It's like millions of people have never heard of the concept of "wash cloth" and "bucket of water" and "soap"... And I did a happy little squeak seeing Ruth Goodman featured (a bit). I absolutely love her shows!
@@kathleenferguson3296 But you can also use room-temp or cool water without suffering, because you're not putting the whole of your body in it all at once!
I think it’s more that if you haven’t tried washing that way before you’d be apprehensive about it not being as effective. It’s exciting to know how well it can work!
Growing up in the '70s and '80s, if we wanted hot water for a bath, we had to light the coal fire for the back burner and heat the tank. So that only happened once a week! But in between we used to have what Mum called 'strip washes' - a bowl of hot water in the sink and a flannel with soap. All the important bits! And it was fine and I used to feel great afterwards. I've thought about going back to it sometimes - it was less effort than a shower and I was never overheated and sweaty as I sometimes am after a shower...
I worked with a woman who did not have access to any bathing failities except a cold tap and soap and a towel. I asked how she managed. "First you wash the public parts, then you wash the stinky parts", she answered cheerfully. Hair got shampooed about once a week in cold weather, more often in nice weather, and she sat near the heat register to dry it in cold weather. She smelled fine.
@@karoma5805 you probably get a few drops on the floor so you put a mat down. You see that in most recreations, a washstand with a rag mat under it. You learn after you clean up a few times. You aren't splashing water around, you use a wash cloth all the time.
Quick side note here: I was hospitalised for 22 months and with catheters and operation wounds (and my general inability to get up) I was washed or washing myself daily with a bowl of soapy water. I’d say, I was definitely clean. After all, I was in hospital and they take that s**t seriously, to the point of scrubbing me raw, lol. You don’t need a bathtub or shower to stay clean and fragrant. That’s a purely modern idea. Granted, taking my first shower, feeling the warm, soothing water running down my body, was indescribable bliss, but that is ultimately pure luxury, not necessity.
I loved this talk! My mother who turned 93 this year grew up in a house with no indoor plumbing and no source of heat but the fireplace and the kitchen stove. They weren’t poor; they simply lived way out in the country. Everyone in her tiny little town was the same. She said they had NO trouble staying clean. They had a big washtub, and when it was time to bathe, they hauled in a couple of buckets of water from the well for each person, put the washtub in front of the fire and washed. She said they would get wet, soap up and then rinse off in the washtub, but there was no immersing yourself in water…not even in the summer, well unless you were swimming. The natural fiber thing is so true. Even now (I’m 70), I don’t wear synthetic fibers. Everyone thinks I’m crazy because that means…shock, gasp…I have to iron. But synthetic fibers start to smell even with modern washing, and they make me sweat like a horse. I love what you dis❤cussed about comforting smells or pleasant smells being associated with being healthy and the modern idea that people in the past were happy to be smelly…Nooooo…since bad odors were associated with disease. A house or clothing smelling like that person can be such a comforting thing. On another note, what we eat changes the smell of our sweat. Years ago, in Germany, I found myself in a discussion about what they thought Americans smelled like, and they said “meat” because we eat so much more of it than they do/did 50 years ago. I never thought about that until I realized that many Germans smelled slightly of beer to me. My late husband always had a clean kind of smell. Even after he had worked in the yard all day, his sweat wasn’t offensive. It smelled like clean sweat. He was a vegetarian, and I think that’s why. I’ll quit blathering now, but great broadcast. Happy Holidays to you.
I’ve been plant-based (mostly) for over a decade. I’ve dated men from a rage of eating preferences and I can definitely confirm that meat, dairy and sugar consumption change the small of all body secretions!
I’m disabled and taking a shower is one of the most difficult average tasks for me. Once I take a shower, I’m pretty much done for the rest of the day. It causes me immense pain and is incredibly draining. So, most of the time I sit in a chair at my bathroom sink and just wash as much as I can manage without overdoing it with a washcloth. The next day I pick up where I left off and wash as much as I can handle, and so on. Then roughly once a week I take a full shower and wash my hair. I don’t tell many people about this because they would think I’m dirty or gross for not taking a proper shower every single day. But taking a shower every day is untenable for me. If I did that, I’d never do anything else. But some people just can’t comprehend disabilities, especially invisible disabilities, and also can’t understand that people can be clean without doing exactly what they’re doing. It starts feeling like a shameful secret that I have to live with.
I know exactly what you mean about not telling people. And doesn't it say SO much about the social construct, that if you don't tell them - they don't notice anything "odd"? Or at the very least they don't notice enough to react. Sympathies about the pain and exhaustion; I've witnessed that struggle and it's brutal.
You can show them this video to remind them cleanliness protocols may differ but folks were clean. I’m sorry for your pain. People are so ignorant and inconsiderate and forget that bathing rituals differ even today across cultures, infrastructure, and resources. Never mind preference or abilities! You’ll get no judgment from me. I once was an aide to a man in a wheelchair and I cannot imagine how hard any daily ritual was and having to rely on another human being for all aspects of daily life. He had muscular dystrophy so cooking, cleaning, everything needed the help of another person since his limbs were absolutely useless. May as well be paralyzed. I often worried about him in an emergency. What would he do? How would he escape a fire? Did he have anyone who lived close by that he can call over? I was a college kid so I wasn’t a permanent caretaker and went home for the school breaks. He had hired help morning, afternoon and evening. Otherwise he lived alone with his door unlocked. He rigged a rope around his door so he can enter and exit as he pleased but it always worried me that he might receive intruders. But the man needed his independence so he made the best of his situation. If everyone had a personal encounter with someone of different abilities, they might find compassion in their hearts, empathy, and not be so quick to judge. My parents also grew up in a country that was late to receive indoor plumbing so I’m also used to hearing about how different their daily rituals were to mine. Exposure to different daily practices really does expand our minds and breed acceptance.
@@SL-lz9jr Unfortunately, a lot of people have exposure to us and the ways we have to live, and they still act like we don’t exist, or worse say that all disabled people (especially those of us with invisible disabilities) are “faking it” just to get a check from the government, or that we’re lazy, or just want attention, etc. I have a sister-in-law that was a CNA, and she worked helping disabled people in their homes like you did, but she was convinced that if these people stopped taking their meds (often life-sustaining meds) and “would just get up off their butts and exercise” then they’d be cured. I’ve met people, in this day and age, that truly believe that disability and chronic illness/disease are curses from God for some horrible transgression, so they ignore us or treat us like trash because we’re probably evil anyway since we’ve been cursed and if we had faith and made things right with God, we’d have been cured by him. So many people can’t stand disabled people, and don’t dare even think about putting themselves in our shoes. And maybe that’s the core of the reason why they dislike us so much: they can’t bear the thought that one day they might _be_ us. So, they make up stories to tell themselves about how they’re never going to be disabled (or if they are, it won’t be for long because they know how to cure it) to make themselves feel better, and in turn ostracize us.
God bless shower chairs and hand held shower heads. The ones that have the secondary “docking station” that just goes somewhere on the wall of the bathtub/shower make putting it back while still sitting the best. Trust me when I say it took awhile (monetarily) to get to that though. Usually a thrift store has a shower chair for $10-15 but the shower head can set you back. One of my docs reminded me to do what I could do. So if it meant I could use a wet soapy cloth and scrub my pits and bits, yay. If I could sit in the shower and not do anything else, yay. If I knew even drying off was going to take too much energy that day, splashing water on my face was a yay. There are definitely days where I sit in the shower and do all the washing and it’s awesome. There are also days where I splash water on my face and change to a different pair of pajamas.
@@maryel5398 depending on where you live, you may be able to get free shower heads with a hose. I’m in Massachusetts and we have a sustainability program called Mass Save that comes to your house to assess energy/ resource usage. It’s all state subsidized and they gave me a free shower head! I also got my home insulated at about a tenth of the full price.
I am retired anthropologist. This discussion is excellent. Ethnocentrism is a blind sight we all suffer from, wherein we unconsciously assume we have a central, correct, even godly, point of view. It robs of of the richness of understanding other cultures and times. Thank you Bernadette!
I think it may comes from the fact that you're average person just isn't aware of it. I cared for my very old great grandmother and only ever gave her a full shower if the weather was hot because the house was built in the 1860s and didn't have central heat, and she was over 100. She would however get a sponge bath everyday-every other day. The hardest part was washing her hair.
@@LiliLovesStuff Washing hair is one thing that some periods didn't do so much, they did clean it, just not with water. There was one method where they'd rub it with a dry linen cloth to absorb oils, and then comb it very thoroughly with a very fine toothed comb, and then braid it and wear a cap to protect it from dirt. I think it was SnappyDragon who did that, and she commented that it did clean her hair just fine, it just made her curls pretty frizzy, but since she wore them braided in a cap during the day, that wasn't a huge problem.
I remember giving my mum a really tight hug as a 9 or 10 year old and taking a deep sigh of happiness, telling her "you smell like mum". Her reaction being "I must need a shower", which I protested against saying she didn't smell sweaty - she just smelled like her.
My grandma had a washing stand. I remember during winter having to pour water from the stove to wash my face and hands and then going outside to empty the basin. Along with taking trips to the well to pull water out. That was very normal to me at the time. We are taking running water for granted. Speaking of the clean clothes smell, the most nostalgic to me is the smell of frozen clothes that were hung out during winter.
More than 30 years ago I had a patient who was born in the late 1800s. He told me that in the rural community he lived in there was no running water in houses. There was a pump outside atop a well where you would pump water up from the ground. He said that women could do wonders with a bucket of water and a cloth to make themselves clean and lovely.
It’s not even that long ago necessarily. My mother was born in the 1959 and didn’t have running water growing up. She grew up with sponge baths and once a week on Saturday she and her siblings would all have a bath in the tub in the kitchen by the stove.
At first i was like woah that was a while ago but actually it really wasn't. I'm so use to this modern industrial era, I forget how 150 years ago was just a blip or a blink of time. Thank you for sharing this :)
Another reason underclothes didn't survive through the ages: they were used to make paper! When they couldn't be worn anymore, linens got pulped and pressed into paper sheets, a process which replaced the use of vellum (calf skin).
wow, great! The circle is full.....ofcourse, i could ve guesssed. we all know paper was made of rag in the days, and todays best quality paper is still made from textile fibres
That's right. Rag men would push their carts in the streets calling out for people's rags that were then used to make paper as all cloth was natural fibre in those days.
I only wore cotton in Texas, rarely linen. I composted them for my garden when they wore out. I hate synthetic clothes, miserably uncomfortable. I now live in the mountains and added wool. I love wool! Sometimes I consider shifting to natural under, but it is harder to come by. Not to mention the gorgeous wool colors. I think I will start papermaking, I did make papers in art school, it is not hard.
I never understood why people believed we never bathed. Some 13,000 paintings from the middle ages depict bathing. That more than any other subject. Why paint something people don't do?
The section about the comforting human smell brought me straight back to primary school where the teacher would hold up someone’s unlabelled school jumper and we’d all sniff it to identify who it belonged to. We all recognised each others’ “smells” and you knew if the jumper “didn’t have a smell” it was yours. It was such a normal occurence that it’s funny how as an adult now the idea of smelling someone else’s human scent is disturbing or dirty.
Cute story but in reality some people are stink, stank, stunk stenchy disgusting. Yes that is foul, disturbing. There are people that need to discover soap, and mouthwash. This is why I loved that whole 6 ft apart rule that popped up during the Covid pandemic. Now you all please wash your hands ✋. Don't breathe on others.
For those of you who are chronically ill: if you have fatigue or autonomic dysregulation that makes showering and bathing hard, try the linen rag thing. It is a lifesaver to be able to feel clean even when you can barely get out of bed.
I use a soft flannel to wash. I've yet to find any linen that doesn't feel like I'm touching the zesting part of a cheesegrater. Its so horribly rough! I have very very fragile skin though which is prone to tearing if the air touches it too hard lol. The idea of wearing linen as an undergarment is just my idea of hell. I have used some old cotton knickers the elastic died on (cut into fabric scraps) in place of linen for days when I'm stuck in bed. Its not going to be quite as effective as linen, but at least its soft. Might try getting some bamboo fabric instead since that's supposed to be more absorbent than cotton but its super soft (have it in my reusable pads and its really soft).
@@AlexaFaiein theory, linen does get softer over time. But I can completely understand not being able to wait for your washcloths to get broken in. Cotton flannel sounds delightful!
Good idea for those who don't have sensitive skin. I have severe chronic fatigue and dysautonomia make showering really tiring. I also can't stand scented soap and no shampoo. I only wash with very soft non-scented bar soap every 2-3 weeks and no one can tell except sometimes for dull hair (which you can brush more like Victorian ladies used to do to avoid washing). Only a tiny bit of that bar soap on my hair will do. I use 70% propyl alcohol everyday to remove armpit smells. My hubby also does that. Peroxide if it gets worse (nearer to needing a shower). Solves all issues until I have enough energy to devote to a shower. If you can't even muster strength to use a washcloth, at least not using harsh scented chemicals should help you not have to wash a while. It seems scented and more chemically complex soaps really prevent the body's natural way of staying clean. How many times I used to have to wash my bras because of deodorant I used. Now I can wear the same without any smells for a full week even though I don't use deodorant. Fair warning if you stop using shampoo: it took 3months for my hair to be better but it happened! It was water only. I have bamboo bedding and bamboo shirts. Keeps me cleaner.
I am 55. But I learned how to bathe with no electricity due to bad storms growing up. We would heat a pot of water on our gas stove and use a wash cloth to clean the smelly areas of the body.
Thank you for this! One of my most hated film tropes is "medieval people be dirty" and actors and actresses with random dirt in their faces, because in the past people didn't wash themselves. How utterly ridiculous, it's the easiest thing to fill a vessel with water and wash your face. People nowadays want to feel good and clean, people from a 1000 years ago surely had the same basic human need.
I wonder how much of the dirty peasants thing in Hollywood is also related to our warped beauty standards. So often female characters will have a full face of modern makeup, regardless of the era the production is set in. Full makeup is normal, while minimal or no makeup looks are reserved for "ugly" characters. The artistic smudges of dirt over a full face of makeup allow for the characters to look poor without making the actors "ugly".
I know quite a lot of reenactors and living history people who showed up to work as extras in not just historical movies but even historical documentaries, dressed in well-researched clothing accurate for the period that was supposed to be portrayed... and who then got told "Too clean, too colourfull, not ragged enough. Go get your constumes from our costuming department." Said costumes being grey, brown and black rags.
@@benjaminlammertz64 Funny you say that... black? Of course I do not know the period you are referring to, but in the olden days there was no black. Hollywood decided witches have warts, medieval people were dirty and werewolves exist. Who cares about facts? Sure, people didn't have a wardrobe full of clothes. And that is why people used aprons, to protect their clothes, by example. (I am a medieval re-enactor and researcher)
A subject that I happen to have written about in some detail. In the late Medieval period, swathes of people across Europe bathed at least once a week in bathhouses as part of preparation (for Sunday service). This tradition was propagated by the Roman Church, but survived the Reformation. Isabella Whitney wrote of Elizabethan Londoners who visited bathhouses not only for prophylactic reasons, but also, "On Saturdayes" so that "those, which all the weeke doo drug: Shall thyther trudge, to trim them up on Sondayes to looke smug".
Visiting the bath house was a big normal part of daily (or weekly) life in medieval europe, people loved it. Some workers were even given bath house tokens as part of their salary and bath houses had free days for the poor. Such a fascinating subject and what we know about it changes all the time :)
A number of 19th and early 20th century German scholars wrote extensively on the subject of medieval bathing. Alas, many English speakers are unaware of their works and assume the worst (that people were unclean). My interest ties in with the musical tradition that was associated with bathhouses - I wrote a book on the (bizarre!) history of barber musicians. @@fakehistoryhunter
@@brushbeatmedia Yes it's fascinating how the moment you look beyond the (often Victorian) history books focusing only on Britain and sometimes on France (and also being wrong about that btw) and look at the original records of what's going on in the rest of Europe you suddenly get the idea of societies obsessed with bathing, washing, steaming. Germans couldn't get enough of their bath houses ;) Your book sounds interesting, what's the title?
@@lenabreijer1311 Yes in some parts of the Netherlands even till the 1970s, it wasn't till having your own bathroom or at least a shower in your toilet or kitchen, that the bath houses became sort of obsolete.
To this day I'm 65yrs and I still use jergens original cherry almond every night when I go to sleep because my mom wore every day and it's like a goodnight hug from my mom she passed in 2009
Love this. It might be fair to say that the hygiene of the past might not meet our modern standards, but people - mostly women and children - put an incredible amount of effort into trying to keep themselves and their environment as clean as they could. They weren’t stupid, nor did they just not care.
I love how she said “ it’s not like the people of the past were dumb “ lol if any of them had seen this they’d have a way better understanding .. history is for us to learn from .. somehow we think we are the ones who found all the solutions .. our ancestors were not stupid or we wouldn’t be here .. this was a wonderful episode !!
They were not unintelligent, but by comparison they were very uneducated so theres is some truth that they were dumber than us. The same way our future relatives may say the same about us.
They were dumber. Even looking at IQ only, we're at historical high atm, it's been just rising historically speaking. only very recently we started seeing first slight drops. Also the volume of knowledge and access to the information. They were not stupid or unintelligent, but compared to modern human... dumber.
I mean that just depends. Average person is way dumber than most scholars of past. 2500 old greeks have infinite more insight than your average barely finish highshool person.
I had a patient awhile back who was born in 1918. He and his brothers were raised on a farm by an older farmer and his wife whose kids had already grown up and left the home. My patient told me that once a week the farmer's wife would drag out a big tin tub. She would heat water and fill the tub. First the farmer would get in the tub and wash. Then his wife would wash. Any of the older kids who were home would wash. Then my patient and his two younger brothers would wash last of all. I asked him if he minded bathing in dirty water. He said, "No." He said they had a great time splashing around. He also said that farm dirt wasn't 'bad' dirt.
We used to do this in our bath as recently as the 1990s - Dad first, then Mum, then my brother & I (together when we were very small!). It probably wasn’t the water itself but the heating that was expensive in our case. Never bothered me either (at least until I was old enough to know it wasn’t the norm)!
