When I was little was lived in a 3 Bedroom apartment with one bathroom. My family was 4 kids with the eldest two as teenage girls at the time, (late sixties).
It was not good being a little kid in this situation and at least twice I had wet my pants as a 3 or 4 year old as the bathroom was not available. It was often tense and pounding on the bathroom door was a very common sound in the house.
Thankfully we moved to NJ and a two bathroom house shortly before I turned 5. The only time I ever had an issue after that, I ran outside and peed in a bush.
I don’t know about the US but in the UK of the 1950s (and into the 60s) many people (including my family) used chamber pots at night (rather than go to the one outside toilet), and they were always available for use in the daytime in an emergency (kept under beds).
Actually, back when my family was 6 people and 1 bathroom some of the shaving and tooth brushing was done over the kitchen sink while the bathroom was in use. Basically, during busy times anything you could do somewhere else was not done int he bathroom - basically, it was for pissing, shitting, and showering (baths were evening only, when no one had to rush to be anywhere). Hair and tooth brushing, make up applications, etc., were done elsewhere. If you needed a mirror there were a couple of portable ones in the house, a full length one behind the door of the parents’ bedroom, and so forth.
When I was a kid, my mom would wash our hair once a week, usually in the bathroom sink. I think that went on until I was about 12 or 13 and started taking showers instead of baths. Man, I had forgotten all about that stuff.
How about today? Do kids get their hair washed every day?
I grew up in a family of five daughters, and four of them were teenagers at the same time. Everyone was expected to ask if anyone needed to use the toilet before they took a bath or shower, and there was no hair styling, makeup applying, or leg shaving in the bathroom. Shower or bathe, brush your teeth, and get out; and shower quickly, so there’s hot water left for the next person. I recall a lot of hair washing in the kitchen sink, which had one of those sprayer things that made rinsing easier.
My sisters also weren’t allowed to leave all their stuff – various shampoos, conditioners, face wash, cleansers, etc – in the bathroom. Either you used whatever Mom bought, or kept your own junk in your room and carried it back and forth. (I now have two teenaged step-daughters, and three small boys, and the two teens can overtake the bathroom in a matter of minutes with about twenty different products each.) I pile two or three little boys in the tub at a time, to save time and water.
I should have said you started brushing in the bathroom and you bobbed back in to spit and put away the brush. You didn’t always have to do that, sometimes you did. Mom had a strict policy against spitting it into the kitchen sink.
Yes. chamber pots (my mother grew up out in farming country where they were called “slop jars”) had lids. You dumped the contents into the privvy (outhouse) in the morning.
There is still one of those in the attic. They made me potty train on it. It was dad’s and I hated that thing. They finally gave up on it after 2 weeks and held me on the large toilet seat. Those little kid trainer seats weren’t in the house until my sister was training.
Keep in mind that prior to the 1970’s people also used a hell of a lot less crap in their hair. Seriously, hairspray was about it, and always even that. Otherwise it was shampoo and rinse, none of this mousse and style gel and other shit that holds on to grease and dirt and whatever else is in the environment. Seriously, just wash your hair without using all that other stuff, give it a good brushing/combing once a day, and it will stay clean for several days to a week. The exception being if you’re doing something that gets your sweating profusely.
My dad grew up one of nine kids in a one bathroom house with a well for water. They had the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” rule to conserve water. Eleven people flushing all day was too much strain on the well.
Many older homes in Pittsburgh have the classic “pittsburgh toilet.” It’s a single commode sitting in an unenclosed corner of the basement. Classy ones have a shower curtain around them.
I think this is the reason behind the fact that a lot of times when I used the one-person-at-a-time men’s room at a small diner immediately after a senior citizen, I found the toilet unflushed.
I live in a house that’s approximately 100 years old. Three bedrooms and 2 baths, but it’s fairly obvious that the downstairs bathroom was originally something else. The upstairs bathroom has an old cast iron bathtub, and everything else other than the toilet and countertop is very old. But I suspect that the downstairs “bathroom”, which contains a shower, sink, toilet, and washer & dryer, was originally either a pantry, a laundry room, or a combination of both.
To get to that bathroom, you have to walk through a room that I suspect was originally the den, which itself is entered via the dining room. The sink sits in sort of an alcove, and judging by that alcove and the opposite side of that wall, I think that’s where the door was originally, and it would have opened directly into the kitchen, which lends credence to the pantry idea. Meanwhile, this bathroom also contains the door to the cellar. Last but not least, it has a door that opens to the outside, at the rear of the house, which probably confirms the laundry room theory - wash the laundry with a tub and a hand-cranked wringer, then carry it outside to hang it on the clothesline.
When I was a kid in the '50s, the people behind us had seven daughters (trying for a son, and never got one). Their house was the same as ours . . . a little frame house with one bathroom. I remember that it wasn’t rare to see one of the girls squatting outside behind the bushes (“behind” from their point of view; “in front of” from ours).
I was #4 of 9 and didn’t know what it was like to bath in fresh warm water. sometimes same water was used for up to 8 baths!
And like the above poster stated, Yellow was a common color in the can.
But indoors sure beat walking the path! Especially after the point (frozen) made it imposable to sit :o
I grew up in a family of 14. We had no electricty,nor indoor plumbing. We had an out house(3 seater).
We pumped our water by hand, then heated it in a big copper washtub. We took turns bathing. Some times the water was barely warm. We washed our hair with rainwater that was collected in a cistern and washed it in a basin. We also had to pump water for washing clothes and it was heated on a kerosene stove in the wash house. In summer we bathed in the creek.
It hasn’t been that long ago that a lack of indoor plumbing wasn’t particularly uncommon (and there are still a few communities where indoor plumbing is the exception rather than the rule - I believe most state health departments track the statistics).
My parents bought their house in 1954 and it didn’t have indoor plumbing til 1955 (my mother got pregnant with my oldest brother and laid down the law).
As to chamber pots, I recall using thost at many relatives’ homes up into the 1970s (my grandmmother’s house never did have indoor plumbing and she died in 1986). It was either use the chamber pot or go to the outhouse and the outhouse was scary.
This is where a fill in location field would help. Hi Leaffan.
As I was born in NY and raised in NJ, indoor plumbing was nearly universal. Even my Grandmother’s summer home in the mountains had a flush toilet, we just had to occasionally get water from a spring to fill up her large tank.
Just a couple years ago, I visited a friend who had just purchased a small house. For financial reasons, he had a bunch of guys living with him, contributing toward the mortgage. We were sitting on the back porch, and I could smell urine. Eventually one of the guys walked to the edge of the porch and urinated into the grass. The single bathroom was for defecation and occasional bathing only. If you had to pee, you went out back.
