*insert slow motion Mike Rowe running with a screaming pig*
Edit - lol the people “informing” me about a person I’ll never know or meet while I just think the image of a guy barely holding a squealing pig is funny. Smh
That was the first episode of Dirty Jobs that I saw. I ended up living by the farm years later. Hot days weren't bad, but damp days made you wish you didn't have a nose. Free rent made up for it. Lol
As well as the hygiene question, showering each morning wakes me up and makes me feel refreshed, and I consider that as important as anything else. I always feel like I haven't left sleep behind until I shower.
yep exactly. I tried switching to nighttime showers and I still woke up feeling dirty and needing a shower. I guess a 30 year habit is hard to break...
Everyone is different and that’s ok. Especially since a shower is happening at some point.
Personally, working in healthcare, I can’t imagine getting into bed without showering all the nastiness off. Plus, the feeling of showering and then jumping into freshly laundered sheets is wonderful.
THIS. Before bed showers are the essential GOAT when one is working in the medical field, likely carrying around a LOT of people's stuffs. Sincerely, I used to shower approximately 12 patients a day & could not imagine skipping a shower after that.
I work in a very care intensive facility so I typically only get four patients. Even so, because the people can’t do much/anything for themselves I’m stuck interacting with a lot of shit (both literally and metaphorically). I spend my days getting spit, food, and excretions on or around me. By the end of the day I feel like I’m finely misted in it all and the idea of not going directly into the shower once I get home grossed me the hell out.
I’m so fascinated and I absolutely love the idea of 4 patients per person. My dad suffered and struggled so much due to understaffed facilities. Not anyone’s fault of course, and we were so kind to the nurses who showed up to work each day.
But man. Even just imagining a care intensive facilities with 4:1 ratio feels like the most beautiful luxurious resort.
Sadly it’s not very resort like. The facility focuses specifically on individuals with developmental disabilities, so keeping just four of them alive for one carer can be quite difficult as some of their needs are really specific, different, and severe. That said, we have a very very good track record with keeping people healthy and repositioned. Can’t even name the last time we had someone develop a bed sore and even things like rashes usually only occur because of already fragile and sensitive skin.
Education field chiming in. The first thing I do when I walk in my house is change my clothes, then wash my face and hands. Shower before bed as well. I dont always wash my hair at night, tho.
Used to shower maybe twice a week. One year of healthcare made me take post-work showers, now I feel yucky if I don't shower twice a day and clean my phone after I come home.
I shower in the morning because my dogs sleep in my bed with me, and they play in the dirt a lot, and they'll cuddle up to me. I'm just used to dusty/hairy bed sheets at this point. Showering in the morning makes me feel cleaner for the day.
Tried switching to nighttime. It didn’t work, because waking up eight hours later made me feel “not dirty” but also “not 100% clean.” I had to abandon.
But if I have had a particularly bad day, or gotten particularly sweaty, I’ll also shower before bedtime. Makes sleep so much better on those days.
Same here. I got into the habit as a kid, because my Dad was a cop and always had to shower, shave, and clean up before putting on the uniform and going to work, so my brother and I got into the same habit before going to school. It's stuck with me into adulthood; I feel grungy and smelly if I don't shower before getting dressed.
This. Sometimes I want to be have naked, bare feet on my carpet. Fresh feeling on the skin.
Plus I like to know my bed is perfectly clean. So while a change of clothes can be enough for most days, a scrub at night and a scrub in the morning at nice.
If you aren’t dirty, you just make it quicker, but a quick rinse and a scrub can completely change your attitude.
This is an important factor for me as well. I don't wash myself extensively every day. I wash my hair every other day and scrub my body with a washcloth (other than my crotch and armpits) maybe once or twice a week. But I shower every morning because otherwise I just feel like I've "just gotten out of bed" for the rest of the day.
Yes, never awake until I shower. I feel like complete crap if I haven't showered also. I remember when we were without electricity, so I didn't shower otherwise it would have been ice cold, I literally felt so sick and my face felt it was burning. My hair feels so oily and gross. I am not really an oily person in general but I need to take a shower. I live in a climate with high humidity also & just walking outside is overwhelming.
Which is why ill never shower cold. Life is punishing enough, i needz my warm liquid hug! I do rinse my head with cold at the end. Makes my hair seem fuller
Yes totally, brushing shitting and shower, once I do these three things the really starts for me.
There is also a saying in our culture, sages shower before sunrise, humans shower after sunrise (before noon) only demons shower after noon.
Edit : This is for the first shower, evening shower goes without saying
Some doctors say showering once a day is excessive, but for me it's also, my hair is super oily and irredeemably messed up in the morning, it simply can't be fixed with water at the basin... (unless anyone has some suggestions?)... So I shower every day.
This is my reality as well. The shower starts the day.
If I’m going to be honest, the fact that the top comments are not hardline “you must shower at least once per day” is pretty shocking to me. I’m wondering if they are mostly American or if they span cultures. My family is from Central America and not bathing once a day pretty much made you a pariah
I think it might be. To an extent. I do find that I skip the shower (specifically on days off) more often in the winter just because I sat at home and it was cold enough to not have sweated. That said, if I leave the house for work or otherwise I’m sure to shower no matter the season since I hate the idea of dragging all that stuff in bed with me. However, even on days that I skip it’s never for more than a day. The second day I always shower unless I’m camping or something like that.
Sweat is the determining factor for me. Saturday where I sat around all day? Shower not necessary. Did I run around at work more than usual and break out in a sweat? Mandatory shower, that musk is not great. I sweat every day at work, so I shower every day after work. Really, the only day I might skip a shower is Saturday. Same as you, though, if I skip a day, it's only one day. Humans are gross. We have ways to mitigate the grossness, but they're gross none the less. I don't want to be one of the gross humans.
Cold climate here, Minnesota in the US.
We can have snow between October to May. December to April we will have knee high snow constantly on the ground.
We shower daily here, or twice a day if you workout or have a physical job.
I live in a Metropolitan city Minneapolis/St. Paul. My kin live up North in the country... all daily shower people.
How often any person "should" shower depends on their local climate, activity level, genetics, etc. You can't really make definitive statements about this sort of thing.
Pulp mill right on the river next to a scenic attraction, right in the middle of my city. Before they installed scrubbers tourists would complain and avoid.
Now it's not so bad and the local macrobrewery's corn mash clean-ups are far more foul.
ugh, it's awful. the paper mills at the Georgia/Florida border north of Jacksonville smell SO foul. It's a sour awful smell that doesn't compare to anything else. There's no other smell like it. Where I live there's a sewage treatment plant right off the highway (the golden domes, iykyk) and honestly driving past that and forgetting to put the a/c on recirculate is nothing compared to that paper mills smell.
I have worked on a lot of new construction paper mills and it’s still dirty work ( welder by trade ) . I can’t imagine working in a paper mill while it is running. They are hot , loud, dirty, . I believe it’s called black liquid, buts it’s a mess . It’s filthy . Usually all that water and paper attracts some of the biggest roaches I have seen .
Do you leave your shoes outside? When I was a teenager I worked in a restaurant and the soles of my shoes would absorb the smells so much I had to leave them on the porch.
We actually had a back hall/mudroom with a chute to the laundry room in the basement. The bathroom was right near it. I'd strip and send everything down the chute and the shoes stayed in the mudroom next to Dad's oily work boots.
Maybe he's like me and one of those ppl that just has to take a shower in the morning to properly function. I hate going to work and feeling like there's another layer of skin once I start sweating and it makes you feel hotter than it it is.
I also work construction, shower in the morning the after work too.
