Washing hair in the bath - how did people manage in the olden days?

ragz_2

Artytarty wrote: »

Just have a normal bath, bend knees, slide bum down to taps abut and dunk your head back in the water. Sit up, shampoo, back down and rinse, running your hands through your hair. Condition and repeat process. It's best of you have a lot of water in the bath as it's more clean water.Easy Peasy! done it for years!

Yep, this is what I do too. Never seen a problem with it... though I do displace a lot of water these days!

catkins

Before I had a shower I used to wash my hair in the sink using a jug. I washed it every day so just got used to it.


I have never washed it in the bath and never would. I find the idea horrible. Mind you I can't remember the last time I had a bath, it must have been about 18 years ago. I really dislike baths

[Deleted User]

Back in the mists of time when the dinosaurs walked the earth we washed our hair perfectly well enough in the bath ,though in those post war days it was usually the tin bath in front of the fire. I always tried to get the first bath before my grubby brothers so I had first dibs on the water.Filling the bath from endless kettles and saucepans of hot water took awhile so it was usually done once a week.The rest of the time us kids were scrubbed by Mum to within an inch of our lives and were wrapped in a towel and rubbed vigorously until we glowed :):) My late Mum could not abide anything mucky be it kids ,dogs, or the household

Our house shone with the smell of lavender polish and carbolic soap.She was the cleanest person I have ever known
Even the kitchen range shone with black leading :)Her doorstep glowed white and her net curtains we so stiff with starch you could have stood them up on their own.Her life revolved around keeping the family clean and fed and warm.Back in those days we had a large kitchen range that she used for heating the water on and her kettle was always on.We had one large carpet in the lounge ,but that room was only used on high days and holidays christmas etc the rest of the house was lino including the stairs It was a huge barn of a house with 13 rooms but was so hard to heat we only used the ground floor and the rest of the house stood empty for most of the time.My late Dad had bought it just after the war when properties were fairly cheap and my Mum hated the place .But being a stoical sort of person she put up with it The only thing she liked was the enormous garden which she enjoyed as she grew most of our fruit and veg and we kept chickens for the eggs and to eat at Christmas and Easter.
She owned no fridge,freezer,microwave,washing machine, dishwasher,phone or TV, and until I was11 used flat irons heated up on the range for ironing with.She ironed on a large kitchen table with an old army blankets and sheet on top never even owned an ironing board She managed fairly well and we all grew up in a reasonable clean and tidy house.I certainly wouldn't like to go back to the life she had and I appreciated the mod cons of wall-to-wall carpets and central heating that my little house has.But living and growing up in the post war period was hardly the dark ages :):):)

PasturesNew

There's a lot of people using their sink; mine wouldn't be up to the job, it's just hand-washing size - and it's got a mixer tap in the middle, so you'd have to have a tiny head to get it past the head of the mixer tap and to be able to have enough room to wash/rinse your hair in it.

Sinks used to be bigger, but as bathrooms have shrunk, so have sinks.

pigpen

PasturesNew wrote: »

There's a lot of people using their sink; mine wouldn't be up to the job, it's just hand-washing size - and it's got a mixer tap in the middle, so you'd have to have a tiny head to get it past the head of the mixer tap and to be able to have enough room to wash/rinse your hair in it.

Sinks used to be bigger, but as bathrooms have shrunk, so have sinks.

we have a belfast sink in the kitchen.. used for bathing children more often than washing pots.. but they are wonderful.. bit high for washing myself though.

My Edwardian bathroom sink is too shallow for anything other than washing the necessities

PasturesNew

pigpen wrote: »

we have a belfast sink in the kitchen.. used for bathing children more often than washing pots.. but they are wonderful.. bit high for washing myself though.

My Edwardian bathroom sink is too shallow for anything other than washing the necessities

They're posh

I plan to have one of those in my planned extension because I want a big sink where I can "wash big/dirty things" and "things I don't want to wash in the kitchen where food is cleaned/prepared". I want to be able to do things like wash the plate drainer, or wash out a bucket, or wash something that's muddy such as shoes/boots. Just "big and/or dirty jobs".

Also, after floor mopping, to be able to tip the bucket of water into the sink, not having to worry that it'll splash back onto the plates that are drying!

Also for hand washing big things such as bathmats and loo mats. I don't want to put those in with my regular washing and, again, don't want to wash them in the kitchen.

pigpen

LOL @ posh... I use the sink as my mop bucket .. I fill it with bleach and water.. wipe the units and worksurfaces and everything.. then mop the floor.. the sink is usually sparkling by then too.. quick rinse and the world is clean!

I have a dishwasher to pots are never handwashed, I don't have a drainer at all.. and anything that won't fit in the washing machine is thrown in the bath, I dont handwash anything other than me!.

moneyistooshorttomention

PasturesNew wrote: »

They're posh

I plan to have one of those in my planned extension because I want a big sink where I can "wash big/dirty things" and "things I don't want to wash in the kitchen where food is cleaned/prepared". I want to be able to do things like wash the plate drainer, or wash out a bucket, or wash something that's muddy such as shoes/boots. Just "big and/or dirty jobs".

Also, after floor mopping, to be able to tip the bucket of water into the sink, not having to worry that it'll splash back onto the plates that are drying!

Also for hand washing big things such as bathmats and loo mats. I don't want to put those in with my regular washing and, again, don't want to wash them in the kitchen.

Sighs at thought of a scullery with nice big low-down sink. My ideal house would have one of them for sure. No more having to lift buckets of dirty water up to waist height to empty them out or, more to the point, finding the kitchen taps getting in the way when I fill the bucket in the first place. Note to self time = when I have the money to gut my kitchen I must think carefully what taps to have on my new kitchen sink.

ripplyuk

JackieO, your mum sounds lovely and a very hard worker! I just love hearing people's stories about those days and how they managed. It must have been endless work to keep a house and children clean and tidy, without the benefit of all our mod cons, especially hot running water. I guess my dilemma of how to wash my hair, really isn't such a big problem .

krlyr

Another plain "dunker" here - dunk to soak, lather, dunk to rinse, condition, dunk one last time and done. I work an office job, I don't get dirty enough that I'm worried about the minute bit of muck in my bath water.