Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: deport
Thats the reason people only took baths infrequently, a lot of trouble to cart the buckets of water into the back room from the outside pump, put in on the old coal fired stove to heat, carry it back into the back room, pour into tub and add enough water to cool it down, wash and the dispose of the water....there was no turning on the tap and filling the tub....we are a soft people now :O)

I still remember my grandma's farm, with a parlor and a piano in it...children were not allowed in the parlor. The upstairs bedrooms would hold 3 full size beds and each had a chamber pot under it...you were careful using the chamber pot in case someone else had used it, you didn't want pee dumped on your feet.....ah, life was good in the good old days.....

87 posted on 12/12/2010 10:42:40 AM PST by goat granny
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies ]


To: goat granny
Yup, baths at great grandma's were just as you described them. Pump the water, put it on the wood stove to heat, dump it in the big tin washtub. Hoped you weren't the last person to take a bath. Great granny to a liking to Tide and used it to scrub my brother and I down. Lord, our skin was brand new by the time she took several layers off of it.

Chamber pots under the beds were only for use in the winter. If you had to go at night in the spring, summer, or fall, it was the outhouse for you. Kerosene lantern went with you if there wasn't enough moon to see by. Scary place at night.

Granny had a four room house, with a pantry that was turned into a bathroom later when she got plumbing. There was a stove that ran on what granny called fuel oil in the living room and a wood stove in the kitchen. Whatever heat the bedrooms felt came in from the kitchen or living room. Granny would heat bricks on the wood stove and put them under the covers at the end of the bed. Sure made your feet toasty. But if you had to go in the middle of the night in the winter, you dropped your feet on the cold rose linoleum, reached under the bed and pulled out the chamber pot (also with roses on it. My mom say a lady use one just like it at a fancy sit down meal decades later for a gravy boat. Mom said she just couldn't eat any gravy, she just couldn't!) and you would lower your poor bottom onto that cold china.....things were a lot harder then; but in some ways, a lot happier too.

279 posted on 12/13/2010 10:07:08 PM PST by MWestMom (Tread carefully, truth lies here.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson