was a hygiene issue.

The thing is, though, that many people with disabilities will manage to shower and do other normal everyday things, but people who are privileged not to have disabilities will often have no idea just how much time or effort it can take for them to do so - dismissing it as something that takes no time at all, when for many folk, this absolutely is not true.

Although the net result is that you've both successfully had a shower, for you, it can be just nonchalantly 'hopping in' and then getting on with your day a few minutes later; whereas for somebody else, it might have taken such a toll on their energy resources and physical capacity that they then have to miss another task to 'pay for it'. So many don't have the faintest idea that, for some people, it can be a choice between having a shower OR preparing a proper cooked meal in one day, but not both.

No matter how long it takes, keeping yourself clean is a matter of self respect as well as respecting the people in the society you live in.

People who didn’t grow up having been taught how to wash must also have lived through the pandemic. If they didn’t learn about cleaning before then they certainly did when COVID happened.

No. Bathing simply not being part of your everyday is not the same thing as having to sanitise your hands on entering a building, which is the only enforced cleanliness we experienced in the pandemic.

Even during the pandemic the people who just don’t wash as it isn’t their ‘normal’ to do so (first due to neglect then as an adult ongoing suboptimal living conditions and never having learned to make the decision to wash more than once a week or so) did not learn to shower every day.

If you smell to the extent we’re talking about here you might be living in a house where the bathroom has become unusable due to hoarding or not allowing people in the house to help with maintenance, or you might be sharing a disgusting shower with strangers in a hostel, have no easily available / affordable laundry facilities and in either case you are likely to be living with some degree of learning difficulties, depression or mental health issues.

Those who don’t wash are not washing just because they can’t be bothered or they’re just mingers. As someone has already said, its not a case of ‘just have a shower’ - for different reasons the decision to wash their body is genuinely a big one for some people and that decision is rarely made.

But I get it, most who were brought up in comfort with encouraging adults who practised and were able to teach basic self care will never be able to understand that.

Oh come on now. The people I came across are in places you simply wouldn’t be if you had all of the hardships you describe in an effort to normalise people who don’t wash.

Get off your high horse, I’m not doing any such thing.

You only go to lovely places where nobody with personal difficulties would dare show up 🙄. You can ‘come on now’ - If someone’s not washing and you’re here complaining about the smell I can tell you that’s not true.

Nobody did that for me. The only toiletries in our house were my dad’s shaving stuff, a bottle of Vosene and a bar of cracked, filthy soap on the side of the kitchen sink.

No shower. Just an emersion heater that was put on once a week for a shallow bath that was used by my parents after me.

For those who don’t believe me I just say count your blessings.

I worked in an office with someone in the 1980s who constantly smelt of BO. She wasn’t impoverished, had her hair and nails done, lived in a nice part of town. She just didn’t wash her clothes often enough. Perhaps she had no sense of smell and they looked ok. HR got involved and she improved.

I have ‘personal difficulties’ of my own.

I also have consideration for other people.

Did you offer him help?

I know people who have stopped using deoderant , after a while they truly do not smell , but I do I think know the smell you mean, and it was because the person never washed his clothes just wore the same shirt every day .

What, with washing? It’s a bit difficult when it’s just someone you’ve seen struggling to cross the road, and he’s asked you to sort out his Zimmer frame. How would you suddenly broach the question of his hygiene? Would you expect me to enter a strange man’s house to put his stuff in the washing machine?

I probably would but im odd. I hope he's ok