To ask how often you need to wash yourself to be clean?

[Goldencurtain]

I have a shower every other day but wouldn't admit that publicly because fear I would be shamed for being dirty. When my mum was growing up it was standard to have a bath once a week, no shame attached at all to that. Indeed it's probably only been fairly recently there has been an expectation of a daily/twice daily shower.

When did social attitudes start to change on what 'dirty' meant and what do you do?

I don't know, but I shower daily with soap (better at cleaning than shower gel) and I couldn't shower less. I'd feel gross. I sometimes have an extra evening shower to wash my hair if I won't have time the next morning. Showers only take 5 mins and I feel much better afterwards.

You can't ask this on mumsnet: the replies will vary between "I scrub myself with diluted bleach on an hourly basis" and "I strip wash at the sink every few days with my old knickers". It is useless as a barometer of normal behaviour.

Ha! Ok, how about a slightly different question...for those that have lived through the change of one bath a week being normal to at least one shower a day being what's normal, when did that happen? Why? Did it make you feel bad about yourself or did you just change without even realising?

This is the sort of social change I find fascinating but am never going to read about in a book!

I would say daily. If you are doing office work where you sit all day and do no exercise, maybe (and it’s a big maybe) you could shower every second day. Anything less and you will be smelling rank 🤮

It's personal isn't it? I shower morning and evening and that's how I feel clean but for most people I know then a daily shower is the norm.

I shower daily more for the relaxation and the ritual start to the day. Oh maybe to reset my hair, I get a really laughable bed head, which needs wetting through and scrunching to shape.
Daily shower since a teen in the 60’s as did my parents.

My mum was brought up in the 40s to bath once a week but always wash their bits and armpits every day.

I am such a person, a living history book on these type of social changes !
when I was young, most people did not have central heating, some did not have bathrooms, esp up north, or had to share facilities with other families, often having to go up or usually down several flights of shared stairs. many domestic toilets were outdoor. premises were very cold and draughty. hot water was not always available. most people were adept at washing adequately and quickly at the kitchen sink.
anyone else remember seeing bath tubs in the kitchen, covered by a large wooded top, with cut-outs for the taps, and used as a table.

holidays meant a week at the seaside, where there was the scrabble to use the shared bathroom in time to get to breakfast.
I can remember being very bold and invading the bathroom which was reserved for rooms on another floor !
then the foreign package holidays started, though I have never been on one.
working/ lower middle class families were astonished at the luxury of ensuite rooms, and with showers !
probably this gave them ideas. older housing was being cleared away, and the modern standard was for each family to have its own self-contained facilities. constant hot water and central heating became more widespread. and showers, usually over the bath tub, and initially so women could kneel by the bath and wash their hair.
perhaps people in hotter countries washed/showered more for comfort and uk travellers picked up these habits, re-inforced by the pleasant associations of being on holiday.
people do seem to give more priority to these issues nowadays. our neighbours did not have bathroom, and were always very clean.
remember there are still many people who never have a bath or shower, those who are bed bound. it is quite possible to keep oneself clean without daily bath/shower. I think its more an expectation and feeling.
from a hygiene or safety point of view I think people should give more attention to frequent hand-washing, esp with current viruses etc. that is more crucial to health. and to communal health, not merely one's own feeling of freshness.
I do think, on the whole people were more community minded in the past, now more individualistic, and materialistic as to what they value, demand, expect; hedonistic. I know that;s a generalisation. ?discuss ? parents not quarantining children with infectious diseases.
these are just my observations, off the top of my head.

I work in an office and shower every other day and it's fine. I used to shower everyday but it was ruining my hair and if I shower without washing my hair, my hair goes frizzy and crap

up until the 60s, many families not only had only one bath a week, but literally it was one bath for the family. they took it in turns to use the bath water, to save on the cost of hot water. also it took some time to get enough hot water, often by an inadequate geyser over the bath. we did not do this in my family, but I have often heard of it.
I can remember peering up into the entrails of our more adequate but frightening geyser. it was frightening and fascinating, would roar aflame when the hot tap was operated. I mostly kept away from it. one did hear of explosions from time to time.

alexdgr8, I agree with you, it’s a very interesting topic.Even my husband (in his fifties) was washed in a tin bath in front of the fire as a small child and Bobleywobley my mum the same,I think it was the norm years ago.