I was recently lucky enough to visit Japan, and bathing in homes and less-westernized hotels is similar, but with a kind of mini-shower. There's a little shower next to the bath, and bath tubs are taller but not as long, so you have to bend your legs but you can actually get your torso under the water. The idea is that you get the hot bath ready and then everyone uses the same water in turns, BUT there's a little shower right next to it where you rinse off and use your soaps and shampoos and whatever you need to do to get clean, and that way the bath water doesn't get dirty for the next person, it's just for relaxing and getting warm, but there's nothing in it aside from MAYBE a soothing bath salt or something. Some tubs even have clever heaters where you can keep the water nice and warm even if you've got a large family. Tl;dr: I started thinking it sounded gross sharing washing water with family, and now honestly think it's a much better system.
@@CatHasOpinions734so you were a clean person and now embraced something gross 🤢 Sharing the same water is extremely unhygienic, even if everyone takes a shower before, especially for women. If a mother has some contagious vaginal infection it is possible that by sharing the water it will spread to the daughters too! No one in their right mind would wear their parents's underwear before at least washing it, why would they soak themselves in water that has been in touch with everything including the genitals... And then did you think about warts and athlete foot? Let's not normalise gross things!
There is still so much snobbery about being clean = being a better person. A real problem for the disabled community, when a lot of us just simply cannot shower every day, not without help at least. No guarantee that you have this help. I found myself automatically using undershirts (no matter what) because "changing my linens" every day means im more likely to keep fresh, even if I wear the same outerwear for a couple of days on the trot. I want to make myself some linen undershirts cause i love linen so so much! They help my (already crap) temperature regulation so much!
And actually showering everyday can be bad for the skin, especially for seniors and people with chronic illness. To be honest nobody in our family can do it. It feels like your skin is being sandpapered off after a week of it. Wash the stinky bits with a wash cloth daily. And shower once a week.
I have depression and can't currently pay for medication, so I shower roughly once a week because I need to use my energy in other ways first. I wear an undershirt to work and it is very useful!
Yes! It's amazing how much of an assumption there is that if one isn't showering or bathing daily then they must be living in filth. I've rediscovered these historical methods over the past year or so, and it's made such a difference! I got a shower chair to try to facilitate more frequent showers, but all it really does is make me less likely to fall over--showering is still exhausting! And bathing has its own issues. Either way, a 'proper wash' by today's standards takes me out for a day or so afterwards. I can wash my hair in a sink if I must, and wet cloths get the job done for everywhere else. Once I've gotten a bit more energy, making some proper linen undershirts sounds like a wonderful project! One of my conditions can cause me to sweat a great deal, so having some clothes designed to cope with that instead of my current cheap polyester nightmares sounds wonderful. Another aspect of cleanliness that I don't see talked about often, but which has been on my mind a fair bit these past few years, is shaving. Women in particular are expected to have hairless legs and armpits, but shaving is such a project! I gave up on shaving my legs years ago, and I'm rapidly approaching a level of apathy regarding my underarms that my teen self would have found impossible to comprehend. I'm sure that hairy legs would have been a complete non-issue when skirts went down to the floor, and even after that I believe that stockings were the norm for a quite some time. I wonder when exactly shaving legs and pits became the done thing? This video has definitely given me the inspiration to do some research.
My grandmother is in her 70s and grew up extremely poor. She explained to us how they had to walk I think a mile to get water. So they only bathed on Saturday nights. I was always shocked by this. But she told me they washed every single day. They washed their face, hands, etc. In the mornings. And before bed they washed their stinky bits (pits, butts, etc.) With a bucket of water.
I’m autistic and showering is an awful sensory experience for me; looking at what they did in the past to stay clean without showers is like super useful in my day to day life so I can at least lengthen the amount of time I can go without showering
I love this deep dive into the misconception and the understanding that people of the past weren't dumb, the just found solutions to the problems available to them. And they had some really good and clever solutions.
Thank you!!! This is the reason I got into historical fashion. I've been telling people for years that wearing clean clothes has more effect on smell than regular showering. I want to share this with everyone I know! A couple years ago, I had some contractor issues that made my bathtub unusable for about 6 months. Towards the end of it, I asked a close friend if I smelled bad, and they told me the only thing they could smell was my hair, and it wasn't bad, just a smell they associated with unwashed hair. During that time, I did the following every day: - wash my hands regularly with soap & water - wash my face with plain water - wear clean clothes - comb my hair - clean my combs
A woman would wear a belt to which she tied layers of cloth, when it soaked through she would wash them. When I started menstruating many, many decades ago I had the same design belt to which I tied netting bags filled with cotton wool which was later thrown out.
My grandmother from 1890 said they had beautiful white linen cloths and when they were frequently washed they became perfectly white again and were very fresh and clean.
This makes me feel MUCH better about the limitations of my disabilities. I've always felt gross and bad for the days and weeks i can't bathe or shower- id call it bird bathing - using some soap and a cloth over my bathroom sink. I never considered filling a bowl with warm water and doing it sitting in a tub. I never considered changing clothes more frequently or wearing a lightweight and easily carried layer underneath my day clothes. It's so hard for me to do laundry because most days, i can't go up or down stairs, let alone while carrying clothing.
I am 50 and don't shower every day. I have a wash at the sink and shower every 3rd day. Please don't think you are unclean. Many of these people shower every day but don't actually wash themselves
A 90 year old lady, once explained to me how she kept clean, using a washcloth soap and water. She washed down as far as possible, up as far as possible, and then she washed possible, never did she smell. I regularly adopt this approach to keeping clean. No one has complained that I smell.
I do a lot of extended overlanding trips, sleeping in the back of my truck. When it's winter, and using a solar shower isn't viable, I'm all about the wet wipes and wash cloths. In the summer I use my solar shower or simply bathe in a body of water. Natural hot springs are my go-to in the winter for rinsing off. Of course you generally need to hike quite a bit of distance to those. If it's easy to access, there will likely be other people around and I'm not that much of savage!
In 1970 at my first boarding school, we each had a plastic bowl by our beds in the dormitory. Every morning we would go and fill it up at the sink (one per dormitory) and wash ourselves. We could have a bath once a week and the hot water usually ran out after one bath. Needless to say, having a hot bath when I want is still a wonderful luxury for me.
I'd like, as an American apartment dweller, to thank Hilary for acknowledging that so many of us don't *have* access to line drying our clothing! I've heard so much badmouthing of Americans from Europeans and Aus/NZ about how Americans are lazy and can't live without our dryers. Like I live in the upper Midwest and you can't hang your clothes outside for approximately five months out of the year, thanks winter, and I don't have space in my tiny apartment to hang them inside. I used to be able to line dry my laundry and I miss it. There's nothing in the world like line dried sheets. So thanks, Hilary, for noting that line drying is not available to many if not most of us.
I can't hang my clothes outside because I have allergies. I can't open my windows in the spring and fall like when I was a little girl. My allergies have gotten worse as I have gotten older.
@@missyvinson6220 with the advances of modern science, allergy treatment is available to most insurance plans in the USA. Ask for a referral to an allergy and asthma specialist and theyll cure it. It will take 3 to 6 or infinite years of regular shots, and after 3 years I truly treasure my ability to breathe through my nose. At the beginning its 3 shots a week, after a year or 2 its a shot every month and so worth it. I can't trade this ability to smell and use my nose for anything.
The vast majority of europeans also don't dry our clothes outside. We also live in cities?! We have small little indoor "clothes horses" (which is apparently the english name for this object) that you can fold away once your clothes are dry. I have lived in some tiny studio appartments and never used a dryer. To be honest most of my clothes are probably not even save to dry with a dryer. I guess there are some special circumstances where this might not be an option but let's be honest, this is totally possible for most of Americans. And I'm pretty sure most of Americans (especially poorer ones) are saving energy and money by doing that.
I'm glad you made this video. It always bothered me that people thought everyone was gross too. Another thing that bugs me is that everyone thinks Neanderthals were dumb, but if you stripped the earth of all our modern things we'd be living exactly like they did.
we'd probably be living worse to be honest. There's a lot of knowledge that a Neanderthal would be taught by their parents and elders that we've just forgotten. We've probably forgotten so much that we don't even know the full extent of what's been forgotten. Maybe we would do better in some regards because of new discoveries, or maybe not. Either way its hard to say, but I do know that I wouldn't choose to go back in time voluntarily unless I was guaranteed to be able to return whenever I wanted. I'm not cut out for that life, I would die immediately.
@@SilverDragonJay yeah, there's a lot of knowledge about surviving, starting with which berries are edible for example, or which animals are where, or weather prediction, which people get very good at. So many skills that I can think of that most modern people don't even have, and probably so many more that I can't imagine because I don't live a hunter/gatherer life.
@kittiescorner222 - Neanderthals and Denisovans were every bit as smart as we are today. They were busy building the knowledge base that would lead to us. There are a number of researchers who think that they were not separate species at all, but subsets of Homo Sapiens. After all, many of us carry their genes, so they MUST have successfully canoodled together. They did not go extinct - they MERGED! .^_^.
I am 85. When I was a child we didn't have central heating. We had the fire back boiler. And coal rationing. Saturday night for children was bath night. The norm was once a week. To this day to save the cost of heating and water there is the stand-up wash option. Just sponge down running the sponge under the wash-basin tap to wet and rinse. Minimal use of power and water and absolutely effective.
I’m a materials scientist going to grad school (next year!!) for archeological science, focusing in textiles (hopefully!!), so I am so thankful for this video! I’ve started wearing linens more often myself, but this video absolutely makes me feel secure in my decision
We have lots of scottish thistle that grow wild and I've been looking more closely to it. I've heard the flowers can be used to set milk into cheese. The new shoots are quite tender. The stalks are strong and very fibrous. But the thing that is intriguing me, and relevant to your study, is the seed part of the plant. It's santa clause parachute part is very close to cotton. I'm wondering if the scottish people used this part for fiber and cloth making..?
hi I'm a sociology student whose special interests are social history and linen, I await your contributions to the field eagerly :D there needs to be more of us!!
During severe drought in 2019 I washed for months in just a basin of water. Being a historian, I knew I was perfectly clean doing that, and still sometimes skip a shower in favour of a wash because it's just so much easier - not to mention that it does clear my conscience to have a longer shower on those days when mu old muscles need it! We're in the bush on rainwater tanks so we're very aware of where water comes from - and when it doesn't.
Get a bucket .. that can hold 15 to 25 litres of water, and a mug... Draw a mug full of water from the bucket and wet your body, from your face/neck down to your toes,front and back, apply soap all over the body, now take a loofah ,wet it and scrub your body thoroughly, after that, rinse off your soapy body ... No need to waste water from a shower head or a bath tub.
I lived in Bermuda for about a year. People are very conscious of water use there, as their water traditionally comes from rain water which is collected below the houses. We used showers but got wet, turned the water off, soaped up, rinsed off. It’s a habit I’ve kept, though I sometimes cheat on cold mornings.
I'm a part of reenactor group, and that includes staying - time to time - in some very basic conditions in historical tents on a random field for several days. Good linen chemise/shirt is the first piece that a newbie buys/sews, because it really helps. Having several of them to change is common and really heplfull, because you might not come across a bath for three days straight, and nobody wants to die of plague fumes :) Also, I'm not putting my boned bodice in a wash until something drastic happens to it. From what I have noticed, a plastic t-shirt smells after several hours, good cotton after a day and linen after three or so days. Merino wool can keep even a bit longer. Unit of measurement: Would I go in a shop in that?
For any multiday camping event my first piece of advice to any newbie was to have a chemise/shirt for every day you plan to be there and one outer set of clothes. Get the "underwear" done first because worst case scenario you have clean undies everyday! The second was make a decent cloak!
I absolutely adore Ruth Goodman, she is definitely one of my historical educational heroes! plus, I think people don't understand the difference between a natural fiber like linen that naturally wicks off sweat, and the oil derivative crap that they have been wearing all their lives. I mean, they believed that smells carry disease… So of course they're not going to let themselves stink. The idea of the rubbing cloth to works really well.
Grew up without electricity until I was a teen, We washed every AM .. lots of hot water from the kitchen stove tank. Everyone " washed up" . The water was always "soft" rain water with Ivory soap. Saturday was bath day. family rotated tub time , mom , children , dad . No one smelled. My mother was very British and had a high standard of our dress and decor... just no electricity where we were.
Our ancestors were inventive and intelligent and they deserve more respect that "omg, they all must have stunk so bad." I'm glad this video acknowledges that! 💖
In America we're not addicted to dryers. Many of us would love to dry our laundry outside, but it is against the apartment rules or the Homeowners Association. It's ridiculous. I don't understand why people consider a line full of clean laundry an eyesore and regulate against it. You get nasty fines : (
Exactly. It's not legal in America. I'm an American and when I moved to the former East Germany, I was surprised by the apartment clotheslines outside! And I was pleased. Sanity is nice to see.
Inside on a rack your clothes dry stiff and they don't smell nice from the fresh breezes. I'm old enough to remember when we could hang laundry outside.@@aspannas
Same in Canada. I've seen some people mention cold as the main issue, but I don't think this is the case. My grandmothers hung their clothes out to dry during the colder months, or they hung them inside (and yes, clothes sometimes froze stiff before they had a chance to dry completely if they were too far from the stove!). I guess that when modern appliances became accessible in the 50s, people started to associate clotheslines with lack of modernity, and by extension, poverty. We (sort of) realized that modernity does not always mean progress when it comes to food (think artificial flavors, sweeteners, highly processed food) but we're still stuck in the 50s when it comes to taking care of our clothes, and clothes in general.
I love the comment about things not meant to be washed. My mom told me not to wash my nicest things. Wear a dress to church, take it off immediately after. The stress was to make expensive clothes last as long as possible. I didn’t think it was weird until I was older and saw other people washing clothes after ONE WEAR!
Some items i rarely wash: dresses that don't get too sweaty, cardigains. My school woolen jumper gets washed 1-2 times a term. However i change my underwear like every 12 hours and socks like 2-3 times a day. I'm autistic and i MUST be wearing clean socks at all times.
I have plenty of clothing that isn’t washed after one wear. If I have an appointment and wear something dressier to the appointment for a couple of hours and change once I get home I’ll hang the clothing back in my closet as it’s not dirty and there’s no need to launder it after only being worn for a short time. Back when I worked in an office I didn’t have my suits cleaned after one wear. I was wearing a blouse with the suit and the skirts were lined or I wore a slip so the suit fabric wasn’t in direst contact with my skin. Even dresses could usually be worn 3-4 times before laundering or dry cleaning. I was sitting in an air conditioned office and wasn’t sweating or engaging in activities that would soil my clothes.
I think people get that about dry clean only stuff. No one wears a pair of wool slacks once and then dry cleans them. Of course that makes any spill an expensive, traumatic event. And while church is once a week for two hours work is every day for eight...
I have a friend that will just try on a shirt or pants to see if that's what she wants to wear, decide it isn't, take it off and puts the item in the hamper to wash. She had them on for less than 5 minutes! Her clothing does not last because it is over washed.
I have a favorite cable knit wool sweater which I've owned for over 2 years now. I have never washed it. I don't wear it for "dirty" activities, like gardening or cleaning. I always wear something under it, obviously, so it doesn't get sweaty. I just need to properly air it out every few months and it's nice and fresh.
Thank you for your compassion around past and present homeless folk. I never considered their clothes being their permanent shelter. I'll be thinking about that alot more now.
Perhaps as a result of a poor, rural upbringing, I am proud to say I am and have throughout my life been aware of the concept of the wash stand and how how to wash with limited resources. Less aware was I of how critical one's choice of clothing materials could be until I was in my twenties and switched to wearing cotton almost exclusively due to skin issues caused by man-made materials.
I have a picture of my father scrunched into a classic galvanized wash tub. That must date from the late 1950's. I'm also a member of the 'only cotton against the skin' group. Polyester is horrible stuff, and wool is too scratchy. Linen sounds interesting but I haven't seen it for sale anywhere locally.
Within the past year I heard a woman at a Renaissance fair telling a group of children about how during the Renaissance no one bathed and they wore biggins caps to hide their “disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden heads” and how filthy and disgusting people were back then because they didn’t believe in bathing. I’ve been wanting to find resources since regarding Elizabethan England and hygiene during that period. Common sense says that she is utterly wrong because it’s not comfortable or healthy for your skin to never wash and I fully believe that people in the past were quite intelligent and sensible and didn’t just leave lice in their hair. You can feel them, you can pick them out and to this day over-the-counter lice washes don’t work as well as actually combing them and the eggs out of your hair. I wanted to try to find actual resources regarding this issue in case I find myself in that kind of situation again. Citing sources is more effective than trying to convince modern people that our ancestors weren’t stupid.
You want Tudor Monastery Farm, it's around here on RUclips, and while it's a touch earlier than Elizabethan, it's still the time of her grandfather and much of the practices would have been similar for your everyday folk like us.
Also, many cultures (including English culture) had very fine toothed combs specifically designed for removing dirt and lice daily. Grooming is one of our oldest human practices, and some grooming techniques really haven’t changed all that much
You just need to read any of the many herbals that exist to know that they had lots of recipes for hair rinses to get rid of lice. I have no idea if they worked, but the recipes alone attest to people's concern and desire to do something about it- and the fact that they washed hair. Lice is going to be fairly common problem any time you have people living and working as close together as they did. As would fleas, especially with all the animals about as part of life. So they had multiple ways of tackling the problems, in their homes and on themselves. Another thing is, though it is from the following century when we have more letters and such from ordinary people testifying to common views and practices, you can tell that in general despite hair still being kept covered for cleanliness, people did notice if someone didn't wash or hadn't done so and tried to hide it with a cap. No reason to think that it was any different in the Renaissance.
Isn’t it amazing the ‘information’ some tour guides convey to the unsuspecting public? I worked at a late 19th house museum where I heard a docent tell a tour group that you could tell the home was used as a boarding house because there were transom windows above the interior doors. Who knows how she made that leap of reasoning.
