You’re at some weird camp site where the only thing you’re allowed to carry to the shower block is a towel and soap.
It’s the end of a day of moderate activity and you are in need of a shower. You’re not muddy or noticeably dirty, just the sort of sweat and grime that your own body might produce after a day of walking around in the same clothes.
Because of the above-stated rule of the site, you are faced with two broad choices:
1: Wear your existing clothes to the shower block, then after showering, dress back into your unclean clothes, walk back to your accommodation, then change there into clean clothes
2: Change into clean clothes before walking to the shower block for your shower
Which is your choice? Remember, you can’t carry additional clothes in either direction, even if you somehow conceal them.
My socks, bra and underwear are really what’s getting dirty, here. So I walk to the shower in my dirty clothes (including underthings), shower, then put back on my pants and shirt, sans underthings, for the walk back. Then I put on my clean clothes.
When I go swimming I pretty much do this. Change into my suit from my street clothes, swim, throw on pants and shirt to go home. Never re-use undies.
This. There is no reason to get funk on clean clothes or get yourself dirty after the shower.
In a laying around the house on a Saturday I’m likely to skip the shower and just put on clean clothes and if my clothes have been very lightly worn I’ll put back on dirty clothes after a shower but that is more of a I threw on something once I got up to let the dog out and then jumped in the shower not I went for a hike and then put the clothes back on. I think in the spirit of the hypothetical I’m dirty body clean clothes but as for the actual question I’m just walking around in my towel.
Who really cares?. The negligible length of time this affects you for is so small it makes no difference, wear your old clothes and change when you get back or change and then walk to the shower. Who cares?
This seems like an appropriate thread to drop in an anecdote I read in a book by historian Ruth Goodman (might have been ‘How to be a Tudor’)
She was discussing medieval cleanliness habits, which amounted to fairly minimal cleaning of the key areas (pits and pubes, hands, face) and hardly ever doing an overall wash - but changing clothes regularly.
In the anecdote she tried this out on a reconstruction site she was working on - she didn’t wash for however many weeks but changed her (appropriately historical) underclothes every day. A colleague followed the opposite regime - showered every day, but kept the same clothes on.
Apparently by the end of the experiment she smelt fine, but the colleague was absolutely rank.
Following that precedent, I’ll assume that changing clothes is the priority. After that I may choose to shower also, but mostly just because showers are nice.
I’ll second the vote for wearing a towel to the shower and back. I also wouldn’t bother bringing soap because I’ve discovered I don’t need it.
Though I have found I can actually forgo a shower every other day and be fine given that my daily exercise regimen is “sit around a lot”. I image that this would be the same only moreso while camping, where I wouldn’t leave the tent/RV.
I figure the trip to that shower isn’t too long, so I’d put on fresh undies and then my old clothes. As quickly as possible I’d go the shower, bathe, and return to the tent, take off the outer preworn clothes and replace them with fresh.
Any choice is going to have clean and dirty in combo, but my least favortie thing is used underwear. Hence my choice.
Shower, return “commando” (pants only) and no shirt, put on all clean clothes as soon as I get in the cabin. Actually faced a situation much like this and that was what I did.
Camping at Assateague, I used an outdoor shower located in a fairly busy area of dunes. I walked from our tent to the shower naked, wrapped in my towel, carrying my soap. The shower stall was three sided, with a cable on the open side to hang your towel which acted as a shower curtain.
As soon as I was soaped up, a gust of wind took my towel, carrying it a hundred yards down the beach. I had no choice but to rinse off, then stalk after my towel, naked.
I was approached by several fellow-campers that day who told me you had to use clothespins to secure your towel/curtain.
I go with wrapping in a towel with dirty underthings underneath. Wear underthings in shower, thereby not being naked and getting underthings clean. Walk back to cabin with wet underthings under towel, then change into clean clothes, taking now clean underthings off to allow them to dry.