I’m going on a mission in Mexico for a week, building homes. My group will be in the high desert, so water may be at a premium. I expect that I will be able to bathe once, maybe twice during the week.
Does anybody have any suggestions for pretreating my clothes before I go? I’ve thought about spraying them with a bunch of deodorant, or washing them with baking soda or Dr. Bronner’s. Am I even on a good track?
Take a bottle of Febreeze and some baby wipes. They’ll fit in your major luggage without taking up too much space.
Use the baby wipes to have a bit of an “army shower” - Pits, groin, ass, feet & a general all over wipe.
Use the Febreeze on your clothes and hang them up to air whenever you’re not wearing them. I can’t say enough good things about Febreeze. It leaves a bit of a perfume-y smell, but it’s great for getting out musty/smoky odors and if you hang your clothes up to air in between times, that’ll help stop dampness from making them more stanky.
Great advice from Sierra.
Make sure you take some sort of drying powder, too, for your underarms and groin. If you’re a dude, something like Gold Bond will do. If you’re a lady, try Vagasil powder (you have to be careful about what sort of powders you put on your ladybits).
Just get used to it. Everyone else will be in the same boat. The most important thing is underwear and socks, pack enough to keep a clean dry pair of each on.
For the clothes… I have no idea. Just change your undies and socks everyday and hang up your clothes when your not wearing them (if you have to re-wear them). If you can take fresh clothes for everyday, who cares how they smell at the end of the day.
As far as the baby wipes are concerned… get an unscented one. I prefer something along the line of the Cottenell (sp?) wipes. No smell, no sticky feeling afterwards. The ponds face wipe 'cloths" are a decent ‘make-do’ for a quick face cleansing.
Also, use some water on a washcloth (from a bottle or your camelbak or whatnot) wipe your face, body, bits and feet. It’s not perfect, but it’ll make you feel better.
For your hair- it’s gonna be dirty. Wash it well before you leave. Wear a hat or bandanna to hide the greasiness. Enjoy your shower when you get one.
I lived in a tent for three weeks for my geology advanced field class… In July and got to take an astounding 4 (yes, 4) real showers in that time period. I managed to deal with all of that and, keep moderately clean and wear my contacts out in the boonies of Utah.
Then again, when everybody smells the same, no one really notices.
Yeah, it looks like I’m just going to have to grin and bear it. It’s not a big deal, but I like working a little more when I’m clean (I used to think that I worked harder when I could shower in the morning, but I gave up on that one years ago.)
Re: the socks and undies, LVgeogeek, you’re right about that. Norman Maclean gave some good advice in one of his short stories, to the effect of “If you’re too tired to do anything else at the end of the day, put on a fresh pair of socks. You will feel a lot better for it.” That’s the one article of clothing that I am stuffing into my bag.
FWIW, I’m also probably going to pack everything in a black trash can. If the water issue is just that there’s no heater (the lead guy wasn’t completely clear about it), then I’m going ask about having the sun heat water for us.
Sound advice above. I might also suggest a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton swabs to give sweaty/greasy skin a wipe-down from time to time; it’s quite bracing.
I went on a four-day camping trip in the White Desert of Egypt a few years ago – no bathing or toilet facilities, limited in the bulk/weight of what we could bring, hot when we hiked up ridges, and incredibly dusty when you weren’t in the lead jeep as we were driving over sand. The shower when I got home was the best I’ve ever taken … but all in all, it really wasn’t too bad. If you get to bathe once during the week, what you face won’t be any worse.
Oh, if your hair is longish, bring a bandana, hairband, hair tie or whatever works to keep your hair at bay. Nothing more irritating than having limp, greasy strands of hair swinging across your face while you’re trying to pretend you aren’t really that dirty.
Couple other items to consider…
ETA: Maybe a fingernail brush for when you need some scrubbing power.
Perhaps not in that exact order, though - at least not with a single wipe.
