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?

*@alexdgr8 *

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/21/british-homes-without-bathroom-archive-1950

I hate the assumption everything 'up north' is behind. The link above shows almost 50% of UK homes without bathrooms in the '50s with Scotland most likely to have one. To heat water for washing 56 per cent used kettles and pans, the proportion being lowest (46) in Northern England and higher (64) in London and South and East England.

I remember an Ascot heater in our bathroom up to the early 70s when full central heating was installed.
That was probably the point where a daily bath become a more comfortable/relaxing option.

I grew up in the bath once a week era, a child of the 60s and 70s. I now like to have a bath every day, but that is more as a leisure activity than a cleansing one. I don’t need to do it. I hardly ever wash my hair at all. It’s in much better condition not w.

In the mornings for work: wash my face in the sink, have a 4 minute body shower with shower gel and puff thing (I'm tight for time in the mornings so set a timer like a weirdo). Apply a 48 hour roll on deodorant, put on clean clothes, go off to work...

Spend 10 - 12 hours on my feet, sometimes getting a bit stressed and sweaty, come home and straight in the shower as I work in a hospital and God knows what's on me by the end of the day. If I'm not in work I tend to still shower in the evening as usually take the dog for a long walk. Wash my hair every 3 days.

Apart from getting clean, the shower in the morning helps to wake me up, and the one in the evening relaxes me. I enjoy it and wouldn't want to do it less.

I'm currently having a lazy morning and haven't showered yet, just sniffed my armpit: it's slightly whiffy, even though I had a bath and exfoliated last night (though didn't put deodorant on after), so maybe I just sweat more than the average person .

Walkacrossthesand yes. Same with hair washing. Growing up people washed their hair once a week. Then shampoo manufacturers realised they could sell more shampoo by persuading us we needed to do it every day. Then because we were washing every day we needed conditioner to instantly replace the oils we were stripping away. Clever stuff.

Depends on what your doing that day. If I go to the gym I shower that night, if I don’t feel like having a shower I will have one the next morning. I don’t shower every day, I like to have a bath at least once a week. I used to shower or bath my kids daily. Now they are a bit bigger I do once a week. Or after sports or Obvs if they are covered in mud or whatever- just a sensible approach really. I’ve read a lot about people distorting their skin biome which can lead to all sorts of skin reactions. I have eczema and also get dermatitis. So we have switched out sulphates soaps and shampoo too for non sulphates and with that and less zealous showering my skin is loads better.

I'm not that dirty.

If I was sweating, or needed it any day, I definitely shower, but not every day. I feel very clean.
My husband showers every day and sometimes twice if he played sports. Everyone is different.

It would feel a wasteful to be showering out of habit if I dont need it. But some people do need it.

Growing up we had a bath once or twice a week too, and wore our clothes more than once also.

I think when they talk about volumes of water, I dont fully get it. (4500 litres could be a bath full or a car full)
But if we were all allocated an amount of water at birth, like say a large cylinder of water each, and we had only that amount for our life.
We would have to look at it every day in our bathrooms, full of hair dye, fake tan, toothpaste, waste etc. I would definitely be more careful, but now it just all runs off down the drain and I forget what I have done.
That water is all there is on this earth and I'm dirtying it and just letting someone else deal with it. I feel ashamed of myself about it.

Bring back WallE. It's really happening, it's not just a film

The only reason people used to have a bath once a week is because they didn’t have bathrooms in those days and heating up gallons of water in big pots on the stove for several family members would have been such a palaver. Hygiene habits changed because having a bathroom in every single property now is the norm, so people can have the hygiene routine they should have.
I shower once a day with soap or shower gel. Twice a day is a bit bonkers. I wash my hair every other day because it is fine in texture and gets flat quickly.

I was born in the 1960’s and one bath a week was normal growing up. I remember even then being aware that my parents odour was not good. When I turned about 12 I started having secret daily baths in about an inch of tepid water and these days I either bath or shower daily, sometime twice daily and have clean clothes every day. Possibly because I had an unhappy upbringing and generally abusive parents I can’t bear even a hint of unwashed odour about myself.

Daily shower is the bare minimum. Yes, every other day is rank. Yes, you do stink, even if you don't think you do. I've met people who say they can go x days without a shower without stinking, and they were totally deluded.

As for your other question - Humanity had been trying to cover up the human stench since time immemorial, using whatever means they had at their disposal. Contrary to popular belief, they didn't go about their lives stinking happily and thinking it was normal; no, they tried to cover up their smell as much as they could. Perfume, fragrant oils and soap had been produced and used with wild abandon since the dawn of time. Then our modern bathrooms came, and the novelty of being clean 24/7 never wore off.

I grew up with weekly baths and I’m still a manker. Obviously I shower if I’m sweaty or dirty, but otherwise not so often. I do wash myself with a flannel if I need to freshen up as well. Ironically, when I was referred to a doctor for recurrent urinary infections, he told me off for washing myself down there too much. This as he had just finished inspecting me, so I’m guessing it wasn’t particularly rank down there.