There are combs that are fine enough to be lice combs that are over 3000 years old, and I know there was a comb found in the Netherlands from about 100BCE with lice/mites/eggs on it, I'm not sure which, so it was fine toothed enough to get rid of lice. It seems silly to me to think that people somehow forgot that lice combs existed. Also, a medieval hair cleaning method was rubbing dry linen on it, and then combing it thoroughly, which gets rid or basically everything, and wearing a cap so it wouldn't get dirty. And from what I remember this was done daily. So next time you can point to those found objects, if you need examples from the medieval era, there are a lot of very fancy combs from that period, as well as simpler ones, so we know that people used them then too. 😊
My family had a camp on a lake in the woods. Dirt road in. No other camps in shouting distance. No running water. Nice outhouse with a pee bucket in the corner of the camp for at night. A wood stove for heat and cooking (and heated water). And yes washbasins for washing up. In the summer there were tree branches overhanging a section of the lake. Great place for a bath.😊
What a great video! As a person who grew up in 90s Ukraine without heat during winter, running hot water and cold water for that matter (we had it for few hours during a day), I never understood extreme opinions of some people that taking showers everyday or even twice a day with a soap is a ABSOLUTELY MUST DO. We had difficult conditions but we didn`t stink 😅 People always adapt to their circumstances and most of the people value the hygiene and like feeling clean and fresh. Plus regular showers are not great for the skin health. As someone wrote in comments: "First you wash the public parts, then you wash the stinky parts". It works just fine. Especially if you prefer natural fibered clothing.
I think it depends on where you live relative to the equator tbh. Cause when I lived abroad, bathing everyday wasn't really necessary because the weather didn't encourage much sweating. However, now that I live in the tropics, I understand people who feel the need for at least one shower a day. Because the heat levels and the effects of the humidity can make you feel icky, ergo making you feel like you're going to start to stink soon
Seriously! I used to hate movies in America about “the poor hillbillies in the south” I’m like a.there are still areas today that live like this and like go to college and shit. I’m one of them 😂 and b.we wash our clothes and are not some sort of goblin creatures! We do bathe 😅 I remember anytime I hear people talking of ‘savages’ of another place it’s always what I think of. I’m like well apparently my family’s just the hills have eyes even though our family is a biracial family born from a Vietnamese war veterans and victim and to me a kind of beautiful story of two families broken by a war and put back together and healed by their childrens’ love but you know 😅 hicks. I remember meeting my husbands very wealthy family hear and they were so wealthy and yet they don’t know how to fix anything, when he moved out he didn’t know how to do anything. Not even to hang his clothing! I had to go every weekend when I was also in college to teach him. Even to clean his own room! He picked up fast and was no lazy man mind you but of course people have a natural inclination to keep themselves clean and tidy as well as their space no matter what their limit to resources may be. Since I went to college in highschool no one knew I was homeless because I appeared freshly showered everyday, makeup done, clothing ironed. I was lucky enough to have a car to live out of and knew my resources from volunteering. I used the gym shower in late or very early hours by being let in by the super gym bros. Washed my hair in the large college lab sinks I worked for when I was done prepping labs. Did my makeup in my car, had a battery powered steamer and mostly nylon and rayon dresses I would put on the hanger, steam and then wear, stocking lint rolled and then of course brush off my shoes with a boar bristle brush. All my other possessions were organized in my trunk with various bins found outside, from my old room, or from goodwill. Folded carefully and organized carefully to maximize storage. Mt makeup…was a disaster in a bag tho lmao 🤣 I knew where to find it tho! And it worked 🤷♂️. Regardless the fact that everyone thought I had like my shit together when in reality I was literally going to behind Little Caesars every day to get the tossed hot and ready out of the dumpster is kind of crazy. I was just determined and I had been conditioned I guess because my folks always made do with what we had. And that’s what I had. I wanted to be clean, so I was. Fucking soap cost 99 cents man. Conditioner was the hardest part and getting my eyeliner at 8 dollars when I did eventually run out and couldn’t water it down again. Lash glue lasted a million years. Cleaning my lashes. I was clean because I knew how to be clean. Not having access to a toilet didn’t mean I just chose to shit my pants 😂. Thank you for your insight! I think it’s important people know that others live like this. We also do in America!
@@wanderingsoul881I will say living near the equator does make more frequent bathing more necessary however a full shower isn’t always needed. I live in Florida and a lot of the things that actually Bernadette has talked about are things that my family had to do on the farm and I eventually did as a homeless person. When you have limited access to laundering facilities, you do tend to wear more under clothes to protect your outer clothes and I used to store them in an area that had laundry sheets and of course, wearing protective outer clothes to protect any good clothes you got on. You do tend to wash up more often, but you don’t tend to submerge your body. When I lived at home, you used to be asked to wash your feet, face hands and neck before entering the home or eating. Usually before bed obviously brush your teeth and wash your face showering may be reserved for once a day. If you’re lucky washing your hair, depends on your hair texture for me I can wash my hair every day because I have that mixed hair texture from my Dad. Usually proper showers are more reserved for more official venues like going into town; college,classes,church, office job etc. if not going to a special event, showers are reserved for those with the hardest work and dirtiest work which was usually the adults with hard labor jobs, nursing farmers factory welding, etc. kids are usually washing up basin style. Overall honestly we used the same things 😅 especially since near the equator it can have areas with little money so we just do some of the same things. It’s why when I moved to the city or met wealthy people I was kind of surprised they like never knew some people were still living without running water and stuff 😂
I love how you brought up human smells. My daughter as a newborn smelled like fresh baked bread. I love the smell of my husband. In a more sad note I lost my mom suddenly in September and I have some of her clothes and I can't bring myself to wear them yet because they still smell like her.
So sorry for your loss. I lost my dad a few years ago and (this may sound strange but) I think it is comforting for both me and my mother that I smell like him. Genetics are weird.
If they wore a specific perfume/cologne, you might get a close approximation. My aunt will spray my grandmother's favorite perfume whenever she wants to reminisce the smell.
@@LeticiaAGentil We call that smell on top of a baby's head "schnoogle" in our family. Once children get to be about 5 years old, the delightful smell fades. You will notice that many people holding a baby or a young child will instinctively smell the top of their heads.
My parents grew up washing themselves by the sink, my grandpa did that until he died. The guest room at my stepfather's house still has a washing basin. And I'm 22 and from a relatively well-off family in a rich European country. It is wild to me how many people have never even considered washing themselves like that. Showering daily is such a huge waste of water, and it is so easy to keep yourself clean in between showers/baths with just a asin and a washcloth!
My mom when alive would call them Whore's baths she'd tell me when her and I would wash in a bedroom with a thing of water each and shave, get clean ect.
I love that there is a video that I can direct people to when they have trouble grasping the fact that people washed in the past even if they weren't doing full immersion into a tub of hot water. And I have used a wash basin to great effect several times to wash and it was perfectly fine. I even use that method when I'm out at events.
Anyone who has ever gone camping (like when I was a kid and at best there might be a porta potty) knows how to bathe in a tub of water same as you'd do your dishes. How to go to the bathroom by digging a small hole. And usually we camped near lakes and streams or rivers so that's where we obtained our water for heating and boiling And drinking and even swimming and fishing
@@recoveringsoul755 yup, that's how I was taught to camp when we were little. Easter time was when we always went to a place called Big River. Lot's of memories of having a small plastic baby bath, with a humpty dumpty motif on it, that you stood in to sponge/flannel wash. It's effective and a shame people don't realise you can 100% clean your body really well with a smallish amount of water and a flannel. I think Big River camping area now has long drop toilets. Talk about luxury! lol.
I, as an incredibly smelly person, can completely attest to the idea of wearing washable layers under un-washable items. And really (in keeping with the idea that we progress our way backwards), it was something that I only discovered in the past year. Sweat blocking undershirts have totally changed the way I live, and make me feel so much better about myself--and finally, I don't feel like I can't get things like expensive wool sweaters or things that are "dry clean only", or like certain items are too precious to wear, and it brings me so much joy.
Have you tried switchin from commercial available "soap"(mostly detergents) to handmade soap? Kirk's Castile bar soap is not a detergent and actually neither is Squach brand. Modern detergents pull too much off that needs to stay on so maybe yer washin routine is not allowin ya to build the correct biome fer yer body. I stopped wearing deodorant years ago. The 1st month I stunk worse than ever but after that as long as I shower at least every 3 days no one even knows unless I tell em. I think it is cuz deodorant kills the beneficial bacteria that live on us. Just my $.02
@@maxhorner2409 I've been using Dr. Bronners for years, and as much as I love it there wasn't really a difference between the Castile soap and your everyday liquid or bar soap. The only thing I've found that really helps is shaving every day and using antibacterial wipes if it gets particularly out of control 🙃
I do medieval reenactment so I am well aware of how to keep yourself clean in a period manner. I also work night shift at a gas station and oftentimes have less fortunate folks come in to use the restroom to clean up. You don't have to get in the shower to be clean. As humans we want to be clean. We do the best we can with what we have. (And I'm never going to stop someone from cleaning up in the restrooms, times are hard, and it's human nature to want to be clean.)
Even the most ardent ‘personal responsabilitehhh!’ advocate should recognize that its hard to get a job - or a better job, as a rather surprising number of unhoused people are workng regularly - if you don’t have access to the most basic means to maintain hygiene. I am not religious, but those of us who are better off should remember ‘there but for grace of God go I’, and it seems you have, May such compassion be returned to you tendold if you are ever in need.
One of the oldest written texts we've found is a Sumerian tablet with instructions for making soap (boiling animal fats with wood ash), and perfumes and incenses were extremely valuable. Humans have always liked to be clean and to smell nice.
I’ve been watching you along time. I love how much I learn from you. I love history and I love all crafts. I’m a 62 year old woman, I thought I knew most crafts or some since of most crafts. I recently saw a documentary on Finnish women and rag rugs that have been passed though generations. I didn’t have a clue! Your never to old to learn something new has a whole new meaning to me now. Just wanted to say how much I’ve enjoyed you.
I once asked my college history teacher what era he would want to live in other than modern eras, and he said the 1990s because “any time before the 1920s would smell appalling, and also basic human rights”. So it’s interesting to see what other historians think on the subject.
I would assume any time before the 1920s (in a city) would smell not so much because of people, but animal manure and inadequate sewer systems (depending on era/location) and so on.
@@louloureads3953 The less cars on the road the more horse poop is in the streets. And i wouldn't want to live anytime before the tetanus shot (1924), cause with my luck I'd step on a nail, get it, and die.
It 1000% was because of the smell of the streets, like what was said. Read up on the smell of the Thames river during the industrial revolution. We still have a problem with industrial pollution today. It's just in countries where all our manufacturing has been moved to.
@@louloureads3953perhaps in Euro-centric settlements, but so many cultures around the world dealt with their civilization waste problems in very different ways.
Honestly, I would think the state of medicine should be one of our first and foremost reasons for what century or even decade to live in. 😂 Your teacher was so close and yet... so far. At least he got the human rights down.
@@justme_gb TLDR is an acronym for Too Long Didn’t Read. Normally used when someone posts a very long article etc. It’s effectively a one or two line summary of the post or article. People just don’t have the attention span of more than a tweet these days.
As someone living in a tropical country, it's so interesting - eye opening really!.. to see how a cold climate would have had that kind of impact on daily tasks such as washing and bathing. In our grandparents' time, they would just jump into the nearest stream/ river or even waterfall 😄😄
11 месяцев назад+58
Bernadette, I'm so glad to be subscribed to you because I need you to understand how important these topics are to our modern society. I'm genuinely grateful for your channel. You make history of fashion even more fascinating
I've had three different dermatologists tell me that people in the US bathe too often. The last one recommended that I switch to dry brushing, washing only my face and "crease areas, every day" and showering/hair washing once a week. Its made a big difference.
My mom's dermatologist also said that people use way too much soap and shampoo. This was when I was a child and I guess it stuck because I go for months and months between purchases of soap and shampoo. You really don't need heaps of suds to get clean.
considered what they put in regular soaps and shampoos nowadays they re more harmful to us and the environment then they do any good @@hambeastdelicioso1600
I'm not American, but I live in a country where the wheather is insanely hot, especially on summer. To be fair, I think this "bathing too often" concept really depends on the weather/climate conditions of where you live. In some places bathing less frequently than once a day is just not an option. Where I live, on a summer day, you can feel the layer of sweat on your skin even if you do basically nothing all day. Which is why, at least in my family, we shower twice a day on summer - once in the morning and once more in the evening or in the afternoon if we're too uncomfortable to wait until nightfall. But that's very common here, eapecially since air conditioning is very expensive, so not available in most houses. During the rest of the year normally people shower for real at night after coming home from work, but in the mornings get under the shower just to freshen up before going out, so it's not an actual "I need to soap and rinse my hair/skin to start my day" kinda shower.
It's true. People are germaphobes. For MOST people, bathing every day just isn't necessary. Of course, it helps to wash some things daily, but even just using water keeps things pretty clean. Our skin has natural oils and layers that help provide a barrier to the elements - including germs. Scrubbing it with soap every day ruins the natural balance.
It depends on the climate and the pollution level. I live in Canada in a city with two extremes. In the summer, it’s so humid and hot that sometimes I shower twice a day (I wash my hair every day otherwise my scalp itches really bad). In the winter, it’s really cold and if I’m wearing natural fibres, I don’t sweat. I wash my arm pits and skin creases every day (sponge bath), shower every second day and wash my hair every 5th day.
As a nurse, I’m a huge fan of the sponge bath! I work with kids now (who don’t smell at all ever) but when I worked with adults I would make sure to give good baths, people really value feeling clean and definitely don’t need showers to do so. I take part in “pits and bits” baths when I don’t have time to shower and it works just fine.
As a Finninsh person this has been super weird myth. In Finland (and other places in the north) we have built houses for bathing, saunas, for ages. Sauna was also the first building to be built when making a new homestead and people lived in saunas.
Also today, the less a sauna is reliant on "modern" technology, such as a electricity - or a chimney - the more prestigious it is often considered. Possibly because a lot of the modern stuff was invented for making it more suited for modern homes instead of ancient cottages... as well as to reduce the risk of burning the whole thing down once a decade by accident. ...which is why the Finns today go out of their way to get a cottage with a sauna of appropriately old design if they can't have that in a city.
But to be fair, we also use some water to wash ourselves after sauna. Luckily Finland is full of lakes and rivers, giving us easy access water supplies. Our washing culture wouldn't be possible in countries where water isn't as easily available.
Severe droughts. Mom would fill a bathroom sink with soapy water, and a mixing bowl with rinsing water. Essentially, two large bowls. And that was sufficient washing water for two teenagers. We were amazed! And then it dawned on us that “this was normal” I think that’s why the Living History work I did wasn’t so hard. Between eight girls and one guy, we had three of the washbasins.
You Ladies are THE Best! Thank you for dispelling the rumors that our foremothers smelled Awful! I have clothing articles that are 20-30+ years old, and I LOVE THEM!!
The way Hillary described how certain smells are connected to warmth, family, our burrow is making emotional for some reason. I love how my parents house smells, it's soothing, soft feels safe. I love how they described it because it is so true. It was spoken very beautifully, thank you for your knowledge Hillary! This was very entertaining and interesting to learn about!
I am currently in a situation where using my sink as a "wash basin" is my only option for daily cleanliness. Using a wash cloth with soap, standing on a towel in front of my sink, I get clean. The only real difference between what I do and a shower is that I don't have water running over my body constantly. I'm still getting all the same parts clean, I'm still getting the dirt off. If it works today, it worked back then. I just have the happiness of instant hot water from the tap.
Fascinating, ladies! And I stayed for the guinea pig sniffing. I greatly appreciate seeing/hearing a master at their craft. You both qualify in spades!
Speaking of 'human smell', I will never forget this pickup truck full of loggers that just got off work from the landing, coming into the store where I worked. Full of sweat and dirt, and then...this deep, rich, swoon-worthy scent of fresh air, fresh sawdust, and fresh pitch. It really blew my mind in a good way!
people wearing sweaters with nothing underneath is something that has always baffled me. I wear my outer clothing up to a week before washing them, and then again I don't think I need to wash them that often. I always felt like people would call me disgusting if I told them, I really don't understand how we lost the real concept of underwear.
When I was a costumed tour guide in Philly, I lived by my cotton chemises. I wore inauthentic victorian sewn shut bloomers because I couldn't do walking tours with my thighs rubbing and without some natural fibers! The outer layers were a thick partial synthetic, and I wore a corset that wasn't period but still gave me the right silhouette, and even with the layers of not natural fibers ontop, I still was fine all summer minus a few super hot days (95°F+). Meanwhile the tourists in their synthetic fibers were all dying.
My Gran's room, and other bedrooms I have seen in old Scottish, not yet updated, houses sometimes have sinks in them and I always thought it was a bit weird to have, in a regular home vs a boarding house. But now I get that it was probably a modernized holdover from wash basins and wash stands!
Yeah they literally took out the wash stand and put in a sink when indoor plumbing became common. I really love rooms with sinks in but it seems like they commonly got removed. I've stayed in a few places that have kept them.
Absolutely. This was the standard in Dutch houses for quite a while. It is also how I washed in the 70s-90s: daily cloth washes at the 'sink' ('wastafel', i.e. washing table) in the room, and a shower every three days. My mother, born in the 40s, grew up with a cloth wash daily and then a bath with only a limited amount of water on Saturdays or Sundays, the bathwater shared with the rest of the family or siblings (I forgot). She didn't like baths: they were not relaxing for her but just a complicated way to get clean.
Omg your explanation as to why there were washbasins not bathrooms in UK bedrooms/hotels makes perfect sense! I’m 67 years old and never worked this out before
Dryers are linked to status, I think. When I purchased my home, included in the huge stack of paperwork was a list of rules: can't have a retail space in your home, can't park non-functional vehicles on the street, can't convert the garage into a living space, etc. Included in the list was that you could not dry laundry outside. I don't have an HOA but these are things that a neighborhood could legally complain about. The message I got was that to keep our neighborhood "nice", you shouldn't dry laundry outside. I think here in America hang drying laundry is seen as being poor/uncivilized. It's sad, it's another way we are judgemental.
There are also parts of the US (only speaking of it because I haven’t lived elsewhere) where it would be pretty impractical. When I lived in the SW things would have dried fast, but often there were enough particulates in the air that anything drying outside would have just gotten dirty. I have spent most of my life in the PNW, and summers can be nice but the rest of the year it can be pretty cold and wet.