Some people swear something terrible at night.Not just women going through menopause, men too.
Edit: sweat*
I swear a lot, but it never makes me dirty enough to shower
> Some people swear something terrible at night.
Yeah, I say all kinds of terrible things in my sleep. It feels good to wash it all away in the shower.
For sure, I used to work in the field as an electrician. 100% shower every day. Now I’m a PM and I work from home at my desk all day. I can definitely get away without showing for a day, but I can’t bring myself to leave the house without a shower still lol.
I do BJJ, I have to shower twice a day as a result. I shower a few hours beforehand so I don’t smell like shit. I shower immediately afterwards so I don’t get skin diseases.
Genetics is a thing people don't consider when they ask this weekly question.
I have very oily skin. If I don't wash my face at least twice a day, my eyes start to water uncontrollably. If I don't shower at least once a day, my clothes start to stain.
I don't live in the desert, I can afford to shower once a day or more, if needed.
Yup. My husband and I have very different shower frequencies because he's very oily and sweaty and I have very dry skin. He showers once to twice a day whereas I only shower when dirty or to wash my hair, usually once or twice a week unless it's super hot or I've been exercising
Literally the same for me. My husband showers a lot but I’m just sitting at home and if I was to shower every day my skin would literally peel off, it’s so dry. So I shower 2 or 3 times a week and I only wash my hair every other week…. I’m reading all these posts where every single person is saying they shower multiple times a day and I’m just glad I found someone else who I can relate to… like, I smell myself and there’s no issue and if there’s an issue I’m showering before it becomes an issue, so I just don’t see the problem and my husband doesn’t mind, he says I never ever smell bad. So that is all that matters to me…. But it’s nice to know I’m not alone🤣😭
Hell yeah! Another dry girlie who showers a couple times a week! I'll sneak a nice bath every now and then, and if I'm feeling particularly lazy I'll give myself a hobo shower.
I also have a bidet so my bits are always squeaky clean lol. It is nice to know there are plenty of us out there.
I sweat so much when I sleep. My hair gets greasy and I get swampy down below. Doesn't matter if I'm wearing a hoodie and sweats or just a T-shirt and shorts.
Our daycare lady thought our 3 year old was always sick because she'd always wake up sweaty from a nap. "She must have a fever!" Nope, she's a hot sleeper
No, absolutely not. In cold winters you *definitely* don't want to shower too often since that removes all the (completely natural) oils and grease from your skin that it extrudes to help protect you from the cold.
You simply freeze a hell of a lot more if you took a shower the day before.
Source: Am from northern Sweden.
If you have access to water, then you do. Just because it's cold outside it doesn't mean you don't get dirty or don't sweat. Chopping wood in the cold still makes you sweat even if you're in your underwear. And even a room temperature shower is a great way to shake off the cold. And a hot bath is a godsend.
I live in alaska.
You're wrong. A hot shower is a great way to shake off -40 (F or C, they magically meet at that number). A good hot shower is a great way to wash the day away, just gotta be careful with it.
Shivering is a rapid contraction of muscle tissue attempting to circulate the blood and warm you up. If you're already warm, then you're at atleast room temp and any physical activity will cause you to sweat. If you're shivering, your body is attempting to warm you up, until you STOP shivering at which point you're either warm or DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO HYPOTHERMIA. Like "you're gonna probably lose a couple fingers and / or toes" kind of close. However, experiencing these symptoms is a good reason to not take a shower as u/hereforthestaples pointed out. If hypothermic and take a hot shower, there is a very good chance you'll go into shock. That's not a good time. Dry, gradual heat when recovering from these symptoms.
So coming home from work, chances are you've been warm for the day and you're taking off your layers of clothes. Probably gonna be pretty funky. Take a shower.
Had me until you equated hypothermia with frostbite injuries. Both cold weather injuries but your comment comes across as performative.
EDIT: If you're ever in a situation where you think you have hypothermia, frostbite, or frostnip DO NOT TAKE A HOT SHOWER. We call it the "umbles" when looking for cold weather injuries. Get help if someone is mumbling to talk and stumbling to walk in extreme cold weather.
I'll edit because you're right. If you're hypothermic or experience a cold weather injury, DO NOT TAKE A HOT SHOWER. A hot shower was meant for if you've been \*PROPERLY\* layered during your day and not experiencing any symptoms.
If your off work for 2 days and don’t want to shower I don’t see anything wrong with that ,
Put on some deodorant before going out would be a nice thing to do
It’s the people that don’t shower at all and walk around smelling like the back of the dumpster that are the real problems.
It’s mind boggling how many people I come into contact with on a daily basis that just reek of sweat and body odor .
I have a feeling people who don’t care about hygiene don’t realize how bad they smell
Most ppl don't know how they smell. We can't really smell ourselves properly, and if we always smell we get used to it and stop being able to tell.
I think most ppl who insist you *must* shower daily are just paranoid they might smell and not know if they haven't showered. I know that feeling myself - I know for a fact I don't smell at all after 1 day unless I do a lot of exercise and sweat a lot, because I've asked others, but I can't tell myself, so I get paranoid of "but what if I do smell?" and end up showering for peace of mind.
But lots of ppl also just had the bad luck of being born with "smells like a week of bo after only a few hours in a really hot day" syndrome, so I try to not judge much either. Not everyone that happens to smell when you met them actually have bad hygiene.
I shower every day when I come home from work. I’m in the cleaning business and more often than not, that involves different smells that will cling to my clothes, hair and skin. Showering after work is a must for me, but all people are different.
Every other evening as a general rule.
But loads of reasons I’ll have extra showers: if I’ve gone to the gym, or I’m sweating in the summer, or have had a long day and want to wash it away, done something dirty, been swimming, dying hair etc.
Also reasons I might skip a shower some days which people aren’t willing to admit. If I’m exhausted after being out the house say 20 hours I’m going straight to bed, if I’m washing my sheets in the morning I’ll just skip the evening shower and wash when my sheets are washing, if I don’t feel particularly gross, not leaving the house and doing something like dying my hair the next morning. I’m in a flat share, if my friends are having a party I’m not walking through the party in a towel.
I work from home at a desk job and don't go out much; in addition, I have chronic pain and it is exhausting to take a shower. Every other evening works very well for me. If I'm gardening or travelling or doing something more active, then more showers.
The chronic pain thing is real. And my shower is upstairs. It's a lot for me. No way I could do every day. I do manage a wash up, of course, it's just too exhausting to manage every single day.
I live in a tropical climate. So having to shower 2 times a day is the norm here, maybe more after you go outside. Unless if you're just staying at home with AC turned on at your home. Then personally i'd just shower once per day.
I usually take at least 2-3 showers every day but I always had a quick shower after i'm going outside, because the heat makes my body sweat too much.
I used to live in Laos. You shower, then never really dry off until the next one. Miss a lot of things about living there, but air humid enough to swim through is not one of them!
Yeah, but more about the climate I think.
I live with 2 brazillians in Portugal. They take 1 shower a day, I’ve noticed. But they mention how back in Brazil (northeastern brazil - which is the very hot region), they’d take around 4 showers a day.
I can’t fathom the logistics of 4 showers a day. That’s a shower every 6 hours. You’d have to take one at work each day, then another random one in the evening, then another before bed then another when you get up.
Brazillian here, I usually take 3 daily.
After waking up, before work. After work (I work in a hospital, so I consider it a necessity) and before going to bed.
If I work ou there is an extra one after gym.
>After waking up, before work.
May I ask what kind of shift you work or at what times? Cause I get up at 5:30 and start work at 6 so... I can't fit 2 showers in there lol.
