Did we all stink?

the beer revolu

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I had a bath once a week. This was the norm for the time, as far as I can make out. I'm not sure if it was the same for adults or did they bathe more often?

So, by today's standards, did we all stink?

I like my daily shower now but thinking back to my 20s in the 90s this wasn't typical, even then.
A shower every few days did the trick.

I was probably close to 30 before I developed the habit of daily showers and I wouldn't change that in a hurry, now.

How stinky were we?
How did we get laid?

EmmetSpiceland

Think anyone born before the 90s just smelled of smoke.

Ubbquittious

the beer revolu wrote: »

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I had a bath once a week. This was the norm for the time, as far as I can make out. I'm not sure if it was the same for adults or did they bathe more often?

So, by today's standards, did we all stink?

I like my daily shower now but thinking back to my 20s in the 90s this wasn't typical, even then.
A shower every few days did the trick.

I was probably close to 30 before I developed the habit of daily showers and I wouldn't change that in a hurry, now.

How stinky were we?
How did we get laid?

You can get away with a shower every few days. Having a shower every day is a relatively modern extreme, unless you are working in cowsh1t you most likely dont need to.

punisher5112

Some people smell more then others and in many cases what one eats doesn't help.....

Some sweat a lot others don't.

Rodin

Ubbquittious wrote: »

You can get away with a shower every few days. Having a shower every day is a relatively modern extreme, unless you are working in cowsh1t you most likely dont need to.

Showering every day is not "extreme".

the beer revolu

Ubbquittious wrote: »

You can get away with a shower every few days. Having a shower every day is a relatively modern extreme, unless you are working in cowsh1t you most likely dont need to.

I wouldn't argue against this but a daily shower is a luxury that I enjoy.
I think it does cut down on laundry, a bit, too.
"Need", in this case is very subjective, though.

the beer revolu

Rodin wrote: »

Showering every day is not "extreme".

It would seem extreme to many.
It certainly would have seemed extreme to me at one time.

the beer revolu

the beer revolu wrote: »

I wouldn't argue against this but a daily shower is a luxury that I enjoy.
I think it does cut down on laundry, a bit, too.
"Need", in this case is very subjective, though.

How so? Do you put back on the same clothes after showering?

Titzon Toast

I shower every night these days. When I was a kid in the 80's Saturday night was "bath night"!.

Sardonicat

the beer revolu wrote: »

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I had a bath once a week. This was the norm for the time, as far as I can make out. I'm not sure if it was the same for adults or did they bathe more often?

So, by today's standards, did we all stink?

I like my daily shower now but thinking back to my 20s in the 90s this wasn't typical, even then.
A shower every few days did the trick.

I was probably close to 30 before I developed the habit of daily showers and I wouldn't change that in a hurry, now.

How stinky were we?
How did we get laid?

Well, in my house, you may only have had a bath once a week, but once you got near puberty you were expected to have a strip wash at the bathroom basin daily. You might do it in 2 stages -top half in morning, bottom half before bed- or all in one go. You might even have had to boil a kettle for the hot water, but you cleaned your body daily. I thought that was the norm for everyone. The reason we didn't have a bath daily was the expense of heating the water for several baths a day. Then electric showers and oil and has gas fuelled heating systems became more and more prevalent throughout the late 80s and 90s and it became more affordable and more convenient just jump in the shower daily.

But Emmet is also right. We all stank of smoke as the adults smoked in the house, in the car, on the bus, in waiting rooms, in the cinema, n hospital wards,everywhere. The only place adults didn't smoke indoors around kids was the classroom

the beer revolu

[Deleted User] wrote: »

How so? Do you put back on the same clothes after showering?

Well, I don't change all my clothes every day, no.
That would seem insanely wasteful to me.
I change my clothes when they look or smell unclean, apart from socks and jocks, of course.

the beer revolu

Titzon Toast wrote: »

I shower every night these days. When I was a kid in the 80's Saturday night was "bath night"!.

Saturday for me, too.

Manach

History tidbit of the day. Imperial Rome on average imported approx 3000 tonnes of frankincense per year to deal with the smells of urban living

punisher5112

You stink op

Gregor Samsa

Before daily showers, people used to wash in the morning. Face, hands, neck, under the arms, round the nether regions. With a sponge or facecloth, standing at the sink. 2 minute job, but kept them going between baths.

Bobblehats

the beer revolu wrote: »

I think it does cut down on laundry, a bit, too.

