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Best way to bathe indoors without running water?

post #1 of 26
Thread Starter 
Figured I might as well ask all you experienced homesteaders. Solar showers are fine for the summertime, but not in our cold winter climate. I exercise daily and get sweaty enough to want to clean off afterward. What do you think is the best/most efficient/tidiest/what-have-you way to bathe indoors without running water or a tub or shower? Surely there is something here that can be learned from experience - and shared on an Internet forum.
post #2 of 26
Hi. No real experience here, except occasionally using a shower bag hung on a nail either in the shower inside or on the deck of a remote cabin. One of the most recent "Back Home" magazines had an article on the best way to sponge bath in a basin. It was fun to read. They recommended standing in a tub and having a fresh, hot basin/tub/bucket of water next to you with a washcloth. Basically, soap up a little at a time, then rinse with the clean water into the tub you are standing in. Also recommended putting your robe on and taking a seat, then pouring all remaining clean, hot water into basin for a foot-soak at the end.
post #3 of 26
^totally

haha! the footsoak is key, otherwise i feel kind of cold and bitchy after my hobo bath! if you can warm your towel or robe up by the woodstove- even better!
post #4 of 26
I have a galvanized wash tub that I keep hanging on the wall and take it down for bathing. I usually wash my hair first, in a little bit of water and then bathe in that (plus more) water and keep a pitcher full of warm water for rinsing. If you stand up and pour the pitcher of water over yourself, it's like a shower...sort of. I usually take a bath right after I have started a fire in the woodstaove, and I bathe right next to it, so I stay nice and warm!
post #5 of 26
I'll be taking some notes here although we will have running water next winter.

I go to the local gym to get a good shower and at home I wash my hair in the sink with a pot of warm water. I wash my armpits with a rag with warm soapy water and rinse.

The kids all hop in the farm sink and bathe together and we use two pots of boiling water then add enough cold to make it a good temp.
post #6 of 26
1. Use the gas or wood stove in the kitchen to heat up more water that you think you'll need. This also heats the kitchen for when you are bathing.

2. Stand in a big plastic or metal tub. Have a small saucepan or similar to use for ladling water from the buckets where you've heated it.

3. Wash hair first. If room is warm, let the water from hair washing soften up you skin you rinse. If not, stay clothed (robed) during this step and towel hair immediately after.

4. Get naked, rinse for moisture, and soap up.

5. Scub- top to bottom, but save face for last.

6. Rinse (my favorite part, when you dump water profusely... ahhhh. ).

7. Face (pores benefit from extended dampness).

Can you tell I have done this a lot?

post #7 of 26
Just throwing this out there...depending on your finances...

Build a wood powered sauna
Heat water by the wood stove while you sauna
Mix hot and cold water together in a large bucket
Pour the water over you in the warmth of the sauna and bathe!

Also, if you have a water resource nearby (a river or stream to chip the ice away for water) you can build a cistern on the roof of the sauna and set up a shower from the tub (a metal or copper tub) to a shower room in the sauna building.

Indoor showering without running water is a challenge I never really mastered in 7 years without water. Tubs and very infrequent bathing was my trick. Basically we were just smelly hippies unless we had a friend with water that offered a shower. Or a trip to town where there were showers at the laundry mat.
post #8 of 26
Holy crow.. please forgive my ignorance but people actually LIVE without running water?

All these suggestions are the same I'd give.
post #9 of 26
you could put the warmed up water into the solar shower bag and hang it up over a big pot/wash tub. a couple sports bottles to aim water where you need it was convenient and not as heavy to lift.

use minimal soap, preferably something like Bronners.

outdoors, it's the wind that got me. rigged a canvas 'tent', with a raised wood floor. outdoors with snow on the ground. 2 one liter bottles of hot water did the job. don't leave the shampoo outside though, very brisk! big fluffy bathrobe and the towel on my hair, then dash back inside and sit in front of the heater.

My son was washed in the little RV sink, one piece at a time. laid down on the counter to wash his hair. and we were 'sent' to the showers when we visited a friend in town. She even let us linger. oh, decadence!