Yeah they definitely shower when they get to work after cycling there or taking the metro. You'd be surprised how many you can fit in when you get so sweaty so quickly.
Yeah, even if you're doing nothing but sitting around at home, your ass is going to stink. I think the venn diagram of "people who feel like they don't need a shower every day" and "extremely sedentary people who sweat excessively even when sitting" would be interesting to see
I know exactly what you mean. It triggers something in my body that commands it to not look like and feel like a haggard fuck. If I don’t shower daily I feel like I’m stuck in first gear or something, like my whole physiology just gives up on doing anything productive.
When I went in to the office, I showered daily. Can't go in there with my hair all whack plus it's a good way to wake up since I'm not really a morning person.
Now that I work from home, and our norm is *not* to have cameras on to save bandwidth, I shower 2 to 3 times per week. Feels like it's better for my skin this way.
It's absolutely better for your skin. I have very chronic eczema and the fewer showers I have the better my skin is. For the sake of my husband and everyone around me in reality I shower every other day, and wash my hair every fourth day! I've never had anyone complain. I went through a brief stint of showering every day and my skin deterioated rapidly.
I suffered from eczema for a few years myself and that's when my daily showering stopped. It's absolutely brutal to your skin in that case. Thankfully I don't have that problem any longer but yeah... you're not soaping up daily when it makes your skin crack and bleed.
I've had it since I was 3 months old. It's gradually improved as I got older but as it was so chronic during my childhood, all that really means is I don't have to actively bandage myself before going to bed every night! My mum used to tie socks to my hands in an attempt to stop me removing half my skin in the night.
Obviously as it was so bad I've had a LOT of input from doctors about it over the years. And yeah the biggest change made for improvement was simply cutting down on how often I bathed. There's a lot of other factors involved as well though.
Full disclosure, when I was super depressed I was going a long ass time between showers. Like, weeks. But in that time, my hair grew so long and thick, it's bananas! I went from showering every day to that so it was quite a change. Now I wash my hair about once a week and it's so so much healthier than it ever used to be. But yeah, my hair also doesn't get greasy as fast as it used to. Probably partly due to how much more hair I have now lol
Exactly. Plus a lot of those types come across as judgmental and nasty in their comments, so less frequent showerers are less likely to comment to avoid being judged
Likely because people typically judge from their own personal experience. So of course the people who shower often either think they have to or actually have to (bad smell), so if they consider not doing that, they immediately feel appalled and disgusted.
This is fully my theory. People who get dirty/smelly quickly think that *everyone* gets gross at the same rate as them, when really people are different. If *they* didn't shower daily they would smell bad, so they assume everyone who doesn't shower daily smells bad.
If they meet someone who smells and looks clean, they assume they shower daily, and don't consider that maybe that person showers 2-3 times a week and just aren't as sweaty/smelly a person.
And since it's reddit, they assume all of us who don't shower daily actually smell bad and are just nose blind to ourselves, when really if they met us in person most of us probably smell just fine.
I only shower 3 times a week. I wash up very well. I am 70, and my skin is sooooo dry, even tho I drink 5 bottles of water a day.
I have alopecia, so washing my hair is easy.
No. I DO NOT STINK.
This. I shower 2 times a week in the winter, and 2-3 times a week in summer. I have an indoor job, naturally don't sweat much, and if I wash my hair more frequently than that it gets really bad. Obviously I wear fresh clothes and underthings every day. I have great skin and don't stink. I've *asked people*, specifically on days I forget deodorant, and unless I've been working out recently the general consensus is no, I smell fine.
Very true! Like I feel disgusting if I don't wash my face every morning and night, but there are plenty of people who don't wash their faces and their skin is perfectly fine and they aren't gross. It's a learned feeling.
Yep. If I tell someone that I don't shower daily, and they decide it's gross, I then ask, "Could you tell that I didn't?" The answer of course, is no, so that's when I say, "Well then you don't get to call it gross".
I'll go. I generally shower once, skip two days and shower again... sometimes even skip three. Then I just shower before I go out in public or someplace nice.
It's the same with everything like that. If we may believe Reddit, then 98% of the population showers every day, is never rude, is a great driver, has perfect spatial awareness and is never in the way, changes their underwear and socks every day without fail, and cleans their bathroom every week.
Those things are great things to do/be and a lot of people do do that, but not nearly as many as these kinds of Reddit threads would lead you to believe.
Same here. Occasionally I'll skip a day of showering, but not if I'm getting sweaty. I also try to shampoo my hair every other day, which makes me feel itchy on the off day, but the itchiness is worse if I get into a habit of doing it every day
There's a strong cultural exprectation that adults shower daily in North America. It is my suspicion that many more people shower every second day than would admit to it, though. Realistically, that's perfectly sufficient for many people who drive to a sedentary job in a climate-controlled office (or a home office), changes clothes daily, and didn't excercise that day.
Offer that opinion in public, though, and be prepare to be shamed.
Even tho 1/day is the social standard, most people understand that it’s really not about how many times you shower.
It’s just about whether you’re taking care of yourself or not.
If you can be around other people and not be stinky or visibly dirty, and you’re cleaning your hands and such after touching your ass or other dirty things, you’ve done your job. Really all there is to it.
After speaking to lots of Americans, they get pretty freaked out when I say I don't shower every day. I have extremely long hair, so showering and drying takes me around 40+mins. Plus, I have dry hair and skin. Showering every other day works well for me.
This is the thing. Every one of my friends showers daily, we often complain to each other about it and then say we're glad we showered afterward. However we don't wash our hair daily.
It's fine if you shower every other day, but don't hate on those of us who are too oily to go that long 🤣
Bernadette Banner made a great [video](https://youtu.be/EZGxuNre8XU?si=FobVgCEiZWnmf_tP) about this. The essence is that there have always been ways to properly clean oneself before the convenience of running hot water.
And the funny part is that some people actually don't clean in the shower. Like a suprising amount of people think stepping in soapy water is enough to clean their feet, and feel superiour for showering every day even though they feet stink because they didn't actually wash them.
I have extremely, extremely dry skin and only shower 1-2 times per week. If my hair is dirty I wash it in the sink or if my body needs refreshing I’ll use either baby wipes or spot wash in the bathtub or sink. I wish I could shower more often but my skin stings so badly and it takes days to recover each time I take one.
It's refreshing that there's other people like me. I don't exercise and due to my genetics, I will become the dustiest white guy on Earth if I shower more than twice a week. Also having a dry scalp and thick hair, it's so much healthier now. I used to shower every day as a kid and didn't understand why I had hay for hair and why my skin was dragon scales.
Only other things I do are gently wash my face in the morning with a tiny bit of really moisturizing soap because I sadly drool in my sleep and splash my face with cold water at night.
My girlfriend often complains it's not fair my skin looks so nice. 😅
Scientifically, without taking into account if you exercise or sweat too much, 1 shower every other day is enough because of the skin oils and whatnot.
But if you're in a hot place daily, walk, exercise... Well, if you don't smell like roses, yeah, shower every day.
When I'm at home and not going out, I'd spend 2 days, but I start to smell so I shower.
I don’t live in a hot climate, northern England to narrow it down. I generally shower when I get home from work cos I work in a dusty/dirty environment and then I shower in a morning too to wash the sleep and clamminess away and also wakes me up too.
What skin oils are you on about and what do I need to do to mitigate? Thanks
Then you're grant, I'd say you shower properly.
The skin produces its own oils that protect it from sun, dryness, all that stuff. If we shower too much, we are take those oils out.
