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 shower daily as I my pits smell when I get out of bed in the morning. On days I'm at the gym I shower again afterwards. I couldn't go out without getting washed. I wash hair every 3 days or so

FagAsh thanks for that. I will try and get to read that.

I like to be clean. People that don't wash enough smell. It really is that simple. They think they don't but they do. Their clothes smell too if they don't wash. Nose blind is a thing.

I have just helped clear a house. I am aquainted only, with the occupants but know them well enough to know they consider themselves middle class and clean....except they aren't. They don't wash frequently enough, they don't wash their clothes frequently enough or on a hot enough wash and the house needed more than just vacuuming twice a month. The build up of filth in that house! Carpets that going out, will weigh five times what they did going in and the extra being their manky skin cells! Body hair and grey sticky grime in layers over every single thing and that smell! That dry scaley grey smell that only scabbling the plaster off the walls is going to get rid of. My overalls still smell of it and I have hung them on the tree in the garden until I have a full load of washing. Bleurrrgh!

I think people are over sensitive to 'smells' these days. The slightest whiff of sweat sends them into an overreaction of horror and disgust.
Most men smelt sweaty when I was a child (manual workers but even office workers) Many people smelt of smoking too.
Using deodorant was not something men did. My dad thought men using deodorant was 'effeminate' and thought a man should smell like he did a days work.
We've come a long way since those days, thank goodness, but I do think people can be too precious about smells.

Varies. Every day or every other day. On the every other day I might not smell of soap but I don't "smell"
Perfectly capable of smelling my own odour after the gym
I do have v dry curly hair so that is washed once or twice a week and never with shampoo

Last GP practice I worked received notice from local trust that people having elective surgery (particularly caesareans) should be advised not to shave the area for some days before the surgery and to shower or bath with soap and water at least once a day to keep the flora down on the skin and prevent infection around the incision site(s).

Post operative care also recommended daily showering where feasible with particular attention to keeping the wound site dry afterwards.

This was because their level of infection after operations, particularly casareans, rose substantilally. Midwife told me that they'd been told that many of them would report that women were unhygienic but would not speak to the women about it but it does have a clinical influence.

My family would share the bath water in front of the fire, father first, then mother and the children either in order of age or boys first, I'm not sure which but I've always been told that the boys got more freedom, not having to do chores and so on so I expect they went first.

My mother always washed in the kitchen sink, they had a bath off the kitchen but I only ever knew it being used for laundry, they had a dolly and a mangle in there and would spend all day Mondays washing the sheets and stuff, I wasn't allowed in the room while they did.

Yes, I'm old.

We've come a long way since those days, thank goodness, but I do think people can be too precious about smells.

I agree. Just because you don’t smell of a ton of artificial fragrance doesn’t mean you smell “bad”. I do shower most days (and more if I have been at the gym) with soap and a bit of body lotion and that’s it. But every now and again will have a sink wash. Not the end of the world.

@Inherdefence Two thoughts:

First, what people say they do and what they actually do have been proven time and time again to be quite different. Not that people deliberately lie, but they may not be self-aware and have an idealised version of themselves that they want to present.

Second, MN is hardly a true cross-section of society, is it? Isn't the main demographic largely middle-class female of a certain age?

So the hygiene of most posters here is hardly representative of the average tube car or public bus.

I don't think there's one rule. It depends on your lifestyle and your body.

I shower every morning but now that I'm retired if I'm having a lazy day at home I could easily get away with not doing. When I had a 3 hour commute, which included walking for a total of an hour, there's no way I could have got away without a shower.

Also, our bodies are all different. Like my father, I have always been quite a sweaty person (though less so as I have got older). My mother on the other hand wasn't at all. She never used deodorant, even when she lived in Italy. She didn't shower/bathe every day but I never knew her to smell anything less than fresh. I always used to wish I'd inherited those genes.

I am of the era of a bath once a week on a Sunday night as a child. Everything was more of an effort without modern appliances. We didn’t have a shower or any central heating. So stripping off totally was bloody freezing so a quick wash would suffice. Plus actually washing clothes was a huge effort so spot cleaning especially stuff like school uniforms was the norm.

I do like a shower every day to make me feel awake but I only wash my hair a couple of times a week.

I shower every morning and evening because if I dont I feel grim but I know by doing this I dry my skin out🙄.

My MIL came to London in the 50s from the Carribbean. She was a nurse in the East End. She was shocked at the cleanliness or lack thereof. Because she came from a hot climate they showered every day or swam in the sea. She describes children being sewn in to their underwear in winter but I never really understood what she meant by that. As a nurse she saw some very unhygienic patients. But she always said they had hearts of gold and were very welcoming and respectful of her. She still talks about it today. So interesting to note historical cultural differences.