I'm so glad you've done an episode on this. My Dad came from Abruzzo in Italy, and when he was a young boy they didn't have showers, he's 85 this year so not that long ago. He told me they washed every day with a washstand. He's never worn antiperspirants or deodorant and always wears natural fibres. I live in a house that is nearly 200 years old and in 2022 due to freezing temps and age, my hot water pipes burst. We made do during summer, I'm Australian, but went through Autumn and Winter last year with no hot water. I couldn't afford the $3000 to jackhammer up our whole laundry and bathroom, the only part of the house with concrete, and have new pipes laid. My daughter and I would boil a large cast iron camp oven of water, take it into the shower and sponge down. Occasionally if temps weren't below zero, I'd rinse my body off in cold water. We were clean, our clothes were clean, my house was clean and so were the sick animals we were caring for. We run a sanctuary. That year our water bill went from 600 a quarter to 185. So guess what! We have continued to wash in this manner mainly. And we've managed to keep our water use very low. I do have a well for outside which helps with the animals. My skin feels better, my hair is stronger and I never wear deodorant. Admittedly we wear all natural fibres and have a very natural diet, which I think helps😊 Ok essay over🥴
This was a wonderful video, which has tempted me out of the shadows for a very rare comment. I am somewhat older (57) than your general demographic but for various reasons I am an avid viewer. As I was growing up in the UK, the idea of a 'basin wash' was still very common. We couldn't afford the time or the money to heat a bath every morning and showers were this new fangled idea from America. I grew up in a Council House and there is a not terribly well documented story of how, in the mid 70s, a company launched the idea of showers to the nation. They bought the rights to sell them to Council tenants and installed hundreds of thousands of them. The problem is that the units didn't work and so by the early 80s, many bathrooms had shower units in them which didn't work. It was a classic con. Therefore the basin wash was a part of every day life for me and many of my generation. The smaller the bathroom, the easier steam was able to heat the space and so the more pleasant the experience was. One thing I thought you were going to expand on in this video was the idea of sweat and oxidisation. Zinc Oxide is a very effective antibacterial and also possesses deodorant properties. It was known in Eastern culture from early history and the first European zinc smelter was founded in 1743 according to Wikipeedia. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that this was used, and if it was, it would have been found to be highly effective. It is after all, the active ingredient in many 'sport' deodorants today. I know your love of trying out old tech in the modern day and so I wondered whether this would be something you might enjoy taking on. Anyway, please continue your wonderful productions. I look forward to every one. All the best.. Aaron.
I cannot get ENOUGH of these videos discussing fabrics, materials, laundry, habits, usage, and routines that were used in the past. I rewatch these constantly! Thank you for another excellent video 👋
Big fan of the blink-and-you-miss-it appearance of the guinea pig. Thanks for this great video! A wash stand does seem like it would be much more eco-friendly than our modern showers.
I have been SLOWLY adding cotton layers or a chamise layer to my clothing and not only am I not washing my cloths AS much, I’m also warmer, and more comfortable throughout the day.
From watching bernadette and learning about chemises, I learned that an uncomfy bra can be made palatable just by wearing a camisole under it. Hard to think how a thin piece of fabric can really do wonders for chaffing. I can't believe that this is knowledge we've just let die out.
@SilverDragonJay my grandmother still wore a corset and yes she wore a vest under it If I have to wear a tight underwired bra I wear something under it, so if I do sweat a lot it is absorbed and the wired cloth doesn't rub me. Often it is a strappy cotton top or an old silk top, it makes things so much more comfortable
I grew up until I was seven without running water. My Mum jokes that She was the running water "running it up the path to the house!" We washed daily and bathed one day a week, which was a huge job. Heating the water to fill the tub, and then carrying the used water out. Often we would bathe at my Auntie 's house. She had indoor plumbing. I can remember avoiding the sides of the tub, because they would be so cold in winter. I live in a very dry climate, and, in winter, my husband and I shower every other day, and wash on the days we don't shower. Otherwise our skin is so dry, it's incredibly itchy. No, we don't stink!
My grandmother grew up in Newfoundland, Canada, where she didn’t have running water as a child. Even years later in the US, she still took her ‘sponge baths.’
Something else that comes to mind is the idea that the smell of sweat isn't necessarily universal among all genotypes. I've heard asian people say that they didn't understand the concept until they moved halfway around the globe among a predominantly caucasian population, since there is a genetic component to what we perceive as the smell of sweat, and it's primarily tied to European ancestry. It is also dependent on other factors like the type of fibers worn and nutrition, so it's conceivable that, although we cannot imagine life without deodorant today, historically it might not have been as much of an issue.
The best description of 19th century bathing that I've ever read is in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Farmer Boy depicting her husband's childhood in upstate New York. The bathing scene is in winter. No one immersed themselves. They stood in a washtub in front of the kitchen cookstove. They dipped hot water from the kettle on the stove and mixed it with cold water as they stood there and scrubbed with lye soft soap. Then the next oldest in the family would dump out the washtub and then take their bath. The father bathed last and his water was dumped out in the morning. If you haven't read the book, you should. They sheared their own sheep and wove their own cloth.
It’s interesting to contrast it with her own family’s experience of the Saturday night wash (I think it was in Little House in The Big Woods). She describes (if I remember correctly) that the kids would go first, then, Ma, then Pa (presumably in order of dirtiness), and they seemed to sit inside the tub, rather than stand.
@@misstweetypie1I came looking for the Laura Ingalls Wilder readers! I loved her descriptions of how they bathed. Almanzo freezing on one side while the other side got too hot, and having to keep turning around
I loved this, thank you both for sharing such wonderful information, and the visuals were really helpful placing the clothing and time periods you were referring to. One thing I was waiting for you to mention but you didn’t, was how dietary changes over just the last 70 or so years have changed how we smell. Our excretions and sweat smell differently now as our diet is lower in fibre, vitamins, minerals etc. An apple today has 25% the iron content of an apple 100 years ago. Our breath smells differently, we are less healthy as we eat less whole foods and more processed foods, and this means people in the past would not have smelled so bad, even when they sweated, even when the sweat dried on them. Just wanted to add this to the conversation as I think it’s very relevant. Thanks!! Keep up the great work, Bernadette, I am sewing nightgowns for myself and my daughter from upcycled bedsheets thanks to your influence!
this myth has always mystified me. mainly because as a Finn, we had our sauna culture. and that has always been with us. and it feels so easy. you go to sauna and sweat everything away and then just refresh with the cooler water and soap and on forwards on your day and the 'dirty' medieval thing was for the central europeans and those without sauna. we heard of 'dark middle ages' during history lessons and peasants not having the luxuries like upper classes and I was like... yeah, those did not have sauna like our peasanta had. And I never thought of it further.
As a European, many of our grandparents didn't have running hot water, and they washed with two cloths. One for the upper body, one for the lower body and private parts were done last. So it isn't even that long ago either.
The traditional folk clothes in my country are white. Clearly they washed. In some region they also had a sort of "washing machine", a device where water from a stream would flow through a basin where clothes would swirl.
My first husband was a historian who got curious about the differences between modern and historicalnlinen because his modern 100% linen shirts always held odor almost as badly as a tee. He had shirts made of 200 year old fabric and wore them doing sweaty farm work. He'd come in soaked and stinky, hang up the shirt, and once it was dry there was no odor. Despite doing this all summer, it never smelled bad once dry.
Was the 200 year old linen coarser? Is it because the new linen is so overprocessed to be soft and thin that the fibers were too broken down to have the natural beneficial properties of the older linen? I’m thinking of the difference between whole wheat bread vs white bread.
Very interesting! I wonder if it could be about the differences in agriculture (similar how 200 year old wood withstands way more than modern day wood). Or like was said the processing of fibres/dyes/finish etc. I notice that with my cotton shirts I still start to smell when I sweat, but a lot of them have elastane and most of them probably polyester or nylon thread.
@@akaLaBrujaRoja - Thats what I was thinking. This was my comment: *FOR MEDICAL REASONS I COULD NOT SHOWER** for about 18 months - I scrubbed my skin with a stiff pig bristle brush head to toe and just washed the smelly bits... Honestly, it works absolutely fine as is a totally viable alternative to showering. *I was getting 3 showers a day in very hard water and I developed a sensitivity to the water. I get a freezing cold quick shower now - but no soap for 10 years ------- The linen was probably doing a similar job - I spend MORE time scrubbing with a rough towel than I do getting showered.
@@DRT813 i was thinking about the thread as well. I feel like all modern clothing is sewn together with polyesther thread which will start to stink even if the actual fabric doesnt
@@DRT813 modern linen is often processed now on machines that also do cotton so they can only handle shorter fibre lengths. Older linen was processed to keep the long fibres intact and felt different and reacts differently. Also a lot of modern fabric is marked as linen when it isn't made of flax. The linen refers to the weave type.
I love the thesis here about finding solutions to modern problems in the past. Learning about historical dress and practices around clothing has given me new perspective on my own clothes and their care. Much to my surprise, modifying my choices as a result of that knowledge has unexpectedly changed my perception of body odor as well, very much in line with this discussion! Since I started wearing cotton undershirts to protect my "outer garments," I've found that not only do I not need to wash my clothes (other than those undershirts) as often, but I also don't need to wash MYSELF as often, nor do I need to wear as much deodorant. Turns out that what I've always thought was ME smelling bad frequently has been the modern fabrics in my clothes trapping, magnifying, and adhering odor to my skin. Where I used to think, as a chronically sweaty person, that I needed to shower every day to not stink, I now know that natural vs synthetic fibers and thoughtful layering can be the difference.
I lived in rural China from 2004-2005. Locals only showered/bath 1 a week in winter and 2-3 times a week in summer; usually at a public bath. deodorant was not available locally. Daily washing focused on face and feet ... I will admit first day I arrived stench seemed pretty strong, probably not helped by the locals love of eating raw garlic, but after a week I lost my sense of smell and all seemed fine
SO true! When I was a child, we washed at the bathroom sink every day - face arms feet private parts. We had a tub bath on Saturday night. Later, I had a house where the furnace died. Of course it was early January and the daytime Temps were around 5°F. I didn't want to get out of bed until the Furnace was replaced! Never mind bathing. With COVID Lockdowns, I reverted to the childhood routine of daily washing at sink, and a weekly Shower. I wasn't going anywhere and live alone. I've kept this schedule now. If you wash your Armpits and Private Parrts daily, you'll be clean and sweet smelling.
I'm in my late 60s. As I've gotten older, I no longer perspire as much under the arms, and never detect a sweat odor. Also rarely ever shave underarms or even legs because hair is also sparse.
I'm an older person and I remember dressing under the covers in winter because it was cold in our old farm house. We had a bathroom, but we still only bathed twice a week and washed our hair once a week. We were just like everyone else where we lived.
In Australia us bushy’s call it “having a birdie bath”. There’s nothing wrong with it and you are so right, saves massive amounts of water. The general public are so lucky to have running water let alone running hot water. Love your channel ❤️. And great episode. 💕.
A Mexican woman I knew would at times just take a plastic cup from 7-11 and wash up in public bathrooms with water in the tiny cup. She called it a “Whore Bath” 😁😁
At the moment we have around minus 2 °C where I live in northern Germany. As there is no heating - and no hot water - in my bathroom, it is around plus 5-6 °C there. Really uncomfortable to take off my clothes. So I heat water on the oven, pour it into a big bowl and wash in front of the fire. Like back in the old days. Not very comfortable, but doable and as a result I am clean afterwards.
I loved this video, thank you! One thing I discovered for myself was actual linen. I think people aren't exposed to it because it is expensive. But wearing a linen shift under a heavy silk dress for a whole day revealed how amazing the fabric is at wicking and holding sweat. Cotton is great, but nothing compares to linen.
This is such a great video! In nursing school we had an excellent professor you told us, "Always think of humans as the animal they are to be fair to them." She told us that humans can smell more than they realize, that part of attraction is the smell of someone whose immune system compliments yours so your offspring will have a stronger immune system than you do. So much of how we think and do things is driven by instinct and visceral drives and most people don't know it.
Having grown up in the late 60s/early 70s I developed a keen hatred for anything polyester or acrylic. I have linen shirts that are 20 years old, still perfectly good, just softer. This is a fascinating discussion, ladies. Great content.
Thank you so much for making this video, not only has it been super interesting but I am absolutely taking it as permission that washing at a sink is absolutely ok! Showers are often a large sensory undertaking for me and I will put them off for as long as possible, a clean cloth and warm soapy water at a sink is way more approachable but in the past I’ve only given myself permission when things get pretty necessary and a shower still isn’t approachable. But that’s just ridiculous, so thank you for all this amazing information! I’m going to go follow in my ancestors footsteps and save water 😁
The question of washing is so interesting to me because as a person who comes from the environment of ballet and has family in ballet costuming, with things like tutus, you are wearing objects that cannot be washed and can be incredibly expensive, so the value of wearing the base leotard to sweat into was drilled as incredibly important because it helped preserve the longevity of the costume. Beyond that, because many tutus cannot be washed in the same way because of their construction, they are disinfected with vodka, to get rid of sweat smells (leotards and tights can only do so much under stage lights) or spot-cleaned for stains, and because of such care can be worn for decades.
Line dried sheets are the best thing ever!!!! Where I live we do have very distinct seasons, but when it is warm enough we do hang things outside to dry. It's also how we do sleeping bags; hang them up outside for a day to air-out, re-fluff from stuffing, and UV-clean. Really great myth-busting :)
Thank you so much for this video! Bringing back to life the concerns of women in the past is so important! I am 63 now and remember as a child my grandmother and her 2 sisters, who were born at the beginning of the 20th century, wore pads that they made for their clothes. These were kept in place under the arms with poppers and meant their clothes weren’t ruined by over washing. They were at all times very elegant and never left the house without their faces on! Their smell was sweet and fragrant too:)
It's like millions of people have never heard of the concept of "wash cloth" and "bucket of water" and "soap"... And I did a happy little squeak seeing Ruth Goodman featured (a bit). I absolutely love her shows!
My dear, one must boil water for those "buckets of water." I lived in a no heat, no bathtub or shower environment for Years. It was quite unpleasant.
@@kathleenferguson3296 But you can also use room-temp or cool water without suffering, because you're not putting the whole of your body in it all at once!
@@kathleenferguson3296 You can also use the hot rock technique, you'll have hot water in no time.
I think it’s more that if you haven’t tried washing that way before you’d be apprehensive about it not being as effective. It’s exciting to know how well it can work!
Growing up in the '70s and '80s, if we wanted hot water for a bath, we had to light the coal fire for the back burner and heat the tank. So that only happened once a week! But in between we used to have what Mum called 'strip washes' - a bowl of hot water in the sink and a flannel with soap. All the important bits! And it was fine and I used to feel great afterwards. I've thought about going back to it sometimes - it was less effort than a shower and I was never overheated and sweaty as I sometimes am after a shower...
I worked with a woman who did not have access to any bathing failities except a cold tap and soap and a towel. I asked how she managed. "First you wash the public parts, then you wash the stinky parts", she answered cheerfully. Hair got shampooed about once a week in cold weather, more often in nice weather, and she sat near the heat register to dry it in cold weather. She smelled fine.
The WACs reportedly called it TPS: t*ts, pits, and sl*ts.
That is how you do it. I grew up camping for most of the summer. Showers cost money in the campground, cold water was free.
Idk how you rinse without getting water everywhere, thats what i would like to know
@@karoma5805 you probably get a few drops on the floor so you put a mat down. You see that in most recreations, a washstand with a rag mat under it. You learn after you clean up a few times. You aren't splashing water around, you use a wash cloth all the time.
You use a cloth or sponge @@karoma5805
Quick side note here: I was hospitalised for 22 months and with catheters and operation wounds (and my general inability to get up) I was washed or washing myself daily with a bowl of soapy water. I’d say, I was definitely clean. After all, I was in hospital and they take that s**t seriously, to the point of scrubbing me raw, lol. You don’t need a bathtub or shower to stay clean and fragrant. That’s a purely modern idea. Granted, taking my first shower, feeling the warm, soothing water running down my body, was indescribable bliss, but that is ultimately pure luxury, not necessity.
I loved this talk! My mother who turned 93 this year grew up in a house with no indoor plumbing and no source of heat but the fireplace and the kitchen stove. They weren’t poor; they simply lived way out in the country. Everyone in her tiny little town was the same. She said they had NO trouble staying clean. They had a big washtub, and when it was time to bathe, they hauled in a couple of buckets of water from the well for each person, put the washtub in front of the fire and washed. She said they would get wet, soap up and then rinse off in the washtub, but there was no immersing yourself in water…not even in the summer, well unless you were swimming. The natural fiber thing is so true. Even now (I’m 70), I don’t wear synthetic fibers. Everyone thinks I’m crazy because that means…shock, gasp…I have to iron. But synthetic fibers start to smell even with modern washing, and they make me sweat like a horse. I love what you dis❤cussed about comforting smells or pleasant smells being associated with being healthy and the modern idea that people in the past were happy to be smelly…Nooooo…since bad odors were associated with disease. A house or clothing smelling like that person can be such a comforting thing. On another note, what we eat changes the smell of our sweat. Years ago, in Germany, I found myself in a discussion about what they thought Americans smelled like, and they said “meat” because we eat so much more of it than they do/did 50 years ago. I never thought about that until I realized that many Germans smelled slightly of beer to me. My late husband always had a clean kind of smell. Even after he had worked in the yard all day, his sweat wasn’t offensive. It smelled like clean sweat. He was a vegetarian, and I think that’s why. I’ll quit blathering now, but great broadcast. Happy Holidays to you.
I’ve been plant-based (mostly) for over a decade. I’ve dated men from a rage of eating preferences and I can definitely confirm that meat, dairy and sugar consumption change the small of all body secretions!
I agree with what you said about synthetic fibres; they don’t let your skin breathe.
@snowfie1 - Thank you for sharing your family's memories. MERRY HOLIDAYS! .^_^.
Yeah, I can smell if someone ate dairy, cheese especially. It's in their breath.
I stopped the video to finish reading your words. You write lovely prose and I enjoyed every word. Back to the video; but thanks for writing.