Eureka! (You-reek-ah)

Fake Scores

Manach wrote: »

History tidbit of the day. Imperial Rome on average imported approx 3000 tonnes of frankincense per year to deal with the smells of urban living

The well-to-do all lived in country villas. Only if they had business did
they go to the overcrowded, filthy city.

crybaby

Titzon Toast wrote: »

I shower every night these days. When I was a kid in the 80's Saturday night was "bath night"!.

Used to be every Sunday night for the bath before going back to school on the Monday!

the beer revolu

the beer revolu wrote: »

Well, I don't change all my clothes every day, no.
That would seem insanely wasteful to me.
I change my clothes when they look or smell unclean, apart from socks and jocks, of course.

Fair enough. Personally I'd rather not shower than shower and then put back on the clothes I was wearing.

Richard Hillman

I always watch old videos of Ireland a hundred odd years ago and think the smell must have been unreal. Horse ****e all over the streets, a lot of people didn't have sewage, outhouses, people not washing properly and regularly, same clothes every day.

Ubbquittious

Rodin wrote: »

Showering every day is not "extreme".

From a historical point of view where people mostly dipped in the river once a week for the past 100,000 years it is. Probably started in De States in the 80s and arrived here 20 years later.



I like an auld shower most days but usually not necessary and there is a theory that it's not good for the skin to wash that often particularly with the harsh detergent people use today

the beer revolu

the beer revolu wrote: »

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I had a bath once a week.

You had A bath ONCE a week! You lucky sucker. WE had A bath ONCE a week too, in strict order, infants first -mixed sex, then youngest to oldest with girls going before boys in their age group. And yes, people smelled. Your mam smelled of underarm perspiration and fags, your Da smelled of work grease and fags, and your grandparents smelled of pee and fags, people in pubs smelled of arse, beer and fags, people in shops smelled of cabbage, fry ups, corned beef and fags, people on buses smelled of musty clothes, damp wool, brylcreem and fags. Then we became sophisticates and everyone, male or female, smelled of Lynx and fags.

Rodin

Ubbquittious wrote: »

From a historical point of view where people mostly dipped in the river once a week for the past 100,000 years it is. Probably started in De States in the 80s and arrived here 20 years later.



I like an auld shower most days but usually not necessary and there is a theory that it's not good for the skin to wash that often particularly with the harsh detergent people use today

Im not putting a fresh shirt on over an unwashed body in the morning.

the beer revolu

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You had A bath ONCE a week! You lucky sucker. WE had A bath ONCE a week too, in strict order, infants first -mixed sex, then youngest to oldest with girls going before boys in their age group. And yes, people smelled. Your mam smelled of underarm perspiration and fags, your Da smelled of work grease and fags, and your grandparents smelled of pee and fags, people in pubs smelled of arse, beer and fags, people in shops smelled of cabbage, fry ups, corned beef and fags, people on buses smelled of musty clothes, damp wool, brylcreem and fags. Then we became sophisticates and everyone, male or female, smelled of Lynx and fags.

This is priceless.
Thank you!

lalababa

Showering every day like alot of our modern habits began in the states emanating from affluent advertising (you deserve it coz you got the money/are not poor). In the 80's/90's through advertising for anything from soap to power showers to deodorant.
It's boll**ks but if it 'makes you feel good' then work away.

whisky_galore

Richard Hillman wrote: »

I always watch old videos of Ireland a hundred odd years ago and think the smell must have been unreal. Horse ****e all over the streets, a lot of people didn't have sewage, outhouses, people not washing properly and regularly, same clothes every day.

Horsesh1t, pipe/cigarette smoke and BO.
Don't forget tanneries and slaughterhouses both quite smelly operations.

Wibbs

I have a bath once a year. Whether I need one or not.

r93kaey5p2izun

I don't remember a time of a bath once a week, it was 3-4 showers a week in my house growing up in the 80s and 90s. I remember the horror of only being allowed shower once a week in the Gaeltacht. I shower daily since my late teens when it became the norm, but I have lived with people who only showered every 2-3 days and they smelled fine, despite my reservations. I think the daily wash at the basin that I know was the norm for my parents would have helped a lot - really not that bad I suppose. I think the fact clothes were washed less often may have been the biggest issue with smells, and sometimes I think now that people wearing dirty clothes is a bigger issue than lack of washing.

the purple tin

Gregor Samsa wrote: »

Before daily showers, people used to wash in the morning. Face, hands, neck, under the arms, round the nether regions. With a sponge or facecloth, standing at the sink. 2 minute job, but kept them going between baths.

Then you would be washing your face with the cloth or sponge that somebody has just used on their genitals?

And if you think babies were exempt you would be wrong. People would hand you their bundle of joy to admire and have a holt of it, and the fecking thing would be reeking of vomit, sour milk, and leaked urine from their cloth nappy. Their plastic pants smelled of piss even straight out of the wash, they wore the same spat up on bib for the whole day, their hair smelled of old dried in Liga, the only thing nice about them, smell wise, was a faint tang of Sudocrem on their scalded arses. We were a proud, tough, war-hardened people, once upon a time.

Sky King

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You had A bath ONCE a week! You lucky sucker. WE had A bath ONCE a week too, in strict order, infants first -mixed sex, then youngest to oldest with girls going before boys in their age group. And yes, people smelled. Your mam smelled of underarm perspiration and fags, your Da smelled of work grease and fags, and your grandparents smelled of pee and fags, people in pubs smelled of arse, beer and fags, people in shops smelled of cabbage, fry ups, corned beef and fags, people on buses smelled of musty clothes, damp wool, brylcreem and fags. Then we became sophisticates and everyone, male or female, smelled of Lynx and fags.

This is straight out of Suskind's "Perfume" (Irish Edition).

Hey remember bungalows back in the 70s often had a sink in the bedroom? For you to 'have a wash'. In lieu of a modern day shower I guess.

YellowLead

We didn’t have a shower in our house so yeah it was a weekly bath and you’d do your best to wash yourself at the sink to get you by in between.
I shower daily because I find it relaxing, but I could do it once every second day and not stink at all (I know because when this has happened by accident - hot water issue etc I’m always grand) but I know my teenage son couldn’t. He needs a shower twice a day basically. Doesn’t like to use deodorant but plays sports, and doesn't seem to have mastered the art of how to wipe his arse properly either - so daily showers are an absolute essential!

Every second day would be the average for me.

Anyone showering twice a day is taking the piss.

Badly Drunk Boy

the purple tin wrote: »

Then you would be washing your face with the cloth or sponge that somebody has just used on their genitals?

Not if you had rules like the Dentons in The League Of Gentlemen...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T58D467HagM

External Association

Titzon Toast wrote: »

I shower every night these days. When I was a kid in the 80's Saturday night was "bath night"!.

And we shared the bath water!!

Sardonicat

the purple tin wrote: »

Then you would be washing your face with the cloth or sponge that somebody has just used on their genitals?

Eh, no. You had your own cloths. One for top and one for the rest.

Leg End Reject

Bath once a week too, but every night I stood in a basin in the bath and was washed that way. Then did it myself at the sink when I was older. Always had clean underwear and clothes everyday except for school uniforms which were worn for the week, except the shirt which was changed when grubby.

Quick daily shower now.

Oink

YellowLead wrote: »

Doesn’t like to use deodorant but plays sports, and doesn't seem to have mastered the art of how to wipe his arse properly either

The stuff I read on Boards sometimes makes me think my parents were aliens. If I had tried half the stuff I read about here I wouldn’t have been allowed out of the house.
My mam once told me very loudly and in front of my girlfriend to get in the shower because I smelled of armpits. There wasn’t a “no deodorant” option.

Vita nova

Sky King wrote: »

This is straight out of Suskind's "Perfume" (Irish Edition).

Hey remember bungalows back in the 70s often had a sink in the bedroom? For you to 'have a wash'. In lieu of a modern day shower I guess.

Not just country bungalows but I bought a house in a 1970s housing estate and all the bedrooms had a plumbed sink, which didn't work well with the carpeted floors. I eventually removed them and put in fitted dressers in their place.

In my parents' house, which would be about two hundred years old there were these large pottery basins and jugs in the attic which would have been in the bedrooms back in the day for people to wash themselves.

foxy farmer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipMliH6B55s

One eyed Jack

I love looking up the origins of euphemisms and idioms, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” is one I’ve just been reminded of that I must look up later, but I remembered looking up “an attack of the vapours”, was not what I was expecting But I was watching one of those antiques shows and they had up for auction a small box like a snuff box that ladies used carry on their person to disguise the... unflattering aroma :pac:

Vinaigrettes, can’t be certain it was exactly them but I think it was them anyway, containing stuff that gave off a more pleasant odour to disguise the offensive smells

Reading about their beauty regime in Victorian times is even more eyebrow raising, between the arsenic, lead and cocaine I’m often skeptical of how much is true and how much is actually just the equivalent of modern one-offs like the girl who recently thought it was a good idea to use gorilla glue in her hair. Stories like this for example -


The toothbrush, such as we use today, was not invented until 1938 (by DuPont), but Victorian women did clean their teeth with toothbrushes made from boars hair or horse hair (horse hair was preferred because it was softer—mostly used by the wealthy). Although one could purchase toothpowders, they were usually made at home, as were mouth rinses. Salt, although rough on the gums, was used to clean teeth on occasion, but thought to be better used on men. Marseilles soap, a delicate soap made from olive oil, sea water and ash, which had been around for 500-600 years, and still available today, was used in the mouth 2-3 times a week.


A Victorian Lady's Toilette, by Kathleen Bittner-Roth


I wonder was that the origins of the phrase “wash your mouth out with soap”?

biko

the beer revolu wrote: »

Growing up in the 70s and 80s, I had a bath once a week. This was the norm for the time, as far as I can make out. I'm not sure if it was the same for adults or did they bathe more often?

So, by today's standards, did we all stink?

I like my daily shower now but thinking back to my 20s in the 90s this wasn't typical, even then.
A shower every few days did the trick.

I was probably close to 30 before I developed the habit of daily showers and I wouldn't change that in a hurry, now.

How stinky were we?
How did we get laid?

In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women.
The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber pots.

For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench.

And of course the stench was foulest in Paris, for Paris was the largest city of France.

And in turn there was a spot in Paris under the sway of a particularly fiendish stench: between the rue aux Fers and the rue de la Ferronnerie, the Cimetiere des Innocents to be exact.

Here, then, on the most putrid spot in the whole kingdom, Jean-Baptiste Grenouilie was born on July 17, 1738.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfume_%28novel%29

Gregor Samsa

the purple tin wrote: »

Then you would be washing your face with the cloth or sponge that somebody has just used on their genitals?

Yeah, but daily teabagging was very common too, so the facecloth thing kind of paled into insignificance.

Either that or people had the revolutionary idea of having their own cloths. I’m not sure.

JupiterKid

Yep, people certainly smelt a lot worse back when I was a kid in the 1980s - B.O. and ciggies usually, with many if not most middle aged fellas - my dads generation - and old lads - smelling of booze. Things really improved in the 1990s.

I started taking showers when I was 11/12 - before then I would have had a weekly bath, sometimes twice a week if I was getting dressed up nicely for some special occasion. I remember my mates when we were hanging out in our bikes saying how they were taking showers now and I was still “babyish” for taking baths. :P:o

We had an old, hardly ever used shower unit in our main upstairs bathroom. Nobody used it until I started taking showers. It was there from when the house was built in circa 1972 - and it was piddly and poorly sealed so water sometimes came down into the kitchen ceiling at a light fitting...

I got a new head for it - my dad fitted it and sealed the shower, and from that point on I was four showers a week chap.

I managed to get laid plenty in my 20s and there’d be nights I wouldn’t have partaken of a shower beforehand... :pac:

JupiterKid

Sky King wrote: »

This is straight out of Suskind's "Perfume" (Irish Edition).

Hey remember bungalows back in the 70s often had a sink in the bedroom? For you to 'have a wash'. In lieu of a modern day shower I guess.

Yes, vanity units they were called. Our house growing up had three bedrooms fitted with there - a sink and a mirror and a unit around the sink, for toiletries and make up. I always thought them a bit pointless. Our suburban Dublin house had these but no en-suite bathroom in the master bedroom. Go figure.

Vita nova

JupiterKid wrote: »

Yes, vanity units they were called. Our house growing up had three bedrooms fitted with there - a sink and a mirror and a unit around the sink, for toiletries and make up. I always thought them a bit pointless. Our suburban Dublin house had these but no en-suite bathroom in the master bedroom. Go figure.

I'd forgotten that they were called vanity units. They were really just an evolution of washstands with jugs and wash basins that you might have seen in your grands' bedrooms.

My parents still have a few washstands that are now used as dressers and the basin and jugs are up in the attic.

Purple Mountain

Titzon Toast wrote: »

I shower every night these days. When I was a kid in the 80's Saturday night was "bath night"!.

After Baywatch usually.

Sardonicat

Purple Mountain wrote: »

After Baywatch usually.

Wire brush and dettol time!

Purple Mountain

Sardonicat wrote: »

Wire brush and dettol time!

That's a bit extreme

You'd miss your man Nox around here for threads like this.

Sardonicat

Purple Mountain wrote: »

That's a bit extreme

To scrub off the nicotine staining so you'd be ready for mass in the morning.