If you don't sweat much or suffer from oily skin/hair, you can probably get away with a few days. I've known people like this and while they don't smell 'fresh', they don't smell bad either.

I shower in the AM, wash hair every other. Sometimes I'll shower again at night if I've worked out or it's been particularly hot.

At least twice a day, I live in a very hot & sweaty part of Sydney, today it’s 46 degrees at my place... so lots of cool showers required. I am used to morning & evening showers every day. Always have.

Everyday.

I have a colleague who showers every other day (and enjoys regularly boasting about it as she isn’t wasting water), you can always tell which day she hasn’t showered on as she has awful BO.

I sweat alot and have oily hair, so I shower every night. Shampoo, conditioner, wash face and wash my entire body with body wash every night. I can't skip a night or I feel horrible the next day.

Once or twice a day:

If I work out before work, I’ll shower afterwards at the gym.

And if I go straight to work, I’ll shower at home and then go to the gym in the evening - second shower when I get home.

Shower or bath at least once a day, definitely twice if going out in evening or very hot day.

I don't feel comfortable if I'm not clean and I absolutely love lots of clean warm water. It definitely has a therapeutic effect on me.

For people born within a few years of WW2 there was still rationing; they wouldn't have noticed it, being infants, but many families carried on being economical with hot water. They worried about wasting anything.
Unless they had an immersion heater or a huge boiler, water was difficult to heat in any quantity.

I presume if I had lived in those conditions, I would have had a good wash in a bowl. However it wasn't only hot water that seemed to be in short supply, it was heating and bathrooms (anywhere upstairs) were often very chilly.

Showers are economical, it's a pity they didn't catch on here earlier. My parents had one in the early 1970s.

I shower most days but occasionally skip a day if I’m. Or going out anywhere. I wash my hair two or three times a week. I am not a smelly or sweaty person by nature and no one would be able to tell. Even if I skipped another day I’d probably be able to get away with it as I never get noticeable BO. But I do always feel a bit scuzzy and by the morning of day 3 so I wouldn’t dream of skipping a second day.

People who claim they can go all week with just a couple of strip washes at the sink and still smell peachy are usually wrong.

Not going out anywhere

To be clean at the very least you need to wash your feet, pits and bits every day.

It's important to have a clean top and underwear daily too.

Post menopause I sweat far less and my hair only needs washing every 3rd day.

I work full-time and like to have a shower when I get home to wash the day off. In the morning I do pits and bits in the bathroom and use a curling brush on my hair - partly because it means I am dressed by the time DH starts dressing after his bath otherwise we get under each others' feet.

I was brought up with bath day on sundays only. When I moved out i only had a shower twice a week. Now I have one every day after my workout. If I didn't work out, it would probably be twice a week still.

We were a family of 7, by no means poor but it was the norm even in a town like Lytham that no one had a shower or central heating. We washed pits and bits every morning at the sink. We had a bath twice a week in rotation, we took turns to have the first bath, the second person let out a third of the water and topped it up, and the third wa s a bit lucky to get a top up, especially if the second person had taken too much hot water. We used to be amazed by the American fims where they all seemed to have showers.

I shower in the mornings before work and like to have a shower (or sometimes a bath) when I get home in the evenings. If it’s practical to do so, I also like to shower before sex.

I’m in my 40s and have seen social changes here. I think a major issue is hot water availability. Older hot water systems when I was younger did not have the capacity.

In the less populated areas of some countries, women still wash in the sea, fully clothed after dark.

Twice a day in the summer, and in winter once or twice a day depending on what ive been doing. But im in australia and easy to get hot and sweaty even in winter for me lol. wash hair every morning.