I’m disabled and taking a shower is one of the most difficult average tasks for me. Once I take a shower, I’m pretty much done for the rest of the day. It causes me immense pain and is incredibly draining.
So, most of the time I sit in a chair at my bathroom sink and just wash as much as I can manage without overdoing it with a washcloth.
The next day I pick up where I left off and wash as much as I can handle, and so on.
Then roughly once a week I take a full shower and wash my hair.
I don’t tell many people about this because they would think I’m dirty or gross for not taking a proper shower every single day.
But taking a shower every day is untenable for me. If I did that, I’d never do anything else.
But some people just can’t comprehend disabilities, especially invisible disabilities, and also can’t understand that people can be clean without doing exactly what they’re doing.
It starts feeling like a shameful secret that I have to live with.
I know exactly what you mean about not telling people. And doesn't it say SO much about the social construct, that if you don't tell them - they don't notice anything "odd"? Or at the very least they don't notice enough to react. Sympathies about the pain and exhaustion; I've witnessed that struggle and it's brutal.
You can show them this video to remind them cleanliness protocols may differ but folks were clean. I’m sorry for your pain. People are so ignorant and inconsiderate and forget that bathing rituals differ even today across cultures, infrastructure, and resources. Never mind preference or abilities! You’ll get no judgment from me. I once was an aide to a man in a wheelchair and I cannot imagine how hard any daily ritual was and having to rely on another human being for all aspects of daily life. He had muscular dystrophy so cooking, cleaning, everything needed the help of another person since his limbs were absolutely useless. May as well be paralyzed. I often worried about him in an emergency. What would he do? How would he escape a fire? Did he have anyone who lived close by that he can call over? I was a college kid so I wasn’t a permanent caretaker and went home for the school breaks. He had hired help morning, afternoon and evening. Otherwise he lived alone with his door unlocked. He rigged a rope around his door so he can enter and exit as he pleased but it always worried me that he might receive intruders. But the man needed his independence so he made the best of his situation. If everyone had a personal encounter with someone of different abilities, they might find compassion in their hearts, empathy, and not be so quick to judge. My parents also grew up in a country that was late to receive indoor plumbing so I’m also used to hearing about how different their daily rituals were to mine. Exposure to different daily practices really does expand our minds and breed acceptance.
@@SL-lz9jr Unfortunately, a lot of people have exposure to us and the ways we have to live, and they still act like we don’t exist, or worse say that all disabled people (especially those of us with invisible disabilities) are “faking it” just to get a check from the government, or that we’re lazy, or just want attention, etc.
I have a sister-in-law that was a CNA, and she worked helping disabled people in their homes like you did, but she was convinced that if these people stopped taking their meds (often life-sustaining meds) and “would just get up off their butts and exercise” then they’d be cured.
I’ve met people, in this day and age, that truly believe that disability and chronic illness/disease are curses from God for some horrible transgression, so they ignore us or treat us like trash because we’re probably evil anyway since we’ve been cursed and if we had faith and made things right with God, we’d have been cured by him.
So many people can’t stand disabled people, and don’t dare even think about putting themselves in our shoes.
And maybe that’s the core of the reason why they dislike us so much: they can’t bear the thought that one day they might _be_ us. So, they make up stories to tell themselves about how they’re never going to be disabled (or if they are, it won’t be for long because they know how to cure it) to make themselves feel better, and in turn ostracize us.
God bless shower chairs and hand held shower heads. The ones that have the secondary “docking station” that just goes somewhere on the wall of the bathtub/shower make putting it back while still sitting the best.
Trust me when I say it took awhile (monetarily) to get to that though. Usually a thrift store has a shower chair for $10-15 but the shower head can set you back.
One of my docs reminded me to do what I could do. So if it meant I could use a wet soapy cloth and scrub my pits and bits, yay. If I could sit in the shower and not do anything else, yay. If I knew even drying off was going to take too much energy that day, splashing water on my face was a yay. There are definitely days where I sit in the shower and do all the washing and it’s awesome. There are also days where I splash water on my face and change to a different pair of pajamas.
@@maryel5398 depending on where you live, you may be able to get free shower heads with a hose.
I’m in Massachusetts and we have a sustainability program called Mass Save that comes to your house to assess energy/ resource usage. It’s all state subsidized and they gave me a free shower head!
I also got my home insulated at about a tenth of the full price.
I am retired anthropologist. This discussion is excellent. Ethnocentrism is a blind sight we all suffer from, wherein we unconsciously assume we have a central, correct, even godly, point of view. It robs of of the richness of understanding other cultures and times. Thank you Bernadette!
As a regular camper, it's so funny (and strange) that people are so baffled by the idea of a sponge bath
This!
This is where I come at it from. I can get a lot of mileage from a fresh clean pair of socks for each hiking day.
I think it may comes from the fact that you're average person just isn't aware of it. I cared for my very old great grandmother and only ever gave her a full shower if the weather was hot because the house was built in the 1860s and didn't have central heat, and she was over 100. She would however get a sponge bath everyday-every other day. The hardest part was washing her hair.
@@LiliLovesStuff Washing hair is one thing that some periods didn't do so much, they did clean it, just not with water. There was one method where they'd rub it with a dry linen cloth to absorb oils, and then comb it very thoroughly with a very fine toothed comb, and then braid it and wear a cap to protect it from dirt. I think it was SnappyDragon who did that, and she commented that it did clean her hair just fine, it just made her curls pretty frizzy, but since she wore them braided in a cap during the day, that wasn't a huge problem.
When living in a van, this is how I washed.
I remember giving my mum a really tight hug as a 9 or 10 year old and taking a deep sigh of happiness, telling her "you smell like mum". Her reaction being "I must need a shower", which I protested against saying she didn't smell sweaty - she just smelled like her.
My grandma had a washing stand. I remember during winter having to pour water from the stove to wash my face and hands and then going outside to empty the basin. Along with taking trips to the well to pull water out. That was very normal to me at the time. We are taking running water for granted.
Speaking of the clean clothes smell, the most nostalgic to me is the smell of frozen clothes that were hung out during winter.
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More than 30 years ago I had a patient who was born in the late 1800s. He told me that in the rural community he lived in there was no running water in houses. There was a pump outside atop a well where you would pump water up from the ground. He said that women could do wonders with a bucket of water and a cloth to make themselves clean and lovely.
It’s not even that long ago necessarily. My mother was born in the 1959 and didn’t have running water growing up. She grew up with sponge baths and once a week on Saturday she and her siblings would all have a bath in the tub in the kitchen by the stove.
@@RosesAndIvy mine(not sure if they did too you didn't mention it.. probably) would all use the same tub of water..
@@ftumi yes in the same water! I believe they went from oldest to youngest, the youngest being the dirtiest because they were still in diapers etc.
At first i was like woah that was a while ago but actually it really wasn't. I'm so use to this modern industrial era, I forget how 150 years ago was just a blip or a blink of time. Thank you for sharing this :)
My family still own an old house that has one of those pumps, I loved playing with it as a kid!
Another reason underclothes didn't survive through the ages: they were used to make paper! When they couldn't be worn anymore, linens got pulped and pressed into paper sheets, a process which replaced the use of vellum (calf skin).
wow, great! The circle is full.....ofcourse, i could ve guesssed. we all know paper was made of rag in the days, and todays best quality paper is still made from textile fibres
@@hetedeleambacht6608and you can do that still today with 100% cotton fabric like shirts and jeans
But it’s labor intensive
That's right. Rag men would push their carts in the streets calling out for people's rags that were then used to make paper as all cloth was natural fibre in those days.
I only wore cotton in Texas, rarely linen. I composted them for my garden when they wore out. I hate synthetic clothes, miserably uncomfortable. I now live in the mountains and added wool. I love wool! Sometimes I consider shifting to natural under, but it is harder to come by. Not to mention the gorgeous wool colors.
I think I will start papermaking, I did make papers in art school, it is not hard.
Rag and bone men. The bones (from meat animals) would be used as sizing for the paper.
I never understood why people believed we never bathed. Some 13,000 paintings from the middle ages depict bathing. That more than any other subject. Why paint something people don't do?
Well, they painted one or two things more often, but none of those were preserved because they were left in a hedge.
The section about the comforting human smell brought me straight back to primary school where the teacher would hold up someone’s unlabelled school jumper and we’d all sniff it to identify who it belonged to. We all recognised each others’ “smells” and you knew if the jumper “didn’t have a smell” it was yours. It was such a normal occurence that it’s funny how as an adult now the idea of smelling someone else’s human scent is disturbing or dirty.
That is so interesting! It's weirdly endearing to be able to identify someone by their smell, I would have loved to learn to do this at a young age
ummmm, okay
What a beautifully human story that is
Cute story but in reality some people are stink, stank, stunk stenchy disgusting. Yes that is foul, disturbing. There are people that need to discover soap, and mouthwash. This is why I loved that whole 6 ft apart rule that popped up during the Covid pandemic. Now you all please wash your hands ✋. Don't breathe on others.
My grandma died two years ago. her clothes still smell like her, i loving going into her closet and smelling the clothes
For those of you who are chronically ill: if you have fatigue or autonomic dysregulation that makes showering and bathing hard, try the linen rag thing. It is a lifesaver to be able to feel clean even when you can barely get out of bed.
Where do you buy your linen?
I use a soft flannel to wash. I've yet to find any linen that doesn't feel like I'm touching the zesting part of a cheesegrater. Its so horribly rough! I have very very fragile skin though which is prone to tearing if the air touches it too hard lol. The idea of wearing linen as an undergarment is just my idea of hell. I have used some old cotton knickers the elastic died on (cut into fabric scraps) in place of linen for days when I'm stuck in bed. Its not going to be quite as effective as linen, but at least its soft. Might try getting some bamboo fabric instead since that's supposed to be more absorbent than cotton but its super soft (have it in my reusable pads and its really soft).
@@AlexaFaiein theory, linen does get softer over time. But I can completely understand not being able to wait for your washcloths to get broken in. Cotton flannel sounds delightful!
Thanks for that.
Good idea for those who don't have sensitive skin. I have severe chronic fatigue and dysautonomia make showering really tiring. I also can't stand scented soap and no shampoo. I only wash with very soft non-scented bar soap every 2-3 weeks and no one can tell except sometimes for dull hair (which you can brush more like Victorian ladies used to do to avoid washing).
Only a tiny bit of that bar soap on my hair will do. I use 70% propyl alcohol everyday to remove armpit smells. My hubby also does that. Peroxide if it gets worse (nearer to needing a shower). Solves all issues until I have enough energy to devote to a shower. If you can't even muster strength to use a washcloth, at least not using harsh scented chemicals should help you not have to wash a while. It seems scented and more chemically complex soaps really prevent the body's natural way of staying clean. How many times I used to have to wash my bras because of deodorant I used. Now I can wear the same without any smells for a full week even though I don't use deodorant. Fair warning if you stop using shampoo: it took 3months for my hair to be better but it happened! It was water only.
I have bamboo bedding and bamboo shirts. Keeps me cleaner.
I am 55. But I learned how to bathe with no electricity due to bad storms growing up. We would heat a pot of water on our gas stove and use a wash cloth to clean the smelly areas of the body.
I suppose it’s the main reason bidets were invented. To keep clean down there.
Thank you for this! One of my most hated film tropes is "medieval people be dirty" and actors and actresses with random dirt in their faces, because in the past people didn't wash themselves. How utterly ridiculous, it's the easiest thing to fill a vessel with water and wash your face. People nowadays want to feel good and clean, people from a 1000 years ago surely had the same basic human need.
I wonder how much of the dirty peasants thing in Hollywood is also related to our warped beauty standards. So often female characters will have a full face of modern makeup, regardless of the era the production is set in. Full makeup is normal, while minimal or no makeup looks are reserved for "ugly" characters. The artistic smudges of dirt over a full face of makeup allow for the characters to look poor without making the actors "ugly".
I came here to say that, only was gunna quote Viking movies. Always people with mud rubbed on their cheeks.
I know quite a lot of reenactors and living history people who showed up to work as extras in not just historical movies but even historical documentaries, dressed in well-researched clothing accurate for the period that was supposed to be portrayed... and who then got told "Too clean, too colourfull, not ragged enough. Go get your constumes from our costuming department." Said costumes being grey, brown and black rags.
@@benjaminlammertz64 Funny you say that... black? Of course I do not know the period you are referring to, but in the olden days there was no black.
Hollywood decided witches have warts, medieval people were dirty and werewolves exist.
Who cares about facts?
Sure, people didn't have a wardrobe full of clothes. And that is why people used aprons, to protect their clothes, by example.
(I am a medieval re-enactor and researcher)
@@benjaminlammertz64They want us to believe we are the first civilized society ever.
A subject that I happen to have written about in some detail.
In the late Medieval period, swathes of people across Europe bathed at least once a week in bathhouses as part of preparation (for Sunday service). This tradition was propagated by the Roman Church, but survived the Reformation. Isabella Whitney wrote of Elizabethan Londoners who visited bathhouses not only for prophylactic reasons, but also, "On Saturdayes" so that "those, which all the weeke doo drug: Shall thyther trudge, to trim them up on Sondayes to looke smug".
Visiting the bath house was a big normal part of daily (or weekly) life in medieval europe, people loved it.
Some workers were even given bath house tokens as part of their salary and bath houses had free days for the poor.
Such a fascinating subject and what we know about it changes all the time :)
A number of 19th and early 20th century German scholars wrote extensively on the subject of medieval bathing. Alas, many English speakers are unaware of their works and assume the worst (that people were unclean). My interest ties in with the musical tradition that was associated with bathhouses - I wrote a book on the (bizarre!) history of barber musicians. @@fakehistoryhunter
@@brushbeatmedia Yes it's fascinating how the moment you look beyond the (often Victorian) history books focusing only on Britain and sometimes on France (and also being wrong about that btw) and look at the original records of what's going on in the rest of Europe you suddenly get the idea of societies obsessed with bathing, washing, steaming.
Germans couldn't get enough of their bath houses ;)
Your book sounds interesting, what's the title?
The bath house was still going strong in Rotterdam up to WWII. Especially in the winter.
@@lenabreijer1311 Yes in some parts of the Netherlands even till the 1970s, it wasn't till having your own bathroom or at least a shower in your toilet or kitchen, that the bath houses became sort of obsolete.
To this day I'm 65yrs and I still use jergens original cherry almond every night when I go to sleep because my mom wore every day and it's like a goodnight hug from my mom she passed in 2009
Love this. It might be fair to say that the hygiene of the past might not meet our modern standards, but people - mostly women and children - put an incredible amount of effort into trying to keep themselves and their environment as clean as they could. They weren’t stupid, nor did they just not care.
Well done on completely missing the point.
@@adaddinsane ...how so?
I love how she said “ it’s not like the people of the past were dumb “ lol if any of them had seen this they’d have a way better understanding .. history is for us to learn from .. somehow we think we are the ones who found all the solutions .. our ancestors were not stupid or we wouldn’t be here .. this was a wonderful episode !!
They were not unintelligent, but by comparison they were very uneducated so theres is some truth that they were dumber than us. The same way our future relatives may say the same about us.
Fr we are smart monkeys. I used to get quite aggravated by that. We become emotional at times but we are not stupid.
They were dumber. Even looking at IQ only, we're at historical high atm, it's been just rising historically speaking. only very recently we started seeing first slight drops. Also the volume of knowledge and access to the information. They were not stupid or unintelligent, but compared to modern human... dumber.
@@Holretwhat a stupid comment you left.
I mean that just depends. Average person is way dumber than most scholars of past. 2500 old greeks have infinite more insight than your average barely finish highshool person.
Even if we don't have washing stands anymore, we have sinks with cold and warm water. Washing by the sink is still a thing.
I had a patient awhile back who was born in 1918. He and his brothers were raised on a farm by an older farmer and his wife whose kids had already grown up and left the home. My patient told me that once a week the farmer's wife would drag out a big tin tub. She would heat water and fill the tub. First the farmer would get in the tub and wash. Then his wife would wash. Any of the older kids who were home would wash. Then my patient and his two younger brothers would wash last of all. I asked him if he minded bathing in dirty water. He said, "No." He said they had a great time splashing around. He also said that farm dirt wasn't 'bad' dirt.
We used to do this in our bath as recently as the 1990s - Dad first, then Mum, then my brother & I (together when we were very small!). It probably wasn’t the water itself but the heating that was expensive in our case. Never bothered me either (at least until I was old enough to know it wasn’t the norm)!
I was recently lucky enough to visit Japan, and bathing in homes and less-westernized hotels is similar, but with a kind of mini-shower. There's a little shower next to the bath, and bath tubs are taller but not as long, so you have to bend your legs but you can actually get your torso under the water. The idea is that you get the hot bath ready and then everyone uses the same water in turns, BUT there's a little shower right next to it where you rinse off and use your soaps and shampoos and whatever you need to do to get clean, and that way the bath water doesn't get dirty for the next person, it's just for relaxing and getting warm, but there's nothing in it aside from MAYBE a soothing bath salt or something. Some tubs even have clever heaters where you can keep the water nice and warm even if you've got a large family.
Tl;dr: I started thinking it sounded gross sharing washing water with family, and now honestly think it's a much better system.
@@CatHasOpinions734so you were a clean person and now embraced something gross 🤢
Sharing the same water is extremely unhygienic, even if everyone takes a shower before, especially for women.
If a mother has some contagious vaginal infection it is possible that by sharing the water it will spread to the daughters too! No one in their right mind would wear their parents's underwear before at least washing it, why would they soak themselves in water that has been in touch with everything including the genitals...
And then did you think about warts and athlete foot?
Let's not normalise gross things!
@@CatHasOpinions734 how interesting! It's certainly less wasteful to bathe that way. Thanks for the interesting story! Be well!
@@louloureads3953 and you came out clean and healthy! 😊
There is still so much snobbery about being clean = being a better person.
A real problem for the disabled community, when a lot of us just simply cannot shower every day, not without help at least. No guarantee that you have this help.
I found myself automatically using undershirts (no matter what) because "changing my linens" every day means im more likely to keep fresh, even if I wear the same outerwear for a couple of days on the trot.
I want to make myself some linen undershirts cause i love linen so so much! They help my (already crap) temperature regulation so much!