Do you know where in Mexico you’ll be? I did much the same thing a number of years ago in Juarez - we stayed at a mission house that had showers, and nearly everyone was able to shower after working at the end of the day. The water probably wasn’t very hot (I don’t really remember), but it was Mexico in summer, so we didn’t really mind. I do believe we had to keep 'em short, but we did get to shower often.
Ditto the baby wipes. Also bring a wash cloth or two – my bet it that there’ll be water around for washing, just not an actual shower. But if not, baby wipes.
Other than that don’t worry about it, it’s really not a big deal, and you actually can get fairly clean with a wipes or a washcloth. I wouldn’t treat your clothes with anything, that just sounds messy when you get all sweaty. Just bring plenty of clean shirts and underwear. Bring all your old t-shirts with you, you can just leave them down there when you are done.
You’ll be fine. I’ve never heard of any place where you could not bathe at least every couple days.
If you don’t have a shower, you’ll learn the art of the bucket bath. Don’t worry, millions of people use and actually prefer this method. Just get a bucket of water and a cup (preferably with an open handle so that it can hook on to the edge of the bucket.) Squat down and give a quick all over rinse with the cup. Then put some water in the cup and moisten the soap. Soap up, then use the cup to rinse. Focus on “parts the rub together” (groin, pits, etc.) If you are feeling extravagant, shampoo your hair- you can even skip the primary rinse if you like.
Shouldn’t take more than a bucket of water. If you like, it can be warmed up over a stove or just left in a dark bucket in the sun.
Um…the desert?
Maybe if you are doing some extreme hiking or a cross saharan caravan.
But anywhere where there is human habitation, there is going to be enough water for you to have a bucketful every couple of days. In extreme heat, it’s easy to drink 5 or 6 liters of water a day- if you can get that kind of water, you can get something to wash off with.
Trust me, I just spent two years in a place that sees no rain 9 months of the year. Hauling water was a pain and sometimes expensive, but it’s not like everyone went most the year without a bath.
Thats not always the case. Where I did my advance field geology, we were 2 hours from the nearest town where are base camp was, we went in every 5 days, but the local water was turbid and well, to put it mildly, it was sort of like having giarida. Not pretty when you have no toilet facilities to use except for a hand-dug latrine at camp. When we were out mapping for 8-12 hours a day no potty to be had except for behind scrub brush.
There was no water whatsoever available in our field area. We had to fill up big water cooler coolers at City of Rocks park Idaho (which was about 2 hours in the other direction) from a hand pump well. That was so we would have enough drinking water for 8 people to last almost 4 days. We only had two field trucks with us that we trucked ourselves and all of our equipment for three weeks of hardcore roughing it. We were at about 7000 ft elevation but it was during a massive heatwave where we were hitting almost 100F everyday.
I guess we had it pretty swell out there, as there had been other field classes that did work in central Nevada that did the full three weeks without getting to take a shower.
When I was a kid, many, many years ago, I never in my life thought one could go without a shower/bath everyday or at the most every other day. Now, eh’ a shower would be nice but you make do with what you got. water from my camelback and a washcloth worked out nicely.
Either that or we geologists really are the crazy bastards people make us out to be.
I spent a week working my ass off on a schooner last year - one shower, you could only use it from 8 to 5 when we were all working hard, and it was… suboptimal. I took two showers for the week, one of them just for the benefit of the other people on the plane home. It was really no big deal - sponge bath in the morning and then everybody else is as gross as you are. You don’t even feel that gross once you get going.
Hee hee, I can top that. I just spent 5 years living in a country that gets less than 1/4 inch of rain a year. There is no rainy season. It. Never. Rains.
There may not be places where people live on a permanent basis where there is zero water, but nomads and travelers definitely inhabit places for a while where water is vanishingly scarce.
The guy running the trip didn’t really go into much detail about the water. We will be staying at a church. My guess is that we will have access to water, but it will be a possibly unpotable municipal supply and that the church doesn’t have a heater. If so, then that’s not that big of a deal.
I have thought about bringing a black tub to heat water in the sun, but I’m not sure if I have the time at this point. FWIW, I did pick up a can of Gold Bond. Y’know, if I spray that all over myself, then I may at least *smell * fresh…