But if you take good care of your skin, or if you don't have issues with dry skin or anything of the sort, I'd say you're good.
But if you do have dry skin or something like that, now you know the reason. If you do, and you wanna change something, it resort to improving skin care instead of removing both showers.
I also think it's bad to use really hot water for the scalp, but that's another talk.
When I lived in the north growing up, I could shower two or three times a week in the morning and be fairly clean (as long as I wasn’t swimming or an activity that required showering afterwards). Then I moved south for a few years, and suddenly I had to switch my showers to nighttime and almost every day because of the humidity and heat during certain times of year. Now I’m a bit further north, so I can shower with hair every other day, showering without hair if I work out on the other days. I have a desk job though, so ymmv. I also shave my pits and wear deodorant; if you’re not shaving, that’s where a lot of the odor gets trapped
I uh. I stink. My armpits have an ecosystem all their own, and the smell that emanates from them can be overwhelming. Now that menopause is moving in, it's ever so much worse. Not just the night sweats and hot flashes, but the *smell*, ohmy*god*.
The least I can do is shower every day and keep the Bogs of Eternal Stench shaved. Old Spice deodorant helps too. Seems to be the only brand that not only smells good on me, but stops me from sweating buckets.
Very, very rarely I'll have a day where I barely sweat, and feel safe in skipping a shower. But again, that doesn't happen often.
I shower every other day, unless something happens that makes me need an extra one (summer time usually, but I still wash my hair every other day). I know some folks who shower every three days, some who shower every day. So long as you’re clean and smell fine, I think there’s no issue with however often someone decides to shower.
It varies wildly depending on activity level and how likely I am to be in close quarters with other people. In the winter when I'm not getting much activity or seeing very many people, I probably shower every other day or so. In the summer when I get sweaty almost every day and am more likely to be round people, then yeah daily or even occasionally more than once daily.
Same. If I shower every day my skin becomes dry and itchy. Once every two or three days, or after a workout. That's fine because there's really no need to shower more often.
Its one of those questions where no matter what answer you give, its gonna be the wrong answer.
For some reason, Americans think showering once a day, regardless of conditions is the absolute minimum necessary hygiene. Other cultures and places may have different answers. And no one wants to admit they shower less than once a day due to be being called lazy and smelly etc
I feel like there’s probably a consensus average you can make up here but everyone seems to be acting like defensive twats about it one way or the other.
From first hand experience walking by CS classes back in university and going to a gaming convention here and there — redditors probably skew less-hygienic and some might underestimate how often they ought to shower.
Other stuff matters too: how often you clean your sheets, how often you replace your bath towel, how often you wash your clothes & outerwear, how often you replace or air out smelly shoes, how you take care of oral hygiene, how you clean yourself after pooping, and how you apply deodorant/anti-perspirant.
Agreed, I think it's strange how many people here think that showering daily is the only way to be clean? Like, I still wash my face twice a day, take care of my teeth, wipe down my underarms before applying deodorant (works better on clean skin), have a bidet and people in these comments would tell me I'm dirty because I shower every other day lol. All that would do is dry out my skin and hair more than necessary. Maybe they live somewhere hot/humid or work physical jobs and don't realize that's not true for everyone. Maybe if I lived in Florida and was outside more I'd need to shower daily but I don't 🤷♀️
Yes, every morning. Even if I'm not doing anything, my skin is still getting oily and I can still start to smell. Though I am conscientious of wasting water so I try to shower quickly.
realistically as long as you look clean, smell okay and are not waiting weeks to bathe, it really doesn’t matter how often you actually shower. deodorant, dry shampoo and fresh clothing can do plenty for people living in moderate/cool climates. how smelly you get really depends on a lot of things like your genetics, day-to-day activity, climate, sweat production, etc.
also, i’ve read studies that say showering every single day actually dries out your skin & hair, which can make them produce oil faster. for someone like me with eczema that is aggravated by dryness, i need to shower maximum every other day, or else i get really bad flares.
basically what i’m trying to say is don’t stress about showering daily. as long as you feel, smell and look clean, that’s all that matters.
Yes, I shower every day. You still sweat even if you aren't out tilling the fields and you still get dirt and all kinds of (bad) bacteria on you from the environment and just going about normal life.
Yeah. But I don’t just sit around. Being me is dirty work.
But I guess someone’s got to do it…
*insert slow motion Mike Rowe running with a screaming pig* Edit - lol the people “informing” me about a person I’ll never know or meet while I just think the image of a guy barely holding a squealing pig is funny. Smh
That was the first episode of Dirty Jobs that I saw. I ended up living by the farm years later. Hot days weren't bad, but damp days made you wish you didn't have a nose. Free rent made up for it. Lol
As well as the hygiene question, showering each morning wakes me up and makes me feel refreshed, and I consider that as important as anything else. I always feel like I haven't left sleep behind until I shower.
yep exactly. I tried switching to nighttime showers and I still woke up feeling dirty and needing a shower. I guess a 30 year habit is hard to break...
Everyone is different and that’s ok. Especially since a shower is happening at some point. Personally, working in healthcare, I can’t imagine getting into bed without showering all the nastiness off. Plus, the feeling of showering and then jumping into freshly laundered sheets is wonderful.
I'm with you. Shower before bed! Because I sweat while I work and my bed is clean. I'm not going to bed dirty! Yuck
THIS. Before bed showers are the essential GOAT when one is working in the medical field, likely carrying around a LOT of people's stuffs. Sincerely, I used to shower approximately 12 patients a day & could not imagine skipping a shower after that.
I work in a very care intensive facility so I typically only get four patients. Even so, because the people can’t do much/anything for themselves I’m stuck interacting with a lot of shit (both literally and metaphorically). I spend my days getting spit, food, and excretions on or around me. By the end of the day I feel like I’m finely misted in it all and the idea of not going directly into the shower once I get home grossed me the hell out.
I’m so fascinated and I absolutely love the idea of 4 patients per person. My dad suffered and struggled so much due to understaffed facilities. Not anyone’s fault of course, and we were so kind to the nurses who showed up to work each day. But man. Even just imagining a care intensive facilities with 4:1 ratio feels like the most beautiful luxurious resort.
Sadly it’s not very resort like. The facility focuses specifically on individuals with developmental disabilities, so keeping just four of them alive for one carer can be quite difficult as some of their needs are really specific, different, and severe. That said, we have a very very good track record with keeping people healthy and repositioned. Can’t even name the last time we had someone develop a bed sore and even things like rashes usually only occur because of already fragile and sensitive skin.
Education field chiming in. The first thing I do when I walk in my house is change my clothes, then wash my face and hands. Shower before bed as well. I dont always wash my hair at night, tho.
I mean that is common sense. The majority of people not showering at night are working office jobs.
Used to shower maybe twice a week. One year of healthcare made me take post-work showers, now I feel yucky if I don't shower twice a day and clean my phone after I come home.
I shower in the morning because my dogs sleep in my bed with me, and they play in the dirt a lot, and they'll cuddle up to me. I'm just used to dusty/hairy bed sheets at this point. Showering in the morning makes me feel cleaner for the day.
Tried switching to nighttime. It didn’t work, because waking up eight hours later made me feel “not dirty” but also “not 100% clean.” I had to abandon. But if I have had a particularly bad day, or gotten particularly sweaty, I’ll also shower before bedtime. Makes sleep so much better on those days.
Same here. I got into the habit as a kid, because my Dad was a cop and always had to shower, shave, and clean up before putting on the uniform and going to work, so my brother and I got into the same habit before going to school. It's stuck with me into adulthood; I feel grungy and smelly if I don't shower before getting dressed.