Solidarity 👊👊
And actually showering everyday can be bad for the skin, especially for seniors and people with chronic illness. To be honest nobody in our family can do it. It feels like your skin is being sandpapered off after a week of it. Wash the stinky bits with a wash cloth daily. And shower once a week.
I have depression and can't currently pay for medication, so I shower roughly once a week because I need to use my energy in other ways first. I wear an undershirt to work and it is very useful!
Yes! It's amazing how much of an assumption there is that if one isn't showering or bathing daily then they must be living in filth. I've rediscovered these historical methods over the past year or so, and it's made such a difference!
I got a shower chair to try to facilitate more frequent showers, but all it really does is make me less likely to fall over--showering is still exhausting! And bathing has its own issues. Either way, a 'proper wash' by today's standards takes me out for a day or so afterwards. I can wash my hair in a sink if I must, and wet cloths get the job done for everywhere else.
Once I've gotten a bit more energy, making some proper linen undershirts sounds like a wonderful project! One of my conditions can cause me to sweat a great deal, so having some clothes designed to cope with that instead of my current cheap polyester nightmares sounds wonderful.
Another aspect of cleanliness that I don't see talked about often, but which has been on my mind a fair bit these past few years, is shaving. Women in particular are expected to have hairless legs and armpits, but shaving is such a project! I gave up on shaving my legs years ago, and I'm rapidly approaching a level of apathy regarding my underarms that my teen self would have found impossible to comprehend. I'm sure that hairy legs would have been a complete non-issue when skirts went down to the floor, and even after that I believe that stockings were the norm for a quite some time. I wonder when exactly shaving legs and pits became the done thing? This video has definitely given me the inspiration to do some research.
@@jasmine5871As far as I know, women shaving really started picking up steam sometime after the 1920s
My grandmother is in her 70s and grew up extremely poor. She explained to us how they had to walk I think a mile to get water. So they only bathed on Saturday nights. I was always shocked by this. But she told me they washed every single day. They washed their face, hands, etc. In the mornings. And before bed they washed their stinky bits (pits, butts, etc.) With a bucket of water.
I’m autistic and showering is an awful sensory experience for me; looking at what they did in the past to stay clean without showers is like super useful in my day to day life so I can at least lengthen the amount of time I can go without showering
Same here!
I've been thinking about the texture of linen and how to get over that to shower less too!!
My son (also autistic) agrees with you.
A tip from the depression side: if you do a sponge bath, using hand disinfectant on armpits and skin folds can be even more effective against smells.
Water spraying on me makes me cough up a lung! Some kinda nerve thing. I ask hairdressers to cut my hair dry
I love this deep dive into the misconception and the understanding that people of the past weren't dumb, the just found solutions to the problems available to them. And they had some really good and clever solutions.
I can't get my brain to stop assuming people were dumb in the past, i know it's not true but ahhh
Thank you!!! This is the reason I got into historical fashion. I've been telling people for years that wearing clean clothes has more effect on smell than regular showering. I want to share this with everyone I know!
A couple years ago, I had some contractor issues that made my bathtub unusable for about 6 months. Towards the end of it, I asked a close friend if I smelled bad, and they told me the only thing they could smell was my hair, and it wasn't bad, just a smell they associated with unwashed hair.
During that time, I did the following every day:
- wash my hands regularly with soap & water
- wash my face with plain water
- wear clean clothes
- comb my hair
- clean my combs
Really interesting. I wish she had talked about how women through the ages dealt with managing menstruating cleanliness.
A woman would wear a belt to which she tied layers of cloth, when it soaked through she would wash them. When I started menstruating many, many decades ago I had the same design belt to which I tied netting bags filled with cotton wool which was later thrown out.
Bernadette already has a video on that!
@@westaussieeggs8867 was there a smell?
My grandmother from 1890 said they had beautiful white linen cloths and when they were frequently washed they became perfectly white again and were very fresh and clean.
Being on one's period certainly makes staying clean more challenging, but genitals can get a sponge bath too.
This makes me feel MUCH better about the limitations of my disabilities. I've always felt gross and bad for the days and weeks i can't bathe or shower- id call it bird bathing - using some soap and a cloth over my bathroom sink. I never considered filling a bowl with warm water and doing it sitting in a tub. I never considered changing clothes more frequently or wearing a lightweight and easily carried layer underneath my day clothes. It's so hard for me to do laundry because most days, i can't go up or down stairs, let alone while carrying clothing.
Bless you and all the best to you through it all. I understand how that is. Be well 🌻
Hi I put clothes in a big bag and throw bag down the stairs
I am 50 and don't shower every day. I have a wash at the sink and shower every 3rd day. Please don't think you are unclean. Many of these people shower every day but don't actually wash themselves
A 90 year old lady, once explained to me how she kept clean, using a washcloth soap and water. She washed down as far as possible, up as far as possible, and then she washed possible, never did she smell. I regularly adopt this approach to keeping clean. No one has complained that I smell.
I do a lot of extended overlanding trips, sleeping in the back of my truck. When it's winter, and using a solar shower isn't viable, I'm all about the wet wipes and wash cloths. In the summer I use my solar shower or simply bathe in a body of water. Natural hot springs are my go-to in the winter for rinsing off. Of course you generally need to hike quite a bit of distance to those. If it's easy to access, there will likely be other people around and I'm not that much of savage!
In 1970 at my first boarding school, we each had a plastic bowl by our beds in the dormitory. Every morning we would go and fill it up at the sink (one per dormitory) and wash ourselves. We could have a bath once a week and the hot water usually ran out after one bath. Needless to say, having a hot bath when I want is still a wonderful luxury for me.
I'd like, as an American apartment dweller, to thank Hilary for acknowledging that so many of us don't *have* access to line drying our clothing! I've heard so much badmouthing of Americans from Europeans and Aus/NZ about how Americans are lazy and can't live without our dryers. Like I live in the upper Midwest and you can't hang your clothes outside for approximately five months out of the year, thanks winter, and I don't have space in my tiny apartment to hang them inside. I used to be able to line dry my laundry and I miss it. There's nothing in the world like line dried sheets. So thanks, Hilary, for noting that line drying is not available to many if not most of us.
Also as an autistic person very sensitive to rough textures, I treasure the way dryers make cloth softer
I can't hang my clothes outside because I have allergies. I can't open my windows in the spring and fall like when I was a little girl. My allergies have gotten worse as I have gotten older.
@@missyvinson6220 with the advances of modern science, allergy treatment is available to most insurance plans in the USA. Ask for a referral to an allergy and asthma specialist and theyll cure it. It will take 3 to 6 or infinite years of regular shots, and after 3 years I truly treasure my ability to breathe through my nose. At the beginning its 3 shots a week, after a year or 2 its a shot every month and so worth it. I can't trade this ability to smell and use my nose for anything.
I know the exact smell she was talking about with sunshine and wind and I hate it 😩
The vast majority of europeans also don't dry our clothes outside. We also live in cities?! We have small little indoor "clothes horses" (which is apparently the english name for this object) that you can fold away once your clothes are dry. I have lived in some tiny studio appartments and never used a dryer. To be honest most of my clothes are probably not even save to dry with a dryer. I guess there are some special circumstances where this might not be an option but let's be honest, this is totally possible for most of Americans. And I'm pretty sure most of Americans (especially poorer ones) are saving energy and money by doing that.
I'm glad you made this video. It always bothered me that people thought everyone was gross too. Another thing that bugs me is that everyone thinks Neanderthals were dumb, but if you stripped the earth of all our modern things we'd be living exactly like they did.
They invented so many lifeways that we still use. They were incredibly resourceful.
we'd probably be living worse to be honest. There's a lot of knowledge that a Neanderthal would be taught by their parents and elders that we've just forgotten. We've probably forgotten so much that we don't even know the full extent of what's been forgotten.
Maybe we would do better in some regards because of new discoveries, or maybe not. Either way its hard to say, but I do know that I wouldn't choose to go back in time voluntarily unless I was guaranteed to be able to return whenever I wanted. I'm not cut out for that life, I would die immediately.
@@SilverDragonJay So true.
@@SilverDragonJay yeah, there's a lot of knowledge about surviving, starting with which berries are edible for example, or which animals are where, or weather prediction, which people get very good at. So many skills that I can think of that most modern people don't even have, and probably so many more that I can't imagine because I don't live a hunter/gatherer life.
@kittiescorner222 - Neanderthals and Denisovans were every bit as smart as we are today. They were busy building the knowledge base that would lead to us. There are a number of researchers who think that they were not separate species at all, but subsets of Homo Sapiens. After all, many of us carry their genes, so they MUST have successfully canoodled together. They did not go extinct - they MERGED! .^_^.
I am 85. When I was a child we didn't have central heating. We had the fire back boiler. And coal rationing. Saturday night for children was bath night. The norm was once a week. To this day to save the cost of heating and water there is the stand-up wash option. Just sponge down running the sponge under the wash-basin tap to wet and rinse. Minimal use of power and water and absolutely effective.
I’m a materials scientist going to grad school (next year!!) for archeological science, focusing in textiles (hopefully!!), so I am so thankful for this video! I’ve started wearing linens more often myself, but this video absolutely makes me feel secure in my decision
That sounds fascinating! Best of luck 🍀
We have lots of scottish thistle that grow wild and I've been looking more closely to it.
I've heard the flowers can be used to set milk into cheese. The new shoots are quite tender. The stalks are strong and very fibrous. But the thing that is intriguing me, and relevant to your study, is the seed part of the plant. It's santa clause parachute part is very close to cotton. I'm wondering if the scottish people used this part for fiber and cloth making..?
@jaegrant6441 Ooooo, fascinating! Being of Scottish heritage, I would be interested as well.
Also, possible dye stuff ?!
@@jaegrant6441 No, because it's not long enough to spin, and it's very brittle.
hi I'm a sociology student whose special interests are social history and linen, I await your contributions to the field eagerly :D there needs to be more of us!!
During severe drought in 2019 I washed for months in just a basin of water. Being a historian, I knew I was perfectly clean doing that, and still sometimes skip a shower in favour of a wash because it's just so much easier - not to mention that it does clear my conscience to have a longer shower on those days when mu old muscles need it! We're in the bush on rainwater tanks so we're very aware of where water comes from - and when it doesn't.
Get a bucket .. that can hold 15 to 25 litres of water, and a mug... Draw a mug full of water from the bucket and wet your body, from your face/neck down to your toes,front and back, apply soap all over the body, now take a loofah ,wet it and scrub your body thoroughly, after that, rinse off your soapy body ... No need to waste water from a shower head or a bath tub.
I lived in Bermuda for about a year. People are very conscious of water use there, as their water traditionally comes from rain water which is collected below the houses. We used showers but got wet, turned the water off, soaped up, rinsed off. It’s a habit I’ve kept, though I sometimes cheat on cold mornings.
I'm a part of reenactor group, and that includes staying - time to time - in some very basic conditions in historical tents on a random field for several days. Good linen chemise/shirt is the first piece that a newbie buys/sews, because it really helps. Having several of them to change is common and really heplfull, because you might not come across a bath for three days straight, and nobody wants to die of plague fumes :) Also, I'm not putting my boned bodice in a wash until something drastic happens to it.
From what I have noticed, a plastic t-shirt smells after several hours, good cotton after a day and linen after three or so days. Merino wool can keep even a bit longer. Unit of measurement: Would I go in a shop in that?
For any multiday camping event my first piece of advice to any newbie was to have a chemise/shirt for every day you plan to be there and one outer set of clothes. Get the "underwear" done first because worst case scenario you have clean undies everyday! The second was make a decent cloak!
I avoid synthetic fibers like the plague, yes they may be cheaper but thats about the only advantage they have
I absolutely adore Ruth Goodman, she is definitely one of my historical educational heroes! plus, I think people don't understand the difference between a natural fiber like linen that naturally wicks off sweat, and the oil derivative crap that they have been wearing all their lives.
I mean, they believed that smells carry disease… So of course they're not going to let themselves stink. The idea of the rubbing cloth to works really well.
Exfoliation is great
Grew up without electricity until I was a teen, We washed every AM .. lots of hot water from the kitchen stove tank. Everyone " washed up" . The water was always "soft" rain water with Ivory soap. Saturday was bath day. family rotated tub time , mom , children , dad . No one smelled. My mother was very British and had a high standard of our dress and decor... just no electricity where we were.
Same in my country when I was a child, there was no running water in the house, it’s no problem to bring few buckets of water and heat it on the stove
I bet you have great skin.
Our ancestors were inventive and intelligent and they deserve more respect that "omg, they all must have stunk so bad." I'm glad this video acknowledges that! 💖
In America we're not addicted to dryers. Many of us would love to dry our laundry outside, but it is against the apartment rules or the Homeowners Association. It's ridiculous. I don't understand why people consider a line full of clean laundry an eyesore and regulate against it. You get nasty fines : (
Exactly. It's not legal in America. I'm an American and when I moved to the former East Germany, I was surprised by the apartment clotheslines outside! And I was pleased. Sanity is nice to see.
Just hang it inside on a rack??
Inside on a rack your clothes dry stiff and they don't smell nice from the fresh breezes. I'm old enough to remember when we could hang laundry outside.@@aspannas
I recently read in The Washington Post that many states protect HOA members'' rights to dry outside.
Same in Canada. I've seen some people mention cold as the main issue, but I don't think this is the case. My grandmothers hung their clothes out to dry during the colder months, or they hung them inside (and yes, clothes sometimes froze stiff before they had a chance to dry completely if they were too far from the stove!). I guess that when modern appliances became accessible in the 50s, people started to associate clotheslines with lack of modernity, and by extension, poverty. We (sort of) realized that modernity does not always mean progress when it comes to food (think artificial flavors, sweeteners, highly processed food) but we're still stuck in the 50s when it comes to taking care of our clothes, and clothes in general.
I love the comment about things not meant to be washed. My mom told me not to wash my nicest things. Wear a dress to church, take it off immediately after. The stress was to make expensive clothes last as long as possible. I didn’t think it was weird until I was older and saw other people washing clothes after ONE WEAR!
Some items i rarely wash: dresses that don't get too sweaty, cardigains. My school woolen jumper gets washed 1-2 times a term. However i change my underwear like every 12 hours and socks like 2-3 times a day. I'm autistic and i MUST be wearing clean socks at all times.
I have plenty of clothing that isn’t washed after one wear. If I have an appointment and wear something dressier to the appointment for a couple of hours and change once I get home I’ll hang the clothing back in my closet as it’s not dirty and there’s no need to launder it after only being worn for a short time. Back when I worked in an office I didn’t have my suits cleaned after one wear. I was wearing a blouse with the suit and the skirts were lined or I wore a slip so the suit fabric wasn’t in direst contact with my skin. Even dresses could usually be worn 3-4 times before laundering or dry cleaning. I was sitting in an air conditioned office and wasn’t sweating or engaging in activities that would soil my clothes.
I think people get that about dry clean only stuff. No one wears a pair of wool slacks once and then dry cleans them. Of course that makes any spill an expensive, traumatic event. And while church is once a week for two hours work is every day for eight...
I have a friend that will just try on a shirt or pants to see if that's what she wants to wear, decide it isn't, take it off and puts the item in the hamper to wash. She had them on for less than 5 minutes! Her clothing does not last because it is over washed.
I have a favorite cable knit wool sweater which I've owned for over 2 years now. I have never washed it. I don't wear it for "dirty" activities, like gardening or cleaning. I always wear something under it, obviously, so it doesn't get sweaty. I just need to properly air it out every few months and it's nice and fresh.
Thank you for your compassion around past and present homeless folk. I never considered their clothes being their permanent shelter. I'll be thinking about that alot more now.
Perhaps as a result of a poor, rural upbringing, I am proud to say I am and have throughout my life been aware of the concept of the wash stand and how how to wash with limited resources. Less aware was I of how critical one's choice of clothing materials could be until I was in my twenties and switched to wearing cotton almost exclusively due to skin issues caused by man-made materials.
I have a picture of my father scrunched into a classic galvanized wash tub. That must date from the late 1950's.
I'm also a member of the 'only cotton against the skin' group. Polyester is horrible stuff, and wool is too scratchy. Linen sounds interesting but I haven't seen it for sale anywhere locally.
Within the past year I heard a woman at a Renaissance fair telling a group of children about how during the Renaissance no one bathed and they wore biggins caps to hide their “disgusting, filthy, lice-ridden heads” and how filthy and disgusting people were back then because they didn’t believe in bathing. I’ve been wanting to find resources since regarding Elizabethan England and hygiene during that period. Common sense says that she is utterly wrong because it’s not comfortable or healthy for your skin to never wash and I fully believe that people in the past were quite intelligent and sensible and didn’t just leave lice in their hair. You can feel them, you can pick them out and to this day over-the-counter lice washes don’t work as well as actually combing them and the eggs out of your hair. I wanted to try to find actual resources regarding this issue in case I find myself in that kind of situation again. Citing sources is more effective than trying to convince modern people that our ancestors weren’t stupid.
You want Tudor Monastery Farm, it's around here on RUclips, and while it's a touch earlier than Elizabethan, it's still the time of her grandfather and much of the practices would have been similar for your everyday folk like us.
Also, many cultures (including English culture) had very fine toothed combs specifically designed for removing dirt and lice daily. Grooming is one of our oldest human practices, and some grooming techniques really haven’t changed all that much
You just need to read any of the many herbals that exist to know that they had lots of recipes for hair rinses to get rid of lice. I have no idea if they worked, but the recipes alone attest to people's concern and desire to do something about it- and the fact that they washed hair. Lice is going to be fairly common problem any time you have people living and working as close together as they did. As would fleas, especially with all the animals about as part of life. So they had multiple ways of tackling the problems, in their homes and on themselves.
Another thing is, though it is from the following century when we have more letters and such from ordinary people testifying to common views and practices, you can tell that in general despite hair still being kept covered for cleanliness, people did notice if someone didn't wash or hadn't done so and tried to hide it with a cap. No reason to think that it was any different in the Renaissance.
Isn’t it amazing the ‘information’ some tour guides convey to the unsuspecting public? I worked at a late 19th house museum where I heard a docent tell a tour group that you could tell the home was used as a boarding house because there were transom windows above the interior doors. Who knows how she made that leap of reasoning.