We did 3 years. and never did build that permanent outdoor shower.

not bad, definately doable.
Bryanna
post #10 of 26
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sage_SS View Post
....but people actually LIVE without running water?
well I do have running water and a tub with a drain ... just don't have coventinal hot water piped to go along with it...

We've only had a 'real bathroom' about 5+ years, while I was pregnant with our first one we finally put in the tub and a TOILET!!!! We've been married going on 14 this year.

The funniest thing is that in 1986 ...21 years ago ....my parents moved to no bathroom house, it did have running water in the kitchen sink, but no tub at all or toilet, not even a room to be considered a bathroom... we had the outhouse and enclosed back portch, oh how I complained, I was a pre-teen... how could my 'weird' parents do this to me... I vowed to my mom When I grow up I'm going to have a bathroom, blah blah blah... well fast forward, Sitting on a log next to the outhouse at our wedding (here at the farm) she brought this fact up to me !!!

I do rember dreaming and planning for the perfcet bathroom, it would be at last the size of a small grocery store, crystal chandellers, a sitting nook, bright lights, possibly a couple different style tubs in case you ever wanted a change...

I do love vacations though, most folks go to the country and have to bath in a bucket, we go to civilazation and take real showers!!!
post #11 of 26
Sage SS- Welcome to the 21st century. Not only do some people live without running water, but most of the world does. And many, many people live without ANY water within a half-hour's walk, or even an hour's walk. (They don't have cars.) (Or donkeys.) (Or even bikes.)

http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/factsheet.html


Just a few of the many sad statistics on water.

Oh, and hot water? If you have your own water heater- most don't even have a proper stove.
post #12 of 26
We have running water for most of the year - for about 2-4 months of the year our water line from the spring is frozen. Then we haul water from the spring in buckets.

Anyways - for showers, we heat the water up in a big pot on the woodstove. Upstairs we have a bathtub with a drain/piping to the outside, etc. We have a hook hanging on the ceiling above the tub where we hang a five gallon bucket w/ a spicket on the bottom. We fill the bucket up w/ hot water, hang it on the hook, turn the spicket and shower! I love it. You can fill the bucket and get 2-3 showers out of it, which conserves a lot of water. I prefer it over convential showers - the hot water is constant and doesn't change temperature.

For the babe - we fill up a dishwashing pan w/ water and he has a tub to splash in. Although he prefers the shower now too.
post #13 of 26
Thread Starter 
What a wealth of ideas! Keep them coming, if you're so inclined. Thanks so much to all who responded!
post #14 of 26
Another idea for a five gallon bucket - poke holes in the bottom with nails, (leave the nails in) and fill it up with water, hang it up on a hook from the ceiling over a small tub, and stand underneath and pull out the nails when you are ready for your shower.
post #15 of 26
mahtob,

where do you live?

interesting facts you gave.

we are pretty darn sheltered in our conviences in america.
post #16 of 26
Langyork- it's a secret. Look at my other posts and you will get an idea.
post #17 of 26
hi there amyamanda! welcome to the world of no running water. it's not as bad as others can make it sound. in fact, your bathing ritual can be quite enjoyable.

i have no tub or shower, either, but i have an enormous farmhouse sink with a drainboard. to be honest, i sometimes move the dish drainer away and sit on the drainboard for a quick wash-off. if you don't have a similarly sized sink, this probably won't work for you. but i have the long-bathing method also, which goes like so:

wait 'til night, when the kids won't interrupt me.

my kitchen sink and woodstove are near each other, with a sizable drainboard to set things on, so i work in this area.

fire up the woodstove. it's nice to have a warm room, and though this isn't essential, it's a nice place to keep extra water heating. light candles for ambiance.

draw up a dining room chair and a galvanized tub - set the tub at the foot of the chair. drape the chair with a terry robe or a towel to sit on.

heat up a gallon of water and mix with cold to get a couple of gallons of warmer-than comfy (it will cool as you go) water in a dishpan. set that on a nearby counter or table with two washcloths - one for soap, one for rinsing. a pitcher or an empty yogurt tub or something like that to pour water over yourself with may be nice too, depending on how you like to do things.

get a fluffy towel, or two if you'll do your hair. if i had wood flooring or similar, i'd put dry unclean towels (from previous baths) under the tub, or if like me you have flooring that can get wet, you can wipe up escaped water with your used bath towel once you're done.