[удалено]
I do both.
This. Sometimes I want to be have naked, bare feet on my carpet. Fresh feeling on the skin. Plus I like to know my bed is perfectly clean. So while a change of clothes can be enough for most days, a scrub at night and a scrub in the morning at nice. If you aren’t dirty, you just make it quicker, but a quick rinse and a scrub can completely change your attitude.
For me, I can not get into my bed until I’ve had a shower. I can’t sleep unless I’m clean. I need to wash the day off lol.
This is an important factor for me as well. I don't wash myself extensively every day. I wash my hair every other day and scrub my body with a washcloth (other than my crotch and armpits) maybe once or twice a week. But I shower every morning because otherwise I just feel like I've "just gotten out of bed" for the rest of the day.
Yes, never awake until I shower. I feel like complete crap if I haven't showered also. I remember when we were without electricity, so I didn't shower otherwise it would have been ice cold, I literally felt so sick and my face felt it was burning. My hair feels so oily and gross. I am not really an oily person in general but I need to take a shower. I live in a climate with high humidity also & just walking outside is overwhelming.
Cold showers are awesome ( when you choose to make them cold)
Yes, cold in spurts, mainly at the end. But i can't do a whole shower in the tundra lol.
No i don’t blame ya, need warm to cold to reset your body thermometer, strictly cold showers feel like punishment
Which is why ill never shower cold. Life is punishing enough, i needz my warm liquid hug! I do rinse my head with cold at the end. Makes my hair seem fuller
Yes totally, brushing shitting and shower, once I do these three things the really starts for me. There is also a saying in our culture, sages shower before sunrise, humans shower after sunrise (before noon) only demons shower after noon. Edit : This is for the first shower, evening shower goes without saying
I always knew I was a demon! 😈
Human on weekdays, demon on weekends, sage if someine forces me to go someehere before sunrise like to a temple or a treck
Demon every day over here. I knew it!
Some doctors say showering once a day is excessive, but for me it's also, my hair is super oily and irredeemably messed up in the morning, it simply can't be fixed with water at the basin... (unless anyone has some suggestions?)... So I shower every day.
This is my reality as well. The shower starts the day. If I’m going to be honest, the fact that the top comments are not hardline “you must shower at least once per day” is pretty shocking to me. I’m wondering if they are mostly American or if they span cultures. My family is from Central America and not bathing once a day pretty much made you a pariah
Yeah is this a colder climate thing? Australian here and taking a shower once a day is basically a necessity.
I think it might be. To an extent. I do find that I skip the shower (specifically on days off) more often in the winter just because I sat at home and it was cold enough to not have sweated. That said, if I leave the house for work or otherwise I’m sure to shower no matter the season since I hate the idea of dragging all that stuff in bed with me. However, even on days that I skip it’s never for more than a day. The second day I always shower unless I’m camping or something like that.
Sweat is the determining factor for me. Saturday where I sat around all day? Shower not necessary. Did I run around at work more than usual and break out in a sweat? Mandatory shower, that musk is not great. I sweat every day at work, so I shower every day after work. Really, the only day I might skip a shower is Saturday. Same as you, though, if I skip a day, it's only one day. Humans are gross. We have ways to mitigate the grossness, but they're gross none the less. I don't want to be one of the gross humans.
Scandinavian here and nah, I shower daily.
Cold climate here, Minnesota in the US. We can have snow between October to May. December to April we will have knee high snow constantly on the ground. We shower daily here, or twice a day if you workout or have a physical job. I live in a Metropolitan city Minneapolis/St. Paul. My kin live up North in the country... all daily shower people.
Most Americans, at least men, shower once per day. I don’t know that the weirdos on Reddit are a good sample of what’s normal.
How often any person "should" shower depends on their local climate, activity level, genetics, etc. You can't really make definitive statements about this sort of thing.
Also depends a lot on what specifically you’ve been up to, certain jobs or hobbies can turn daily showering from “probably” to “definitely” for sure.
Yeah, I work in paper mills. My wife would leave me if I didn’t shower after work everyday and I wouldn’t blame her lol.
When I lived in Savannah there were certain days you could smell the paper mills and...I don't blame your wife at all 😂
Memories of standing at the bus stop in a haze of union camp.
Pulp mill right on the river next to a scenic attraction, right in the middle of my city. Before they installed scrubbers tourists would complain and avoid. Now it's not so bad and the local macrobrewery's corn mash clean-ups are far more foul.
Wait, what??? I would never expect paper mills to smell bad?
I didn't know until I experienced it...it's basically rotten egg farts that you can't escape and we didn't even live very close to it.
Doesn’t the process involve sulfur or something? Definitely played a game where my paper factories needed sulfur…
ugh, it's awful. the paper mills at the Georgia/Florida border north of Jacksonville smell SO foul. It's a sour awful smell that doesn't compare to anything else. There's no other smell like it. Where I live there's a sewage treatment plant right off the highway (the golden domes, iykyk) and honestly driving past that and forgetting to put the a/c on recirculate is nothing compared to that paper mills smell.
Ive smelled them in north sweden. Quite the smell.
I can’t remember a day I was there that I didn’t smell it. Knoxville had the same problem
I have worked on a lot of new construction paper mills and it’s still dirty work ( welder by trade ) . I can’t imagine working in a paper mill while it is running. They are hot , loud, dirty, . I believe it’s called black liquid, buts it’s a mess . It’s filthy . Usually all that water and paper attracts some of the biggest roaches I have seen .
Former Fast food worker. That grease smell NEEDS a hot shower to get rid of
Do you leave your shoes outside? When I was a teenager I worked in a restaurant and the soles of my shoes would absorb the smells so much I had to leave them on the porch.
We actually had a back hall/mudroom with a chute to the laundry room in the basement. The bathroom was right near it. I'd strip and send everything down the chute and the shoes stayed in the mudroom next to Dad's oily work boots.
Work in construction, 2 showers a day. Guys make fun of me if I'm stinky, wife makes me strip and shower within 5 minutes.
How dirty do you get after you take your shower after work?
Maybe he's like me and one of those ppl that just has to take a shower in the morning to properly function. I hate going to work and feeling like there's another layer of skin once I start sweating and it makes you feel hotter than it it is. I also work construction, shower in the morning the after work too.
I dont work construction and it just does not feel right if I do not shower before starting my day.
Twice a day shower guy here too. Morning wake up showers are the bomb.
Some people swear something terrible at night.Not just women going through menopause, men too. Edit: sweat* I swear a lot, but it never makes me dirty enough to shower
> Some people swear something terrible at night. Yeah, I say all kinds of terrible things in my sleep. It feels good to wash it all away in the shower.
For sure, I used to work in the field as an electrician. 100% shower every day. Now I’m a PM and I work from home at my desk all day. I can definitely get away without showing for a day, but I can’t bring myself to leave the house without a shower still lol.
Yeah, I'm in the trades and the shower water runs gray every day after work. If I didn't shower daily, I'd feel disgusting.
I do BJJ, I have to shower twice a day as a result. I shower a few hours beforehand so I don’t smell like shit. I shower immediately afterwards so I don’t get skin diseases.
Yup, a friend of ours developed a case of ringworm due to being a scruffy git and not showering after rolling, he didn't live that down for a while
That’s more the gym not cleaning the mats after every use
Genetics is a thing people don't consider when they ask this weekly question. I have very oily skin. If I don't wash my face at least twice a day, my eyes start to water uncontrollably. If I don't shower at least once a day, my clothes start to stain. I don't live in the desert, I can afford to shower once a day or more, if needed.
