Dirt and Disease From the Past.

[ecaridad]

Originally Posted by dizzybint

didnt they wash clothes in urine.. oh my god.. Id rather have stayed dirty..

don't worry that was only the first step. The next step was to rinse out the urine and yes that method of cleaning was recorded in the Greek and Roman times.

[CraigCreek]

At least the Victorians (and perhaps earlier folk) had bowls and pitchers in their bedrooms, which lessened the need for those 40+ buckets of water required to fill scarce bathtubs.

My grandmother's one-bathroom house (which had also been the home of my g-grandparents) retained bowls and pitchers in three of the five bedrooms. At Christmas, when my aunts, uncles, cousins and my own immediate family filled the old house (one family per bedroom; grandchildren on rollaways and cots), the antique bowls and pitchers saw a revival of their original use for shaving and sponge baths. There was also a deep sink (but no other bathroom facilities) with hot and cold water in the second floor hallway, used for nighttime requests for drinking water by the grandchildren, filling the pitchers, toothbrushing, and usually an uncle or father shaving. "Slop jars" were used to transport the dirty water back to the sink for disposal. Occasionally the slop jars came in for other nighttime use.

Given our numbers - up to thirteen people, eleven of them in the three upstairs bathrooms - the bowls and pitchers were very functional and real time-savers. The bedrooms were usually considerably warmer than the one faraway downstairs drafty full bathroom, too. I expect the Victorians had similar appreciation for their bowls and pitchers.

[CraigCreek]

I should have made clear that the above post describes Christmases in the 1950s through the early 1970s. Old ways still worked perfectly well for us, though perhaps a little more time-consuming and less convenient.