start at the top and work down; that way, you're never rinsing over something you just washed.

i wash my hair in the kitchen sink, using pitchers of water (or the kettle) to pour with. wet, lather, rinse. wrap hair in towel. it doesn't take as much water as you'd think, but the better you get at it, the less water it'll take.

next i lather up one washcloth and soak the other in plain water. (i'm always working next to the sink for my convenience setting down washcloths and so on.) wet face with one, soap and scrub with the other, rinse with the first again, and dry with the second towel, or if the one from your hair is long enough, the tail of that one. all that i do standing at the sink.

now i'll open the terry robe (or a towel) over the chair to have somewhere cozy to sit later. standing feet in the tub, within reach of the dishpan of warm water (adding more after the hair/face routine if needed) i start working down - wet, soap, rinse (with washcloth and then pitcher) and dry. the torso is one area, the behind and goodies another, and then i sit to do legs and feet. if you don't have a stove, drying as you go keeps you much warmer, too. when you're down to the legs, you can put your arms through the sleeves of your terry robe, even, kick back and take it easy.

by the time you get down to feet, they'll have been soaked nicely and can be paid attention to. much nicer than in a shower, where they tend to get ignored. here i scrub at them with an exfoliator thingy, wash, dry, clip nails, and apply lotion.

after you get the hang of it, it feels rather more civilized than either being blasted like a firehose with water from a wall fitting *or* soaking in your own dirty water in the tub. at least, i like to look at certain things as benefits rather than hardships. and it really is quite nice. also, the sofa isn't far from the woodstove, so if DH is up reading, he gets a show.

make up your own ritual - it's very nice to take time with this, i feel so pampered when it's over.

a few notes on soaping:

it took a while to realize i didn't have to soap everything, then rinse everything, in that order. going in stages is much nicer, and drying as you go keeps you warmer.

if you're using water from a rain barrel, plan to use less soap. this water is so much softer that what i was used to before, i didn't know why it was taking so long to rinse.

use an eco-friendly soap like bronner's, especially if your greywater goes to the garden or something. bronner's makes an unscented baby-mild one that i quite like. it's even quite good on hair.

get a big enough galvanized tub that you feel you can move. i tried to start with a smaller one, but soon realized that size didn't matter because i could keep it outside. (in my small house, storage space is a premium.)

everything you'll want to have, keep handy. this seems basic, i know, but when i started i kept forgetting things and having to get up, and now i just keep it all in the kitchen instead of the WC. there was no logical reason to keep things there, anyway. now i store toilet paper and rags and cleaning supplies in the WC instead. (i guess it's not really a 'water closet' as it's a water-free composting toilet, but you get the idea.)

live and learn!
post #18 of 26
[QUOTE=nuthatch;10706355]
Anyways - for showers, we heat the water up in a big pot on the woodstove. Upstairs we have a bathtub with a drain/piping to the outside, etc. We have a hook hanging on the ceiling above the tub where we hang a five gallon bucket w/ a spicket on the bottom. We fill the bucket up w/ hot water, hang it on the hook, turn the spicket and shower! I love it. You can fill the bucket and get 2-3 showers out of it, which conserves a lot of water. I prefer it over convential showers - the hot water is constant and doesn't change temperature.
QUOTE]


oh my goodness! this has lit a fire under my butt! this is a fantastic idea! i ran it by my DP the other day and we've been inspired!!

oh, thanks! thank you thank you!
post #19 of 26
We had no running hot water last winter. What we did was had a cast iron bath outside with a fire underneath it. It you cover the top of the bath with a sheet of roofing iron & use one to shield the fire from any wind, it heats up quicker. Once it was warm enuf, take the fire out from underneath & hop in. Making sure you test the bottom first. When it got real cold in the middle of winter, we used the horse feed bucket to carry the hot water into a tub inside.
post #20 of 26
We have a clawfoot bathtub that we use for bathing. We warm up the water that we'll need, and then hop in. It is relaxing and pretty easy. We average under 10 gallons of water TOTAL for our family of 7...

I do like the 5 gallon bucket with a spigot idea, though! I bet DH would really go for that!
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