I was married for a long time to a man who had been brought up to wash and shower obsessively, usually twice a day. He had terrible excema and I wondered now and then whether his mother’s obsession with cleanliness was part of the problem.

I’m another who thinks it might be better to go back to being a bit less obsessed with erasing body hair and daily hairwashing as a society. I recall asking a flatmate at university what he used on his hair: it was the shiniest I’d ever seen. He said he only used shampoo once every six months or so.

Our bodies would naturally self-clean to an extent, if we left them to it more. The more often you wash away the grease, the more your body produces. Obviously there will be exceptions ... and once you’re in that cycle it’s difficult to reset as it takes several weeks. But I wouldn’t be worried, OP, about showering every other day. There might be an odd supersmeller who can tell (they do exist) but most people will have no idea unless you tell them. And the whole idea that there’s some kind of moral element to all this is twee as fuck.

Always daily during the week when I am working - paranoid about smelling bad. I sometimes skip a day over the weekend or on holiday if I am not going to see anyone. I feel grubby if I skip more than one day. Post-menopause, my hair doesn't get greasy like it used to - I used to have to wash it every day, now it's fine after two days and just about OK for a third day if needed, so I often have a bath so I can keep my hair dry.

I was born in the 70’s and we had a bath every night without fail.

I come from the Sunday bath tradition and indeed Sunday is still bath night for me and the kids. DH used to have to go round to his grandparents for a bath otherwise it was a tin bath in front of the fire. This was London in the 70s (he's just 50)

Shower most but not all other days but on non shower days pits and bits get a proper wash as does face obvs.

My mum and dad always did the full on strip wash thing and were very clean people although my dad did swap to showers when they had one out in in the 90s.

I remember my grandma luxuriating in daily hot baths in her 80s because if the readily available hot water which she hadn't had or been able to afford before

I started to shower more regularly when I hit puberty. Also we finally got central heating when I was 12 which made the who experience more pleasant. When there is ice on the inside of the window you don’t want to spend longer washing than necessary. I rarely go a day without showering but don’t wash my hair every day as it is fine and will go dull and dry.

My DC are at the whiffy preteen / teen stage and do a lot of sport. There is no way they can go without showering. They really do smell if they don’t.

Here is a gynaecologist’s advice re foof care.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/dec/08/how-to-look-after-your-vulva

I shower roughly every other day in winter with a sink was on the days in between. I find that my skin gets very dry, itchy and flaky otherwise.

The rest of the year it’s every day.

I had a weekly bath growing up and have never changed that pattern.

I have a sedentary lifestyle and don’t sweat.

My hair is thick and looks clean for days. On a Friday I can wear it up or use dry shampoo.

I wear fresh clothes every work day.

I am perfectly presentable and don’t smell!

Showers just make me feel wet not clean.

I don’t think people who have 5 min showers are as clean as me.

My bath takes 2 hours and I come out squeaky clean!
-shave
-exfoliate
-wash
-face scrub then mask then cleanse
-shampoo and conditioner

OP in terms of how it changed, it happened this way for me.

As a child baths were once a week. Everyone was pretty much the same. Exception was if you took part in vigorous exercise and then most people did have a wash or on rare very hot days. I remember age about 10 hearing that French people had a shower every day and laughing at this, as it seemed ridiculously over the top. We had a bathroom, but water was heated by immersion and had to be put on at least an hour before a bath. And it was expensive.

At puberty I started to be more smelly, so started tp strip wash more, and then as my parents had a bit more money had baths more often. Probably about 3 times a week. Then I went to uni and there was a shower, so I started to shower every day.
These days I shower every day when I am working, but often skip it at the weekend if I am just with the family.

Those saying they can smell if someone is showering every 2 days are I think lying. Not changing clothes enough can make people smell. But some people smell from having a shower in the morning and getting sweaty during the day.

I find shaving my armpits makes them more smelly quicker. No idea why.

I've never understood the strip wash thing though... surely it's quicker and easier just to hop in the shower for a quick wash down of your whole body but not wash your hair.

By the time you’ve wiped and squeegeed the shower afterwards it’s quicker to do strip wash. Stand on bathmat, flannel in laundry bin after. And you’re not left as soaking wet as you just do the necessary bits. I don’t need to wash my arms, for example.

Shower and hair wash every other day at this time of the year, but wash all smelly bits daily, and sometimes before bed too. In the summer I shower daily. I'm not a sweaty person and daily showering makes my dry skin worse.

I think the increase there is in skin problems though is linked to increased washing.

Every 10 minutes.

Strip washes were common when you had to put an immersion heater on at least an hour before to have a bath. They were also much cheaper.

Wash for 3 F's Everyday

Your even