There are combs that are fine enough to be lice combs that are over 3000 years old, and I know there was a comb found in the Netherlands from about 100BCE with lice/mites/eggs on it, I'm not sure which, so it was fine toothed enough to get rid of lice. It seems silly to me to think that people somehow forgot that lice combs existed. Also, a medieval hair cleaning method was rubbing dry linen on it, and then combing it thoroughly, which gets rid or basically everything, and wearing a cap so it wouldn't get dirty. And from what I remember this was done daily. So next time you can point to those found objects, if you need examples from the medieval era, there are a lot of very fancy combs from that period, as well as simpler ones, so we know that people used them then too. 😊
My family had a camp on a lake in the woods. Dirt road in. No other camps in shouting distance. No running water. Nice outhouse with a pee bucket in the corner of the camp for at night. A wood stove for heat and cooking (and heated water). And yes washbasins for washing up. In the summer there were tree branches overhanging a section of the lake. Great place for a bath.😊
What a great video!
As a person who grew up in 90s Ukraine without heat during winter, running hot water and cold water for that matter (we had it for few hours during a day), I never understood extreme opinions of some people that taking showers everyday or even twice a day with a soap is a ABSOLUTELY MUST DO.
We had difficult conditions but we didn`t stink 😅
People always adapt to their circumstances and most of the people value the hygiene and like feeling clean and fresh.
Plus regular showers are not great for the skin health.
As someone wrote in comments: "First you wash the public parts, then you wash the stinky parts". It works just fine. Especially if you prefer natural fibered clothing.
I think it depends on where you live relative to the equator tbh.
Cause when I lived abroad, bathing everyday wasn't really necessary because the weather didn't encourage much sweating.
However, now that I live in the tropics, I understand people who feel the need for at least one shower a day. Because the heat levels and the effects of the humidity can make you feel icky, ergo making you feel like you're going to start to stink soon
I think if you live in a hotter place , like Australia, it's probably more important...
Я теж з Украіни
Завжди так неочікувано побачити когось звідси
Seriously! I used to hate movies in America about “the poor hillbillies in the south” I’m like a.there are still areas today that live like this and like go to college and shit. I’m one of them 😂 and b.we wash our clothes and are not some sort of goblin creatures! We do bathe 😅 I remember anytime I hear people talking of ‘savages’ of another place it’s always what I think of. I’m like well apparently my family’s just the hills have eyes even though our family is a biracial family born from a Vietnamese war veterans and victim and to me a kind of beautiful story of two families broken by a war and put back together and healed by their childrens’ love but you know 😅 hicks.
I remember meeting my husbands very wealthy family hear and they were so wealthy and yet they don’t know how to fix anything, when he moved out he didn’t know how to do anything. Not even to hang his clothing! I had to go every weekend when I was also in college to teach him. Even to clean his own room! He picked up fast and was no lazy man mind you but of course people have a natural inclination to keep themselves clean and tidy as well as their space no matter what their limit to resources may be. Since I went to college in highschool no one knew I was homeless because I appeared freshly showered everyday, makeup done, clothing ironed. I was lucky enough to have a car to live out of and knew my resources from volunteering. I used the gym shower in late or very early hours by being let in by the super gym bros. Washed my hair in the large college lab sinks I worked for when I was done prepping labs. Did my makeup in my car, had a battery powered steamer and mostly nylon and rayon dresses I would put on the hanger, steam and then wear, stocking lint rolled and then of course brush off my shoes with a boar bristle brush. All my other possessions were organized in my trunk with various bins found outside, from my old room, or from goodwill. Folded carefully and organized carefully to maximize storage. Mt makeup…was a disaster in a bag tho lmao 🤣 I knew where to find it tho! And it worked 🤷♂️. Regardless the fact that everyone thought I had like my shit together when in reality I was literally going to behind Little Caesars every day to get the tossed hot and ready out of the dumpster is kind of crazy.
I was just determined and I had been conditioned I guess because my folks always made do with what we had. And that’s what I had. I wanted to be clean, so I was. Fucking soap cost 99 cents man. Conditioner was the hardest part and getting my eyeliner at 8 dollars when I did eventually run out and couldn’t water it down again. Lash glue lasted a million years. Cleaning my lashes.
I was clean because I knew how to be clean.
Not having access to a toilet didn’t mean I just chose to shit my pants 😂.
Thank you for your insight! I think it’s important people know that others live like this. We also do in America!
@@wanderingsoul881I will say living near the equator does make more frequent bathing more necessary however a full shower isn’t always needed. I live in Florida and a lot of the things that actually Bernadette has talked about are things that my family had to do on the farm and I eventually did as a homeless person. When you have limited access to laundering facilities, you do tend to wear more under clothes to protect your outer clothes and I used to store them in an area that had laundry sheets and of course, wearing protective outer clothes to protect any good clothes you got on.
You do tend to wash up more often, but you don’t tend to submerge your body. When I lived at home, you used to be asked to wash your feet, face hands and neck before entering the home or eating. Usually before bed obviously brush your teeth and wash your face showering may be reserved for once a day. If you’re lucky washing your hair, depends on your hair texture for me I can wash my hair every day because I have that mixed hair texture from my Dad. Usually proper showers are more reserved for more official venues like going into town; college,classes,church, office job etc. if not going to a special event, showers are reserved for those with the hardest work and dirtiest work which was usually the adults with hard labor jobs, nursing farmers factory welding, etc. kids are usually washing up basin style.
Overall honestly we used the same things 😅 especially since near the equator it can have areas with little money so we just do some of the same things. It’s why when I moved to the city or met wealthy people I was kind of surprised they like never knew some people were still living without running water and stuff 😂
I love how you brought up human smells. My daughter as a newborn smelled like fresh baked bread. I love the smell of my husband. In a more sad note I lost my mom suddenly in September and I have some of her clothes and I can't bring myself to wear them yet because they still smell like her.
Sorry for your loss, and I totally get it, after I lost my dad 22 years ago it was hard to wear his stuff for a while cause it still smelled like him.
So sorry for your loss. I lost my dad a few years ago and (this may sound strange but) I think it is comforting for both me and my mother that I smell like him. Genetics are weird.
If they wore a specific perfume/cologne, you might get a close approximation. My aunt will spray my grandmother's favorite perfume whenever she wants to reminisce the smell.
I'm sorry for your loss. Babies have the best smell in the world, especially in their heads
@@LeticiaAGentil We call that smell on top of a baby's head "schnoogle" in our family. Once children get to be about 5 years old, the delightful smell fades. You will notice that many people holding a baby or a young child will instinctively smell the top of their heads.
My parents grew up washing themselves by the sink, my grandpa did that until he died. The guest room at my stepfather's house still has a washing basin. And I'm 22 and from a relatively well-off family in a rich European country. It is wild to me how many people have never even considered washing themselves like that. Showering daily is such a huge waste of water, and it is so easy to keep yourself clean in between showers/baths with just a asin and a washcloth!
I shower daily, in the morning and before bed because I live in hot and humid country
My mom when alive would call them Whore's baths she'd tell me when her and I would wash in a bedroom with a thing of water each and shave, get clean ect.
You get off the "shower" ideal if you are in the military and have to wash with a tin cup and a canteen in the field. 😏
Nobody cares about your background or if you think showering is a waste of water. It’s not.
My grandfather who was born 1915. He would wash up in the sink most days of the week and shower once a week.
I love that there is a video that I can direct people to when they have trouble grasping the fact that people washed in the past even if they weren't doing full immersion into a tub of hot water. And I have used a wash basin to great effect several times to wash and it was perfectly fine. I even use that method when I'm out at events.
My god and the fact that they had to MAINTAIN their clothes so they got creative!
Sponge bathing.
I know they do. Very poor people in Latin America wash themselves like that, but they do not smell bad, not like Paris in the summer.
Anyone who has ever gone camping (like when I was a kid and at best there might be a porta potty) knows how to bathe in a tub of water same as you'd do your dishes. How to go to the bathroom by digging a small hole. And usually we camped near lakes and streams or rivers so that's where we obtained our water for heating and boiling And drinking and even swimming and fishing
@@recoveringsoul755 yup, that's how I was taught to camp when we were little. Easter time was when we always went to a place called Big River. Lot's of memories of having a small plastic baby bath, with a humpty dumpty motif on it, that you stood in to sponge/flannel wash. It's effective and a shame people don't realise you can 100% clean your body really well with a smallish amount of water and a flannel.
I think Big River camping area now has long drop toilets. Talk about luxury! lol.
I, as an incredibly smelly person, can completely attest to the idea of wearing washable layers under un-washable items. And really (in keeping with the idea that we progress our way backwards), it was something that I only discovered in the past year. Sweat blocking undershirts have totally changed the way I live, and make me feel so much better about myself--and finally, I don't feel like I can't get things like expensive wool sweaters or things that are "dry clean only", or like certain items are too precious to wear, and it brings me so much joy.
Well done! 🤗
Oh I do that too!!!!
Have you tried switchin from commercial available "soap"(mostly detergents) to handmade soap? Kirk's Castile bar soap is not a detergent and actually neither is Squach brand.
Modern detergents pull too much off that needs to stay on so maybe yer washin routine is not allowin ya to build the correct biome fer yer body.
I stopped wearing deodorant years ago. The 1st month I stunk worse than ever but after that as long as I shower at least every 3 days no one even knows unless I tell em. I think it is cuz deodorant kills the beneficial bacteria that live on us.
Just my $.02
@@maxhorner2409 I've been using Dr. Bronners for years, and as much as I love it there wasn't really a difference between the Castile soap and your everyday liquid or bar soap. The only thing I've found that really helps is shaving every day and using antibacterial wipes if it gets particularly out of control 🙃
So much of this is what I've been saying as a living historian for YEARS! Thank you for putting it more officially than I ever could.
I do medieval reenactment so I am well aware of how to keep yourself clean in a period manner.
I also work night shift at a gas station and oftentimes have less fortunate folks come in to use the restroom to clean up. You don't have to get in the shower to be clean. As humans we want to be clean. We do the best we can with what we have. (And I'm never going to stop someone from cleaning up in the restrooms, times are hard, and it's human nature to want to be clean.)
Thank you, for your show of kindness. The world should be so respectful.
Even the most ardent ‘personal responsabilitehhh!’ advocate should recognize that its hard to get a job - or a better job, as a rather surprising number of unhoused people are workng regularly - if you don’t have access to the most basic means to maintain hygiene.
I am not religious, but those of us who are better off should remember ‘there but for grace of God go I’, and it seems you have, May such compassion be returned to you tendold if you are ever in need.
One of the oldest written texts we've found is a Sumerian tablet with instructions for making soap (boiling animal fats with wood ash), and perfumes and incenses were extremely valuable. Humans have always liked to be clean and to smell nice.
I wish we could have covered hygiene practices in dry climate (pre-diaspora Jews, Bedouin, Hopi and Navajo ppl)
Moslems wash before each prayer, usually from a fountain. Then there is ghusl. Jews have mikveh. I think just Europe was a little uncivilized.
I’ve been watching you along time. I love how much I learn from you. I love history and I love all crafts. I’m a 62 year old woman, I thought I knew most crafts or some since of most crafts. I recently saw a documentary on Finnish women and rag rugs that have been passed though generations. I didn’t have a clue! Your never to old to learn something new has a whole new meaning to me now. Just wanted to say how much I’ve enjoyed you.
I once asked my college history teacher what era he would want to live in other than modern eras, and he said the 1990s because “any time before the 1920s would smell appalling, and also basic human rights”. So it’s interesting to see what other historians think on the subject.
I would assume any time before the 1920s (in a city) would smell not so much because of people, but animal manure and inadequate sewer systems (depending on era/location) and so on.
@@louloureads3953 The less cars on the road the more horse poop is in the streets. And i wouldn't want to live anytime before the tetanus shot (1924), cause with my luck I'd step on a nail, get it, and die.
It 1000% was because of the smell of the streets, like what was said. Read up on the smell of the Thames river during the industrial revolution. We still have a problem with industrial pollution today. It's just in countries where all our manufacturing has been moved to.
@@louloureads3953perhaps in Euro-centric settlements, but so many cultures around the world dealt with their civilization waste problems in very different ways.
Honestly, I would think the state of medicine should be one of our first and foremost reasons for what century or even decade to live in. 😂 Your teacher was so close and yet... so far. At least he got the human rights down.
There is no such thing as a TLDR for any of Miss Banner's videos. Watching is half the fun. the other half is education.
TLDR?
@@justme_gb TLDR is an acronym for Too Long Didn’t Read. Normally used when someone posts a very long article etc. It’s effectively a one or two line summary of the post or article. People just don’t have the attention span of more than a tweet these days.
@@Yandarval Thanks!
@@justme_gb people commenting with acronyms makes tedious reading..I just don't bother with those..
As someone living in a tropical country, it's so interesting - eye opening really!.. to see how a cold climate would have had that kind of impact on daily tasks such as washing and bathing. In our grandparents' time, they would just jump into the nearest stream/ river or even waterfall 😄😄
Bernadette, I'm so glad to be subscribed to you because I need you to understand how important these topics are to our modern society. I'm genuinely grateful for your channel. You make history of fashion even more fascinating
I've had three different dermatologists tell me that people in the US bathe too often. The last one recommended that I switch to dry brushing, washing only my face and "crease areas, every day" and showering/hair washing once a week. Its made a big difference.
My mom's dermatologist also said that people use way too much soap and shampoo. This was when I was a child and I guess it stuck because I go for months and months between purchases of soap and shampoo. You really don't need heaps of suds to get clean.
considered what they put in regular soaps and shampoos nowadays they re more harmful to us and the environment then they do any good @@hambeastdelicioso1600
I'm not American, but I live in a country where the wheather is insanely hot, especially on summer. To be fair, I think this "bathing too often" concept really depends on the weather/climate conditions of where you live. In some places bathing less frequently than once a day is just not an option. Where I live, on a summer day, you can feel the layer of sweat on your skin even if you do basically nothing all day. Which is why, at least in my family, we shower twice a day on summer - once in the morning and once more in the evening or in the afternoon if we're too uncomfortable to wait until nightfall. But that's very common here, eapecially since air conditioning is very expensive, so not available in most houses. During the rest of the year normally people shower for real at night after coming home from work, but in the mornings get under the shower just to freshen up before going out, so it's not an actual "I need to soap and rinse my hair/skin to start my day" kinda shower.
It's true. People are germaphobes. For MOST people, bathing every day just isn't necessary. Of course, it helps to wash some things daily, but even just using water keeps things pretty clean. Our skin has natural oils and layers that help provide a barrier to the elements - including germs. Scrubbing it with soap every day ruins the natural balance.
It depends on the climate and the pollution level. I live in Canada in a city with two extremes. In the summer, it’s so humid and hot that sometimes I shower twice a day (I wash my hair every day otherwise my scalp itches really bad). In the winter, it’s really cold and if I’m wearing natural fibres, I don’t sweat. I wash my arm pits and skin creases every day (sponge bath), shower every second day and wash my hair every 5th day.
As a nurse, I’m a huge fan of the sponge bath! I work with kids now (who don’t smell at all ever) but when I worked with adults I would make sure to give good baths, people really value feeling clean and definitely don’t need showers to do so. I take part in “pits and bits” baths when I don’t have time to shower and it works just fine.
As a Finninsh person this has been super weird myth. In Finland (and other places in the north) we have built houses for bathing, saunas, for ages. Sauna was also the first building to be built when making a new homestead and people lived in saunas.
Unfortently some people seem to think only water dropping from a shower can clean you
Also today, the less a sauna is reliant on "modern" technology, such as a electricity - or a chimney - the more prestigious it is often considered.
Possibly because a lot of the modern stuff was invented for making it more suited for modern homes instead of ancient cottages... as well as to reduce the risk of burning the whole thing down once a decade by accident.
...which is why the Finns today go out of their way to get a cottage with a sauna of appropriately old design if they can't have that in a city.
And with sauna, I feel you are cleaning yourself inside and outside by sweating! Love Sauna.
But to be fair, we also use some water to wash ourselves after sauna. Luckily Finland is full of lakes and rivers, giving us easy access water supplies. Our washing culture wouldn't be possible in countries where water isn't as easily available.
@@lilaem Sure, but having a bucket of water for washing is quite simple and effective. Easily also heated in the sauna to have warm water.
Severe droughts. Mom would fill a bathroom sink with soapy water, and a mixing bowl with rinsing water. Essentially, two large bowls. And that was sufficient washing water for two teenagers. We were amazed!
And then it dawned on us that “this was normal”
I think that’s why the Living History work I did wasn’t so hard. Between eight girls and one guy, we had three of the washbasins.
You Ladies are THE Best! Thank you for dispelling the rumors that our foremothers smelled Awful! I have clothing articles that are 20-30+ years old, and I LOVE THEM!!
The way Hillary described how certain smells are connected to warmth, family, our burrow is making emotional for some reason. I love how my parents house smells, it's soothing, soft feels safe. I love how they described it because it is so true. It was spoken very beautifully, thank you for your knowledge Hillary! This was very entertaining and interesting to learn about!
I am currently in a situation where using my sink as a "wash basin" is my only option for daily cleanliness. Using a wash cloth with soap, standing on a towel in front of my sink, I get clean. The only real difference between what I do and a shower is that I don't have water running over my body constantly. I'm still getting all the same parts clean, I'm still getting the dirt off. If it works today, it worked back then. I just have the happiness of instant hot water from the tap.
Fascinating, ladies! And I stayed for the guinea pig sniffing. I greatly appreciate seeing/hearing a master at their craft. You both qualify in spades!
Speaking of 'human smell', I will never forget this pickup truck full of loggers that just got off work from the landing, coming into the store where I worked. Full of sweat and dirt, and then...this deep, rich, swoon-worthy scent of fresh air, fresh sawdust, and fresh pitch. It really blew my mind in a good way!
Oh yeah, when my husband comes in with the smell of lumber in his beard... yeah...
The way you wrote that! It could start a Hallmark movie.
Easy there girl, sounds like you're about to have a "moment"
Brands like “Numi” are now marketing undershirts with sweat absorbers to keep your sweaters safe longer. Love the remarketing of a historical concept
people wearing sweaters with nothing underneath is something that has always baffled me. I wear my outer clothing up to a week before washing them, and then again I don't think I need to wash them that often. I always felt like people would call me disgusting if I told them, I really don't understand how we lost the real concept of underwear.