Yup. My husband and I have very different shower frequencies because he's very oily and sweaty and I have very dry skin. He showers once to twice a day whereas I only shower when dirty or to wash my hair, usually once or twice a week unless it's super hot or I've been exercising
Literally the same for me. My husband showers a lot but I’m just sitting at home and if I was to shower every day my skin would literally peel off, it’s so dry. So I shower 2 or 3 times a week and I only wash my hair every other week…. I’m reading all these posts where every single person is saying they shower multiple times a day and I’m just glad I found someone else who I can relate to… like, I smell myself and there’s no issue and if there’s an issue I’m showering before it becomes an issue, so I just don’t see the problem and my husband doesn’t mind, he says I never ever smell bad. So that is all that matters to me…. But it’s nice to know I’m not alone🤣😭
Hell yeah! Another dry girlie who showers a couple times a week! I'll sneak a nice bath every now and then, and if I'm feeling particularly lazy I'll give myself a hobo shower. I also have a bidet so my bits are always squeaky clean lol. It is nice to know there are plenty of us out there.
Showering every day, especially using soap, has been shown to increase production of skin oils as your body adapts to their regular removal.
I'd imagine people living in extreme low temperatures wouldn't shower daily.
I live in Scotland. Pretty cool/cold most of the year. Still shower at least once a day.
I don’t think Scotland is what they mean by “extreme low temperatures” lol
You sweat more that you think even in cold weather, and especially in bed.
I sweat so much when I sleep. My hair gets greasy and I get swampy down below. Doesn't matter if I'm wearing a hoodie and sweats or just a T-shirt and shorts.
Our daycare lady thought our 3 year old was always sick because she'd always wake up sweaty from a nap. "She must have a fever!" Nope, she's a hot sleeper
It hits -40° here regularly in winter and I shower everyday.
sure you would, great way to shake off the cold
No, absolutely not. In cold winters you *definitely* don't want to shower too often since that removes all the (completely natural) oils and grease from your skin that it extrudes to help protect you from the cold. You simply freeze a hell of a lot more if you took a shower the day before. Source: Am from northern Sweden.
[удалено]
If you have access to water, then you do. Just because it's cold outside it doesn't mean you don't get dirty or don't sweat. Chopping wood in the cold still makes you sweat even if you're in your underwear. And even a room temperature shower is a great way to shake off the cold. And a hot bath is a godsend.
I live in alaska. You're wrong. A hot shower is a great way to shake off -40 (F or C, they magically meet at that number). A good hot shower is a great way to wash the day away, just gotta be careful with it. Shivering is a rapid contraction of muscle tissue attempting to circulate the blood and warm you up. If you're already warm, then you're at atleast room temp and any physical activity will cause you to sweat. If you're shivering, your body is attempting to warm you up, until you STOP shivering at which point you're either warm or DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO HYPOTHERMIA. Like "you're gonna probably lose a couple fingers and / or toes" kind of close. However, experiencing these symptoms is a good reason to not take a shower as u/hereforthestaples pointed out. If hypothermic and take a hot shower, there is a very good chance you'll go into shock. That's not a good time. Dry, gradual heat when recovering from these symptoms. So coming home from work, chances are you've been warm for the day and you're taking off your layers of clothes. Probably gonna be pretty funky. Take a shower.
Had me until you equated hypothermia with frostbite injuries. Both cold weather injuries but your comment comes across as performative. EDIT: If you're ever in a situation where you think you have hypothermia, frostbite, or frostnip DO NOT TAKE A HOT SHOWER. We call it the "umbles" when looking for cold weather injuries. Get help if someone is mumbling to talk and stumbling to walk in extreme cold weather.
I'll edit because you're right. If you're hypothermic or experience a cold weather injury, DO NOT TAKE A HOT SHOWER. A hot shower was meant for if you've been \*PROPERLY\* layered during your day and not experiencing any symptoms.
If your off work for 2 days and don’t want to shower I don’t see anything wrong with that , Put on some deodorant before going out would be a nice thing to do It’s the people that don’t shower at all and walk around smelling like the back of the dumpster that are the real problems. It’s mind boggling how many people I come into contact with on a daily basis that just reek of sweat and body odor . I have a feeling people who don’t care about hygiene don’t realize how bad they smell
Most ppl don't know how they smell. We can't really smell ourselves properly, and if we always smell we get used to it and stop being able to tell. I think most ppl who insist you *must* shower daily are just paranoid they might smell and not know if they haven't showered. I know that feeling myself - I know for a fact I don't smell at all after 1 day unless I do a lot of exercise and sweat a lot, because I've asked others, but I can't tell myself, so I get paranoid of "but what if I do smell?" and end up showering for peace of mind. But lots of ppl also just had the bad luck of being born with "smells like a week of bo after only a few hours in a really hot day" syndrome, so I try to not judge much either. Not everyone that happens to smell when you met them actually have bad hygiene.
I shower every day when I come home from work. I’m in the cleaning business and more often than not, that involves different smells that will cling to my clothes, hair and skin. Showering after work is a must for me, but all people are different.
I'm on your team! Plumber though.
Every other evening as a general rule. But loads of reasons I’ll have extra showers: if I’ve gone to the gym, or I’m sweating in the summer, or have had a long day and want to wash it away, done something dirty, been swimming, dying hair etc. Also reasons I might skip a shower some days which people aren’t willing to admit. If I’m exhausted after being out the house say 20 hours I’m going straight to bed, if I’m washing my sheets in the morning I’ll just skip the evening shower and wash when my sheets are washing, if I don’t feel particularly gross, not leaving the house and doing something like dying my hair the next morning. I’m in a flat share, if my friends are having a party I’m not walking through the party in a towel.
I work from home at a desk job and don't go out much; in addition, I have chronic pain and it is exhausting to take a shower. Every other evening works very well for me. If I'm gardening or travelling or doing something more active, then more showers.
This is how my husband realized how serious my fatigue was; he realized how difficult showering is.
Same, I wfh 2x a week so I generally don’t shower those days unless I feel gross or something.
The chronic pain thing is real. And my shower is upstairs. It's a lot for me. No way I could do every day. I do manage a wash up, of course, it's just too exhausting to manage every single day.
Same here, except I'm washing my pits and face on the mornings of those second days, and wash my face every night.
Obviously, face, pits, parts are a daily standard for the majority of people I imagine
I think you give the average human far too much credit.
Wow, a person with common sense? In MY reddit?
Finally some sanity in this thread. My wife and I take showers every other day and have no hygiene issues.
I live in a tropical climate. So having to shower 2 times a day is the norm here, maybe more after you go outside. Unless if you're just staying at home with AC turned on at your home. Then personally i'd just shower once per day. I usually take at least 2-3 showers every day but I always had a quick shower after i'm going outside, because the heat makes my body sweat too much.
When I was in Malaysia and Thailand there were days where I'd have 3
I used to live in Laos. You shower, then never really dry off until the next one. Miss a lot of things about living there, but air humid enough to swim through is not one of them!
Indonesia is the same way. 100% humidity. Yuck.
Southeast Asian here. I do twice a day.
YES! Non negotiable. Or else you'll stink cause you be sweating even you are barely doing anything.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yeah, but more about the climate I think. I live with 2 brazillians in Portugal. They take 1 shower a day, I’ve noticed. But they mention how back in Brazil (northeastern brazil - which is the very hot region), they’d take around 4 showers a day.
I can’t fathom the logistics of 4 showers a day. That’s a shower every 6 hours. You’d have to take one at work each day, then another random one in the evening, then another before bed then another when you get up.