Twice daily. Although I do that because I find baths the most relaxing and centering part of my day. We have a friend who washes every other day and the lingering BO is mild but still unpleasant

To those interested in social history, I’m in my 50s. We had 2 baths a week in the late 60s/ early 70s when I was young, Sunday and Wednesday were bath nights for the whole family. But I washed thoroughly at the sink every day as well, this included hair washing once I was a teen. This continued until I went to university where there were showers in the halls of residence, I copied everyone else and took to having a daily shower very quickly - I’d never had a shower before (apart from the communal ones at school which doesn’t count) , it was fun, I liked it. After university I stayed in various lodgings / shared flats for a few years and rarely had access to a shower. I usually had a daily bath and I had a shower attachment you slipped over the bath tap and used to rinse hair, it worked quite well. Then I bought a flat which had a shower over the bath in my mid 20s (which was the early 90s) and took to daily showers again. I’ve always had a shower at home ever since. Since my mid 40s I sweat a lot less and nowadays shower every other day usually. On days I don’t shower, I’m still happy to wash at the sink (christened a strip wash in mumsnet which is weird, hopefully everyone strips off for a shower/bath too?) which is quick and thorough and somehow less effort than a shower, perhaps because I’m used to it and it doesn’t need much cleaning afterwards, unlike the shower which needs a wipe down and that’s a job I dislike.

Every day. Hair is greasy within 18 hours or so.

My friend is a firm believer in saving water so washes every couple of days or so, but she gets notably pungent but doesn't seem to notice. I personally can't not wash every day, I would smell and look awful.

I grew up with one bath weekly, if we were lucky. It was a tin bath that had to be filled by hand and was pretty grimy by the last person’s turn. I’m not convinced my mother ever had a bath. My grandmother, who lived with us, certainly didn’t.
My father started building a bathroom but died before it was properly finished. We had a temporary bathroom made from hardboard that took space out of the kitchen. The lavatory was outside but he’d coveted the yard over to make it slightly drier and warmer. We didn’t at that point have a working boiler so my mother used to heat water in the washing machine (open top with mangle) and drain it into the bath.
A few years later when we were in our teens we had a boiler fitted but it wasn’t particularly powerful and baths were out; we had showers using a hand held rubber device that fixed to the taps.
It was never an experience that one was enthusiastic about.

I moved away to train at eighteen and discovered he joy of deep, hot, private baths with endless hot water. Baths have been my solution to most of lives problems since. They treat everything from a bad day/stress to dysmenorrhea and marital disputes. I learnt from peers and our lectures that a daily bath was a pre requisite of success.

Looking back we were grimier than most and must have been really quite smelly.

Something I've never seen anyone mention in these discussions is weight gain, and people being generally heavier, and the effect it has on how much people sweat.

I have a very elegant, slim friend who is 5"6 and a size 8-10. I've been on weekends away with her and she happily will shower every second day, on a camping weekend stretched it to three days because she didn't fancy the communal shower. I think she would normally shower most days at home but doesn't worry about missing one if it's convenient. I have a very sensitive sense of smell and I promise she doesn't smell at all.

We were once discussing why we had so much more laundry than her, and she also is happy to wear a top twice without washing. I'm the same height and about a 10-12, I couldn't rewear a top as it would feel sweaty, but I wouldn't wash a jumper if only worn once. Whereas my husband is a lot bigger, about 16 stone, and would always need to wash a t-shirt and whatever he'd worn over it, jumper, shirt, after a day.

I basically think the size you are correlates roughly with how much you sweat. People act as though there is a universal correct answer but in reality people live in different environments, ans their bodies produce radically different amounts of sweat. I don't smell after two days, but my hair looks greasy. I started washing it daily when I lived in a hot country where exhaust fumes would stick to your skin after a day being out. I could go a week without washing in this country and never be as grubby and grimey and sweaty as I was after an afternoon there.

I also think all the pressure to wash, and particularly to wash clothes, is a bit of a conspiracy to get is using more things and to keep women in their place. All these labour saving devices, and yet if you have people who feel they need to wash their entire wardrobe and pjs and bath towel every single day then they're as stuck under the tyranny of laundry as their grandmothers who were bearing carpets and using twin tubs. And it's always women self-policing each other on this too.

I shower every day. I just like the feeling and I’m always clean and ready for whatever is coming my way 😉.

I basically think the size you are correlates roughly with how much you sweat.

This definitely makes a difference but we're not supposed to say it anymore because it hurts people's feelings. DM definitely sweats a lot more and therefore smells more when she is heavier than she should be.

I quite honestly have never had a discussion about how often I bathe with anyone.

To whom would you need to admit it publicly to?

I'm in my 30s no central heating as a young child . Went in when I was 10 ish . My dad put it in himself with the help of a neighbour neither of them were plumbers but it worked. We were bathed in the kitchen in front of the range in a tub in winter. if it wasnt too cold we had the super sur on the landing to keep us warm . It was a once weekly thing . As there was more hot water we bathed more

I shower every morning, wash my hair every day. I sweat at night so night showers are pointless.

When I was young 70/80s it was a weekly bath, up to around puberty when we got a shower and then they became much more frequent. My hair was terribly greasy by the end of the week and I refuse to go anywhere these days with dirty hair.

Bath every day, hate showers. I like to smell fresh when I get into bed, expensive body lotion is a little treat. DH loves it.

Good point, worriedmama - all this laundry sells laundry product (especially as I'll wager few people actually measure the recommended amount and will over-dose the load) and there's a lot of comments about 'feeling gross'. We're being conditioned here, folks...

One factor to take into account is that people used to be more generally active through their days, and would walk much more.

Nowadays, lots of people live fairly sedentary lives, tend to drive everywhere and then get all their exercise in an intense session at the gym, which obviously necessitates a shower.

Also, everyday clothes were mainly made of natural fibres back then, whereas lots of the manufactured fibres don't allow skin to breathe in the same way.

Plus, people's diets are very different now and secretions from all sorts of convenience foods probably seep out of their pores. Gross. I need a shower now.