I LOVE clothes dried on the line! The smell is divine.
When I was a costumed tour guide in Philly, I lived by my cotton chemises. I wore inauthentic victorian sewn shut bloomers because I couldn't do walking tours with my thighs rubbing and without some natural fibers! The outer layers were a thick partial synthetic, and I wore a corset that wasn't period but still gave me the right silhouette, and even with the layers of not natural fibers ontop, I still was fine all summer minus a few super hot days (95°F+). Meanwhile the tourists in their synthetic fibers were all dying.
My Gran's room, and other bedrooms I have seen in old Scottish, not yet updated, houses sometimes have sinks in them and I always thought it was a bit weird to have, in a regular home vs a boarding house. But now I get that it was probably a modernized holdover from wash basins and wash stands!
I stayed in an old convent in Canada years ago. All the bedrooms had sinks in them.
Yeah they literally took out the wash stand and put in a sink when indoor plumbing became common. I really love rooms with sinks in but it seems like they commonly got removed. I've stayed in a few places that have kept them.
I stayed at a place in Brisbane that had those...
Absolutely. This was the standard in Dutch houses for quite a while. It is also how I washed in the 70s-90s: daily cloth washes at the 'sink' ('wastafel', i.e. washing table) in the room, and a shower every three days. My mother, born in the 40s, grew up with a cloth wash daily and then a bath with only a limited amount of water on Saturdays or Sundays, the bathwater shared with the rest of the family or siblings (I forgot). She didn't like baths: they were not relaxing for her but just a complicated way to get clean.
Omg your explanation as to why there were washbasins not bathrooms in UK bedrooms/hotels makes perfect sense! I’m 67 years old and never worked this out before
I take a shower every two or three days but i wash up every day. Fashion and history ❤❤❤❤❤Another great video!
Great video - the idea of the dirty past is so prevalent. Being clean makes you feel better so people would always try to feel clean. Love Hilary!
Dryers are linked to status, I think. When I purchased my home, included in the huge stack of paperwork was a list of rules: can't have a retail space in your home, can't park non-functional vehicles on the street, can't convert the garage into a living space, etc. Included in the list was that you could not dry laundry outside. I don't have an HOA but these are things that a neighborhood could legally complain about. The message I got was that to keep our neighborhood "nice", you shouldn't dry laundry outside. I think here in America hang drying laundry is seen as being poor/uncivilized. It's sad, it's another way we are judgemental.
There are also parts of the US (only speaking of it because I haven’t lived elsewhere) where it would be pretty impractical. When I lived in the SW things would have dried fast, but often there were enough particulates in the air that anything drying outside would have just gotten dirty. I have spent most of my life in the PNW, and summers can be nice but the rest of the year it can be pretty cold and wet.
Nowadays drying outside is part of saving planet
Yep. Also not allowed to have chickens cause that's for the poors
Just never hang a line under mulberry trees 😅
@heatherduke7703 yet people can have outdoor bunny hutches... for now. Chooks are not dirty!
I'm so glad you've done an episode on this. My Dad came from Abruzzo in Italy, and when he was a young boy they didn't have showers, he's 85 this year so not that long ago. He told me they washed every day with a washstand. He's never worn antiperspirants or deodorant and always wears natural fibres. I live in a house that is nearly 200 years old and in 2022 due to freezing temps and age, my hot water pipes burst. We made do during summer, I'm Australian, but went through Autumn and Winter last year with no hot water. I couldn't afford the $3000 to jackhammer up our whole laundry and bathroom, the only part of the house with concrete, and have new pipes laid. My daughter and I would boil a large cast iron camp oven of water, take it into the shower and sponge down. Occasionally if temps weren't below zero, I'd rinse my body off in cold water. We were clean, our clothes were clean, my house was clean and so were the sick animals we were caring for. We run a sanctuary. That year our water bill went from 600 a quarter to 185. So guess what! We have continued to wash in this manner mainly. And we've managed to keep our water use very low. I do have a well for outside which helps with the animals. My skin feels better, my hair is stronger and I never wear deodorant. Admittedly we wear all natural fibres and have a very natural diet, which I think helps😊
Ok essay over🥴
This was a wonderful video, which has tempted me out of the shadows for a very rare comment. I am somewhat older (57) than your general demographic but for various reasons I am an avid viewer. As I was growing up in the UK, the idea of a 'basin wash' was still very common. We couldn't afford the time or the money to heat a bath every morning and showers were this new fangled idea from America. I grew up in a Council House and there is a not terribly well documented story of how, in the mid 70s, a company launched the idea of showers to the nation. They bought the rights to sell them to Council tenants and installed hundreds of thousands of them. The problem is that the units didn't work and so by the early 80s, many bathrooms had shower units in them which didn't work. It was a classic con. Therefore the basin wash was a part of every day life for me and many of my generation. The smaller the bathroom, the easier steam was able to heat the space and so the more pleasant the experience was.
One thing I thought you were going to expand on in this video was the idea of sweat and oxidisation. Zinc Oxide is a very effective antibacterial and also possesses deodorant properties. It was known in Eastern culture from early history and the first European zinc smelter was founded in 1743 according to Wikipeedia. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that this was used, and if it was, it would have been found to be highly effective. It is after all, the active ingredient in many 'sport' deodorants today.
I know your love of trying out old tech in the modern day and so I wondered whether this would be something you might enjoy taking on. Anyway, please continue your wonderful productions. I look forward to every one. All the best.. Aaron.
I cannot get ENOUGH of these videos discussing fabrics, materials, laundry, habits, usage, and routines that were used in the past. I rewatch these constantly! Thank you for another excellent video 👋
Big fan of the blink-and-you-miss-it appearance of the guinea pig. Thanks for this great video! A wash stand does seem like it would be much more eco-friendly than our modern showers.
I have been SLOWLY adding cotton layers or a chamise layer to my clothing and not only am I not washing my cloths AS much, I’m also warmer, and more comfortable throughout the day.
From watching bernadette and learning about chemises, I learned that an uncomfy bra can be made palatable just by wearing a camisole under it. Hard to think how a thin piece of fabric can really do wonders for chaffing.
I can't believe that this is knowledge we've just let die out.
@@SilverDragonJay this is amazing -- after this video and your comment I just want to make a bunch of linen underclothes and start living the dream 😂
Me, too! I thought I’d be hot, but I wasn’t. More layers=better temperature regulation.
@SilverDragonJay my grandmother still wore a corset and yes she wore a vest under it
If I have to wear a tight underwired bra I wear something under it, so if I do sweat a lot it is absorbed and the wired cloth doesn't rub me. Often it is a strappy cotton top or an old silk top, it makes things so much more comfortable
I grew up until I was seven without running water. My Mum jokes that She was the running water "running it up the path to the house!" We washed daily and bathed one day a week, which was a huge job. Heating the water to fill the tub, and then carrying the used water out. Often we would bathe at my Auntie 's house. She had indoor plumbing. I can remember avoiding the sides of the tub, because they would be so cold in winter.
I live in a very dry climate, and, in winter, my husband and I shower every other day, and wash on the days we don't shower. Otherwise our skin is so dry, it's incredibly itchy. No, we don't stink!
My grandmother grew up in Newfoundland, Canada, where she didn’t have running water as a child. Even years later in the US, she still took her ‘sponge baths.’
Hilary’s enthusiasm about sweaty armpits never fails to amuse me 🙏
Something else that comes to mind is the idea that the smell of sweat isn't necessarily universal among all genotypes. I've heard asian people say that they didn't understand the concept until they moved halfway around the globe among a predominantly caucasian population, since there is a genetic component to what we perceive as the smell of sweat, and it's primarily tied to European ancestry. It is also dependent on other factors like the type of fibers worn and nutrition, so it's conceivable that, although we cannot imagine life without deodorant today, historically it might not have been as much of an issue.
The best description of 19th century bathing that I've ever read is in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Farmer Boy depicting her husband's childhood in upstate New York. The bathing scene is in winter. No one immersed themselves. They stood in a washtub in front of the kitchen cookstove. They dipped hot water from the kettle on the stove and mixed it with cold water as they stood there and scrubbed with lye soft soap. Then the next oldest in the family would dump out the washtub and then take their bath. The father bathed last and his water was dumped out in the morning.
If you haven't read the book, you should. They sheared their own sheep and wove their own cloth.
It’s interesting to contrast it with her own family’s experience of the Saturday night wash (I think it was in Little House in The Big Woods). She describes (if I remember correctly) that the kids would go first, then, Ma, then Pa (presumably in order of dirtiness), and they seemed to sit inside the tub, rather than stand.
@@misstweetypie1 They were a lot smaller. But the order was the same. From youngest to oldest and the father being the last.
The Farmer Boy book in that series was my favorite. It was so descriptive of the era.
@@misstweetypie1I came looking for the Laura Ingalls Wilder readers! I loved her descriptions of how they bathed. Almanzo freezing on one side while the other side got too hot, and having to keep turning around
My absolute favorite of the LH books!
I loved this, thank you both for sharing such wonderful information, and the visuals were really helpful placing the clothing and time periods you were referring to. One thing I was waiting for you to mention but you didn’t, was how dietary changes over just the last 70 or so years have changed how we smell. Our excretions and sweat smell differently now as our diet is lower in fibre, vitamins, minerals etc. An apple today has 25% the iron content of an apple 100 years ago. Our breath smells differently, we are less healthy as we eat less whole foods and more processed foods, and this means people in the past would not have smelled so bad, even when they sweated, even when the sweat dried on them. Just wanted to add this to the conversation as I think it’s very relevant. Thanks!! Keep up the great work, Bernadette, I am sewing nightgowns for myself and my daughter from upcycled bedsheets thanks to your influence!
this myth has always mystified me. mainly because as a Finn, we had our sauna culture. and that has always been with us. and it feels so easy. you go to sauna and sweat everything away and then just refresh with the cooler water and soap and on forwards on your day and the 'dirty' medieval thing was for the central europeans and those without sauna. we heard of 'dark middle ages' during history lessons and peasants not having the luxuries like upper classes and I was like... yeah, those did not have sauna like our peasanta had. And I never thought of it further.
Steam baths go back to prehistoric times and medieval people also had saunas, although steam room is a better description, they were very popular :)
I've been to Finland twice (Jyväskylä and Oulu) and have enjoyed the sauna experience. Can't wait to go back one day.
As a European, many of our grandparents didn't have running hot water, and they washed with two cloths. One for the upper body, one for the lower body and private parts were done last. So it isn't even that long ago either.
@@107613cw In the 1970s we had a shower... but it was outside in the outhouse with the toilet.
This was in a big Dutch city.
The traditional folk clothes in my country are white. Clearly they washed. In some region they also had a sort of "washing machine", a device where water from a stream would flow through a basin where clothes would swirl.
My first husband was a historian who got curious about the differences between modern and historicalnlinen because his modern 100% linen shirts always held odor almost as badly as a tee. He had shirts made of 200 year old fabric and wore them doing sweaty farm work. He'd come in soaked and stinky, hang up the shirt, and once it was dry there was no odor. Despite doing this all summer, it never smelled bad once dry.
Was the 200 year old linen coarser? Is it because the new linen is so overprocessed to be soft and thin that the fibers were too broken down to have the natural beneficial properties of the older linen? I’m thinking of the difference between whole wheat bread vs white bread.
Very interesting! I wonder if it could be about the differences in agriculture (similar how 200 year old wood withstands way more than modern day wood). Or like was said the processing of fibres/dyes/finish etc. I notice that with my cotton shirts I still start to smell when I sweat, but a lot of them have elastane and most of them probably polyester or nylon thread.
@@akaLaBrujaRoja - Thats what I was thinking. This was my comment: *FOR MEDICAL REASONS I COULD NOT SHOWER** for about 18 months - I scrubbed my skin with a stiff pig bristle brush head to toe and just washed the smelly bits...
Honestly, it works absolutely fine as is a totally viable alternative to showering.
*I was getting 3 showers a day in very hard water and I developed a sensitivity to the water. I get a freezing cold quick shower now - but no soap for 10 years
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The linen was probably doing a similar job - I spend MORE time scrubbing with a rough towel than I do getting showered.
@@DRT813 i was thinking about the thread as well. I feel like all modern clothing is sewn together with polyesther thread which will start to stink even if the actual fabric doesnt
@@DRT813 modern linen is often processed now on machines that also do cotton so they can only handle shorter fibre lengths. Older linen was processed to keep the long fibres intact and felt different and reacts differently. Also a lot of modern fabric is marked as linen when it isn't made of flax. The linen refers to the weave type.
I love the thesis here about finding solutions to modern problems in the past. Learning about historical dress and practices around clothing has given me new perspective on my own clothes and their care. Much to my surprise, modifying my choices as a result of that knowledge has unexpectedly changed my perception of body odor as well, very much in line with this discussion!
Since I started wearing cotton undershirts to protect my "outer garments," I've found that not only do I not need to wash my clothes (other than those undershirts) as often, but I also don't need to wash MYSELF as often, nor do I need to wear as much deodorant. Turns out that what I've always thought was ME smelling bad frequently has been the modern fabrics in my clothes trapping, magnifying, and adhering odor to my skin. Where I used to think, as a chronically sweaty person, that I needed to shower every day to not stink, I now know that natural vs synthetic fibers and thoughtful layering can be the difference.
I lived in rural China from 2004-2005. Locals only showered/bath 1 a week in winter and 2-3 times a week in summer; usually at a public bath. deodorant was not available locally. Daily washing focused on face and feet ... I will admit first day I arrived stench seemed pretty strong, probably not helped by the locals love of eating raw garlic, but after a week I lost my sense of smell and all seemed fine
SO true! When I was a child, we washed at the bathroom sink every day - face arms feet private parts. We had a tub bath on Saturday night.
Later, I had a house where the furnace died. Of course it was early January and the daytime Temps were around 5°F. I didn't want to get out of bed until the Furnace was replaced! Never mind bathing.
With COVID Lockdowns, I reverted to the childhood routine of daily washing at sink, and a weekly Shower. I wasn't going anywhere and live alone. I've kept this schedule now. If you wash your Armpits and Private Parrts daily, you'll be clean and sweet smelling.
I'm in my late 60s. As I've gotten older, I no longer perspire as much under the arms, and never detect a sweat odor. Also rarely ever shave underarms or even legs because hair is also sparse.
@@hyacinth4368 I'm 76. Youre right! Less body hair with age and less sweating. Still important to have clean 'base layers.'
That (the cabin & lake) sounds like paradise to me!!!! Just an aside, but I haven't needed to shave my legs or armpits for two decades!! (I'm 63).
I'm an older person and I remember dressing under the covers in winter because it was cold in our old farm house. We had a bathroom, but we still only bathed twice a week and washed our hair once a week. We were just like everyone else where we lived.
Now I understand the "dressing for Dinner". The days sweat is removed before you go and are social for eating dinner.
In Australia us bushy’s call it “having a birdie bath”. There’s nothing wrong with it and you are so right, saves massive amounts of water. The general public are so lucky to have running water let alone running hot water. Love your channel ❤️. And great episode. 💕.
My mom calls them “Hussie” baths
I've heard it called "pits and bits" lol
A Mexican woman I knew would at times just take a plastic cup from 7-11 and wash up in public bathrooms with water in the tiny cup. She called it a “Whore Bath” 😁😁
At the moment we have around minus 2 °C where I live in northern Germany. As there is no heating - and no hot water - in my bathroom, it is around plus 5-6 °C there. Really uncomfortable to take off my clothes. So I heat water on the oven, pour it into a big bowl and wash in front of the fire. Like back in the old days. Not very comfortable, but doable and as a result I am clean afterwards.
I loved this video, thank you! One thing I discovered for myself was actual linen. I think people aren't exposed to it because it is expensive. But wearing a linen shift under a heavy silk dress for a whole day revealed how amazing the fabric is at wicking and holding sweat. Cotton is great, but nothing compares to linen.
This is such a great video! In nursing school we had an excellent professor you told us, "Always think of humans as the animal they are to be fair to them." She told us that humans can smell more than they realize, that part of attraction is the smell of someone whose immune system compliments yours so your offspring will have a stronger immune system than you do. So much of how we think and do things is driven by instinct and visceral drives and most people don't know it.
Having grown up in the late 60s/early 70s I developed a keen hatred for anything polyester or acrylic. I have linen shirts that are 20 years old, still perfectly good, just softer. This is a fascinating discussion, ladies. Great content.
Thank you so much for making this video, not only has it been super interesting but I am absolutely taking it as permission that washing at a sink is absolutely ok! Showers are often a large sensory undertaking for me and I will put them off for as long as possible, a clean cloth and warm soapy water at a sink is way more approachable but in the past I’ve only given myself permission when things get pretty necessary and a shower still isn’t approachable.
But that’s just ridiculous, so thank you for all this amazing information! I’m going to go follow in my ancestors footsteps and save water 😁
The question of washing is so interesting to me because as a person who comes from the environment of ballet and has family in ballet costuming, with things like tutus, you are wearing objects that cannot be washed and can be incredibly expensive, so the value of wearing the base leotard to sweat into was drilled as incredibly important because it helped preserve the longevity of the costume. Beyond that, because many tutus cannot be washed in the same way because of their construction, they are disinfected with vodka, to get rid of sweat smells (leotards and tights can only do so much under stage lights) or spot-cleaned for stains, and because of such care can be worn for decades.
Interesting!
Line dried sheets are the best thing ever!!!!
Where I live we do have very distinct seasons, but when it is warm enough we do hang things outside to dry. It's also how we do sleeping bags; hang them up outside for a day to air-out, re-fluff from stuffing, and UV-clean.
Really great myth-busting :)
Thank you so much for this video! Bringing back to life the concerns of women in the past is so important! I am 63 now and remember as a child my grandmother and her 2 sisters, who were born at the beginning of the 20th century, wore pads that they made for their clothes. These were kept in place under the arms with poppers and meant their clothes weren’t ruined by over washing. They were at all times very elegant and never left the house without their faces on! Their smell was sweet and fragrant too:)