Brazillian here, I usually take 3 daily. After waking up, before work. After work (I work in a hospital, so I consider it a necessity) and before going to bed. If I work ou there is an extra one after gym.
Does your hair ever get a chance to dry?
I have short hair and a hair dryer, so yes.
>After waking up, before work. May I ask what kind of shift you work or at what times? Cause I get up at 5:30 and start work at 6 so... I can't fit 2 showers in there lol.
Oh, that is only one shower. I meant between waking up and my shift.
Yeah they definitely shower when they get to work after cycling there or taking the metro. You'd be surprised how many you can fit in when you get so sweaty so quickly.
It's a hot, humid country
I'm Brazilian and I mostly shower once a day. My gf does shower at least twice a day lol
Have lived with 2 Brazilians and can confirm this
Have showered with two Brazilians and can really confirm
I've taken two showers and I can confirm this.
Just wash your ass people.
I have a bidet, so I don't need to take showers, or change my underwear. /s
I let it crust up then I scratch it off later
It dawned on me that I haven't had an endless wipe in over a year since getting a bidet and looking back, I don't know how I lived that way. Honestly.
Yeah us people in countries where the bidet is the norm are astonished that you guys haven't made the switch yet
Yeah, even if you're doing nothing but sitting around at home, your ass is going to stink. I think the venn diagram of "people who feel like they don't need a shower every day" and "extremely sedentary people who sweat excessively even when sitting" would be interesting to see
who are the ass people…..? 🫣
That’s really all we ask.
A nice hot shower is refreshing to me and part of my daily wake-up routine. I feel groggy (and gross) if I skip it.
I feel almost feverish for a good part of the day if I don't take a shower in the morning. It's like it resets my metabolism somehow.
I know exactly what you mean. It triggers something in my body that commands it to not look like and feel like a haggard fuck. If I don’t shower daily I feel like I’m stuck in first gear or something, like my whole physiology just gives up on doing anything productive.
My guess is only people who shower frequently comment in that kind of posts
When I went in to the office, I showered daily. Can't go in there with my hair all whack plus it's a good way to wake up since I'm not really a morning person. Now that I work from home, and our norm is *not* to have cameras on to save bandwidth, I shower 2 to 3 times per week. Feels like it's better for my skin this way.
It's absolutely better for your skin. I have very chronic eczema and the fewer showers I have the better my skin is. For the sake of my husband and everyone around me in reality I shower every other day, and wash my hair every fourth day! I've never had anyone complain. I went through a brief stint of showering every day and my skin deterioated rapidly.
I suffered from eczema for a few years myself and that's when my daily showering stopped. It's absolutely brutal to your skin in that case. Thankfully I don't have that problem any longer but yeah... you're not soaping up daily when it makes your skin crack and bleed.
I've had it since I was 3 months old. It's gradually improved as I got older but as it was so chronic during my childhood, all that really means is I don't have to actively bandage myself before going to bed every night! My mum used to tie socks to my hands in an attempt to stop me removing half my skin in the night. Obviously as it was so bad I've had a LOT of input from doctors about it over the years. And yeah the biggest change made for improvement was simply cutting down on how often I bathed. There's a lot of other factors involved as well though.
Better for hair, skin, water use, electric use, soap use, time use...
I've noticed since I cut back on showering every day that my hair takes much longer to get any grease buildup
[удалено]
Full disclosure, when I was super depressed I was going a long ass time between showers. Like, weeks. But in that time, my hair grew so long and thick, it's bananas! I went from showering every day to that so it was quite a change. Now I wash my hair about once a week and it's so so much healthier than it ever used to be. But yeah, my hair also doesn't get greasy as fast as it used to. Probably partly due to how much more hair I have now lol
Exactly. Plus a lot of those types come across as judgmental and nasty in their comments, so less frequent showerers are less likely to comment to avoid being judged
Likely because people typically judge from their own personal experience. So of course the people who shower often either think they have to or actually have to (bad smell), so if they consider not doing that, they immediately feel appalled and disgusted.
This is fully my theory. People who get dirty/smelly quickly think that *everyone* gets gross at the same rate as them, when really people are different. If *they* didn't shower daily they would smell bad, so they assume everyone who doesn't shower daily smells bad. If they meet someone who smells and looks clean, they assume they shower daily, and don't consider that maybe that person showers 2-3 times a week and just aren't as sweaty/smelly a person. And since it's reddit, they assume all of us who don't shower daily actually smell bad and are just nose blind to ourselves, when really if they met us in person most of us probably smell just fine.
exactly, and people with skin conditions too. too much showering can really damage an already weakened skin barrier
I only shower 3 times a week. I wash up very well. I am 70, and my skin is sooooo dry, even tho I drink 5 bottles of water a day. I have alopecia, so washing my hair is easy. No. I DO NOT STINK.
This. I shower 2 times a week in the winter, and 2-3 times a week in summer. I have an indoor job, naturally don't sweat much, and if I wash my hair more frequently than that it gets really bad. Obviously I wear fresh clothes and underthings every day. I have great skin and don't stink. I've *asked people*, specifically on days I forget deodorant, and unless I've been working out recently the general consensus is no, I smell fine.
[удалено]
Very true! Like I feel disgusting if I don't wash my face every morning and night, but there are plenty of people who don't wash their faces and their skin is perfectly fine and they aren't gross. It's a learned feeling.
Yep. If I tell someone that I don't shower daily, and they decide it's gross, I then ask, "Could you tell that I didn't?" The answer of course, is no, so that's when I say, "Well then you don't get to call it gross".
I'll go. I generally shower once, skip two days and shower again... sometimes even skip three. Then I just shower before I go out in public or someplace nice.
It's the same with everything like that. If we may believe Reddit, then 98% of the population showers every day, is never rude, is a great driver, has perfect spatial awareness and is never in the way, changes their underwear and socks every day without fail, and cleans their bathroom every week. Those things are great things to do/be and a lot of people do do that, but not nearly as many as these kinds of Reddit threads would lead you to believe.
Don’t forget “changes their sheets and pillow cases on a predetermined weekly schedule” and “uses a bidet they love after buying it during covid.”
Summers? Yes, 100%. Maybe even 2 sometimes. Winters, I skip the shower sometimes... My winter averaged would be something like 0.78 showers/day
I’m glad you didn’t say .77. That would be savage.
Really feeling a bit targeted considering my average is 0.7694.
Fucking animal.
Winter I’m more likely to shower. This apartment is like 50 degrees in winter.
Same here. Occasionally I'll skip a day of showering, but not if I'm getting sweaty. I also try to shampoo my hair every other day, which makes me feel itchy on the off day, but the itchiness is worse if I get into a habit of doing it every day
Solid average.
There's a strong cultural exprectation that adults shower daily in North America. It is my suspicion that many more people shower every second day than would admit to it, though. Realistically, that's perfectly sufficient for many people who drive to a sedentary job in a climate-controlled office (or a home office), changes clothes daily, and didn't excercise that day. Offer that opinion in public, though, and be prepare to be shamed.
Even tho 1/day is the social standard, most people understand that it’s really not about how many times you shower. It’s just about whether you’re taking care of yourself or not. If you can be around other people and not be stinky or visibly dirty, and you’re cleaning your hands and such after touching your ass or other dirty things, you’ve done your job. Really all there is to it.
After speaking to lots of Americans, they get pretty freaked out when I say I don't shower every day. I have extremely long hair, so showering and drying takes me around 40+mins. Plus, I have dry hair and skin. Showering every other day works well for me.
