It’s been my experience that not stripping the natural oils out of your skin works better than trying to add sufficient back in the form of lotion. Also, for some people soaps are irritating in and of themselves, so they do better with every other day bathing.
3 times a day, how do you find the time, or clean dry towels ?
That’s straying into OCD territory now.
Unless you are a Pro Wrestler or work in a Steel Foundry or a Coalmine I can’t concieve how you could exude a sweaty smell a matter of hours after showering [ unless you have a horrible skin condition ].
I think one of the hardest conversations I had with a former boyfriend was to tell him that one shower a day wasn’t working for him. But I must have done it right, because he didn’t get mad and he did start taking two. Some unfortunate people do have to wash more frequently than others.
Due to my skin issues I have doctor’s orders to NOT bathe daily unless particularly dirty/sweaty. But when I’m doing construction work in the summer I have taken up to three daily because I was that dirty - one before work, if I could run home take one at lunch, then one after work. But on days like that two of them were mostly rinsing the sweat and surface dirt/smell off, with the real scrub the last one of the day.
So really, it’s comes down to individual biology, activity, and sometimes diet and weather. There shouldn’t be a kneejerk assumption that a person who skips a day is automatically filthy and smelly, but in today’s society erring on the side of cleanliness does seem to be the way to go. On the other hand, some folks in this thread sound a little compulsive to me. Shower both before and after sleep? WTF are you doing at night that requires that? (I am aware some menopausal women going through night sweats might actually need a shower on waking, but other than something like that…)
NM
Exactly. I don’t want to lotion from head to toe every day when I can just shower every other day and not be itchy.
It almost seems like there are people in this thread who don’t believe that you can shower less than daily and not be smelly. Honest to God, I’m not smelly. I’m not the person at work that everyone is whispering about behind their backs because I only shower every other day.
Uh, by sweating. I do a job that requires significant physical labor. I shower every morning and by the end of my first shift (normally about 90 minutes) I’m pretty sweaty. If I had to work longer shifts (and I will next year) I would exude an odor, faint but real, by noon. Now, I might or might not shower mid-day; some of my co-workers do and some do not, and some are slightly stinky at work occasionally. No one cares very much; it’s a loud, physical, and boisterous work environment, and we all accept that each of us will probably be a little stinky one day*. If I have a very long day, I definitely need a shower when I get home. My T-shirts are good for one day of wearing at work and my jeans rarely last more than three work days. On a day where I don’t work and don’t sweat, I can go 48 hours between showers without a problem.
I understand that this may not be the case for you, and that some people can simply shower less frequently without a problem. I worked in a relatively physical job with a woman who showered only once or twice a week and I never once noticed a smell, or saw her with greasy hair. I certainly can’t do that myself. These things can be quite individual.
*On my first day on the job, a co-worker said about me “He’s doing great! If we can just get him to stink a little more, he’ll fit right in.”
But how do you know they aren’t whispering behind your back? It’s already been mentioned in this thread that one’s own odor may not be as easily noticed by the person themself as it is to other people. Perhaps you are “that smelly one” at work, and this thread will serve as a polite notice taking the place of a possibly rude or otherwise unpleasant experience at work.
Well, it’s possible, of course, but since I don’t tend to sweat (I actually have to be careful with this in summer, because I don’t sweat enough), I wash my clothes after one or two wearings, I wear deodorant every day, and I shower every other day, I really don’t think I’m a noticeably smelly person. Maybe I’ll ask in the grocery store tomorrow - “Hey, can you smell me?” 
OK, maybe I’m just taking gender roles a little too literally. (Not like the rest of society doesn’t.)
:rolleyes: Heh. Show me.
I had to look up “oxter”. Gotta remember that one.
Once I spent a week overseas with no deodorant. I forgot mine, and couldn’t read the labels in stores to find any. Even though I took the hottest, soapiest showers I could stand, as the week wore on I got riper and ranker. Finally I had to shave my armpits, which held up OK for a workday but then I had the 15-hour flight home. I stunk so bad I probably set off an alarm going through customs. So, no, I cannot go without regular hygiene.
Alright, I gotta ask.
Why would you need to read the labels? You just couldn’t look for things that resemble sticks of deodorant?
Or searched out a box of what resembles baking soda? Or baby powder?
Yeah, but you accumulate all those things in greater quantities and more while going about your daily activities. I sweat way more in the course of my job than I do asleep in my bed, plus there is dirt, pollutants in the air, normal bathroom use, contact with other people, etc. Then you are putting all of that in your bed! Gross!
Same. There’s nothing worse than a smoker, or cook, or garlic eater that tries to cover the stink up with perfume. It doesn’t seem like the heavy detergent scents are as common as they once were, though.
Really, the key is laundry. No, you can’t sneak an extra wearing of jeans. They fit too closely for that. Same for T-shirts and blouses. The only clothing, not counting jackets, that I might squeak out an extra wearing in is a skirt (having worn a slip) or a sweater.
What I find annoying is the person who walks or bikes a long distance into work and performs no subsequent ablutions. Blecch!
OK, I was typing something and backspaced and ended up out of the box and in the middle of the thread…weird.
As I was saying, I shower before going out of the house or every other day. I have had to go “no-poo” because of dry skin and allergies. I do use a castile soap about every 2 weeks or if I get really grody doing something, otherwise it’s just warm water. Co-workers tell me I do not smell, I did ask!
I do not like it when people smell like chemicals or artificial products. While I don’t enjoy STANK, I don’t at all mind a nice human odor.
Just noticed this is in a “Quick Reply” box, guess I need to go read the stickies again…
Sometimes a language barrier is a bigger problem than you might think. When we were in Finland my husband developed pretty massive heartburn (apparently eating your weight in reindeer and bear will do that to you:rolleyes:) and we were in a tiny, tiny town with no pharmacy. We figured that the grocery store would have Tums or something so we walked across the street with our Finnish dictionary in hand and wandered the aisles for about 30 minutes before we determined that they had no antacids. Apparently in Finland they don’t use the word antacid and instead use the word neutralizer or something similar so not one of the 20 some people in the store had any clue what we wanted.
We finally determined that baking soda would be an acceptable substitute until we could catch a bus to town and get to a pharmacy the next day and headed to the baking products aisle to look for baking soda. It was then that we realized that pretty much every single baking product in the known universe is a fine white powder and that Arm & Hammer isn’t available there. Well, shit. So we are standing in front of a wall of packages filled with an assortment of baking goods looking up individual words in our dictionary when a kind gentleman offered to help us determine which product was which and guided us to the right shelf. Without that guy we would have ended up buying 15 different products and taste-testing them to try and figure out what was the most likely to be baking soda. I can just see Hyperelastic standing in a hotel room randomly rubbing confectioner’s sugar into one armpit and flour into the other to try and figure out if either of them might help him keep his smell under control. 