Have you ever gone camping and gone without a shower for a few days (or four or five)? Hmmm...I guess that happens after you have a baby too--you go days without a shower, just because sleep is SO much more important than being clean. But still, that feeling is gross.
You know the feeling I'm talking about, right? The one where your skin and hair are greasy and you can smell yourself and um...it's not a good smell?
Can you imagine living like that?(Not to mention wearing the same clothes every day) I mean, 100 years ago, they bathed once a week and it was a huge ordeal!
Have you ever read the Little House on the Praire books? Whenever I read those books, it makes me so grateful I live now and not 100 years ago. Here's what getting yourself clean was like a hundred years ago (at least in the Ingalls family): in the summer they hauled water from the spring bucket by bucket and warmed it on the stove, then filled a big tub with water and the first person bathed (I'm guessing that process took at least an hour, most likely closer to two). No separate room, so they had to bathe behind a screen made of a blanket in the main room. In the winter, they took snow, warmed it on the stove and went through the same routine. After they were done, the water was dirty, so they dumped it and started all over again for each person who had to bathe. (I got this information in the first book, Little House in the Big Woods, in the chapter entitled 'Sundays')
Wow. It would take all day to take a bath! No wonder they only did it once a week!
I can get up in the morning, turn on the shower (automatic warm water) and be clean (with nice-smelling, foaming soap instead of a nasty-smelling brick that was like trying to get clean using a rock) in ten minutes (well, probably closer to fifteen :0).
I love and am so grateful for my shower!
3 comments:
Comments work! In addition to my Russia story, I'm so thankful that I can bathe stinky kids more than once a week!
ps -- I'm jen
Yes, I would include hot baths in my top 10 comforts I am thankful for. I know you aren't a bath person, but I can't think of much better than sitting in a hot, bubbly bath reading an intruiging book.
I'm reading some not-exactly literature right now that's sort of an adult Little House on the Prairie, and it has me thinking of these sorts of thoughts too. (Janette Oke is the author.)
As for the showering in particular, I thought for sure once my kids were as old as they are now I would go back to waking early to a shower every day. I don't. I always think "I'll wait till after I run" and then some days I go the whole day without getting on the treadmill (and therefore no shower!)
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