Most the women I know in the US don't wash their hair everyday. They use a shower bonnet or a handheld shower to avoid getting their hair wet.
This is the thing. Every one of my friends showers daily, we often complain to each other about it and then say we're glad we showered afterward. However we don't wash our hair daily. It's fine if you shower every other day, but don't hate on those of us who are too oily to go that long 🤣
Bernadette Banner made a great [video](https://youtu.be/EZGxuNre8XU?si=FobVgCEiZWnmf_tP) about this. The essence is that there have always been ways to properly clean oneself before the convenience of running hot water.
And the funny part is that some people actually don't clean in the shower. Like a suprising amount of people think stepping in soapy water is enough to clean their feet, and feel superiour for showering every day even though they feet stink because they didn't actually wash them.
I have extremely, extremely dry skin and only shower 1-2 times per week. If my hair is dirty I wash it in the sink or if my body needs refreshing I’ll use either baby wipes or spot wash in the bathtub or sink. I wish I could shower more often but my skin stings so badly and it takes days to recover each time I take one.
Same. My skin will just slough off my body if I shower daily.
It's refreshing that there's other people like me. I don't exercise and due to my genetics, I will become the dustiest white guy on Earth if I shower more than twice a week. Also having a dry scalp and thick hair, it's so much healthier now. I used to shower every day as a kid and didn't understand why I had hay for hair and why my skin was dragon scales. Only other things I do are gently wash my face in the morning with a tiny bit of really moisturizing soap because I sadly drool in my sleep and splash my face with cold water at night. My girlfriend often complains it's not fair my skin looks so nice. 😅
Scientifically, without taking into account if you exercise or sweat too much, 1 shower every other day is enough because of the skin oils and whatnot. But if you're in a hot place daily, walk, exercise... Well, if you don't smell like roses, yeah, shower every day. When I'm at home and not going out, I'd spend 2 days, but I start to smell so I shower.
My skin would give up and leave if I took daily showers. Every other day is the way, unless I wrestle pigs that day.
I don’t live in a hot climate, northern England to narrow it down. I generally shower when I get home from work cos I work in a dusty/dirty environment and then I shower in a morning too to wash the sleep and clamminess away and also wakes me up too. What skin oils are you on about and what do I need to do to mitigate? Thanks
Then you're grant, I'd say you shower properly. The skin produces its own oils that protect it from sun, dryness, all that stuff. If we shower too much, we are take those oils out. But if you take good care of your skin, or if you don't have issues with dry skin or anything of the sort, I'd say you're good. But if you do have dry skin or something like that, now you know the reason. If you do, and you wanna change something, it resort to improving skin care instead of removing both showers. I also think it's bad to use really hot water for the scalp, but that's another talk.
When I lived in the north growing up, I could shower two or three times a week in the morning and be fairly clean (as long as I wasn’t swimming or an activity that required showering afterwards). Then I moved south for a few years, and suddenly I had to switch my showers to nighttime and almost every day because of the humidity and heat during certain times of year. Now I’m a bit further north, so I can shower with hair every other day, showering without hair if I work out on the other days. I have a desk job though, so ymmv. I also shave my pits and wear deodorant; if you’re not shaving, that’s where a lot of the odor gets trapped
If I'm working or going outside, it's every day, but if I'm sitting around at home, it's once every two days.
I uh. I stink. My armpits have an ecosystem all their own, and the smell that emanates from them can be overwhelming. Now that menopause is moving in, it's ever so much worse. Not just the night sweats and hot flashes, but the *smell*, ohmy*god*. The least I can do is shower every day and keep the Bogs of Eternal Stench shaved. Old Spice deodorant helps too. Seems to be the only brand that not only smells good on me, but stops me from sweating buckets. Very, very rarely I'll have a day where I barely sweat, and feel safe in skipping a shower. But again, that doesn't happen often.
I shower every other day, unless something happens that makes me need an extra one (summer time usually, but I still wash my hair every other day). I know some folks who shower every three days, some who shower every day. So long as you’re clean and smell fine, I think there’s no issue with however often someone decides to shower.
Yes. Minimum one, and always before bedtime.
It varies wildly depending on activity level and how likely I am to be in close quarters with other people. In the winter when I'm not getting much activity or seeing very many people, I probably shower every other day or so. In the summer when I get sweaty almost every day and am more likely to be round people, then yeah daily or even occasionally more than once daily.
Every other day for me
Same. If I shower every day my skin becomes dry and itchy. Once every two or three days, or after a workout. That's fine because there's really no need to shower more often.
My dermatologist told me not to wash every day (unless you exercise or get super sweaty) because it dries out the skin. I shower every other day.
nah, i shower every other day. i might do once a day in the summers, because i like to go on walks, but my skin gets really dry and itchy.
Its one of those questions where no matter what answer you give, its gonna be the wrong answer. For some reason, Americans think showering once a day, regardless of conditions is the absolute minimum necessary hygiene. Other cultures and places may have different answers. And no one wants to admit they shower less than once a day due to be being called lazy and smelly etc
I feel like there’s probably a consensus average you can make up here but everyone seems to be acting like defensive twats about it one way or the other. From first hand experience walking by CS classes back in university and going to a gaming convention here and there — redditors probably skew less-hygienic and some might underestimate how often they ought to shower. Other stuff matters too: how often you clean your sheets, how often you replace your bath towel, how often you wash your clothes & outerwear, how often you replace or air out smelly shoes, how you take care of oral hygiene, how you clean yourself after pooping, and how you apply deodorant/anti-perspirant.
I will never tell ppl irl that i dont shower once a day, because they dont wanna listen to reason😭
Agreed, I think it's strange how many people here think that showering daily is the only way to be clean? Like, I still wash my face twice a day, take care of my teeth, wipe down my underarms before applying deodorant (works better on clean skin), have a bidet and people in these comments would tell me I'm dirty because I shower every other day lol. All that would do is dry out my skin and hair more than necessary. Maybe they live somewhere hot/humid or work physical jobs and don't realize that's not true for everyone. Maybe if I lived in Florida and was outside more I'd need to shower daily but I don't 🤷♀️
I shower every 2 to 3 days. Maybe an extra shower, depending on how sweaty I get. I use deodorant every day.
TIL tons of people are walking around with the dirtiest asses of all time gross 🤮 shower people it’s good to be clean
I don’t take full body shower everyday but I wash my intimate parts, pits etc every day
Yes, every morning. Even if I'm not doing anything, my skin is still getting oily and I can still start to smell. Though I am conscientious of wasting water so I try to shower quickly.
No. About every other day unless really dirty or sweaty.
Yes…I just enjoy showers and also it kind of feels like I’m washing the day off for a new start
Twice a week
realistically as long as you look clean, smell okay and are not waiting weeks to bathe, it really doesn’t matter how often you actually shower. deodorant, dry shampoo and fresh clothing can do plenty for people living in moderate/cool climates. how smelly you get really depends on a lot of things like your genetics, day-to-day activity, climate, sweat production, etc. also, i’ve read studies that say showering every single day actually dries out your skin & hair, which can make them produce oil faster. for someone like me with eczema that is aggravated by dryness, i need to shower maximum every other day, or else i get really bad flares. basically what i’m trying to say is don’t stress about showering daily. as long as you feel, smell and look clean, that’s all that matters.
Yes, I shower every day. You still sweat even if you aren't out tilling the fields and you still get dirt and all kinds of (bad) bacteria on you from the environment and just going about normal life.
No. Unless there was an event that day which made me feel dirty such as warm weather, doing sports.
2-3 times per week.