Is the cost of living driving us to share baths in a way not seen since the long hot summer of 1976? Soap manufacturer Cussons would have us believe so.
Its chief executive, Jonathan Myers, said this week that eye-watering energy bills had led to people running fewer baths.
Television personality Sarah Beeny is one of those people – and she has four countryside-dwelling sons plus a builder husband. Indeed, she has reported going last into the water, after her family. Truly parenting of a high order. But does that idea wash with Telegraph writers and readers?
As a child, I listened in horror as my grandmother told stories of taking turns with her siblings to bathe themselves in the tin bath in front of the coal fire, starting with Tom, the eldest, finishing six children later with Alice, the youngest. In later life, Alice became the most fastidiously and extravagantly well-groomed of them all.
In the extreme water shortage of 1976, I remember standpipes in the street, and posters and badges extolling us to save water and bathe with a friend.
And it seems we are there again, with more of us sharing baths to save money and the planet. You can be too retro, you know.
Sorry, no. I cannot. I refuse. I would rather be dirty than share bath water. The whole thought of it gives me the shivers. I am haunted by a TikTok I watched recently on the bathing habits of the Japanese. The caption explained that first they showered thoroughly, washing their hair, scrubbing their body, rinsing well, before getting into the bath. Admirable to honour the bath in such a fastidious fashion, I thought. But hold on. Plot twist. Then they bathed, leaving the water in the bath so the next member of the family could use it.
I understand I may be an extreme bath addict. A long soak with a splash of Ren Moroccan Rose Bath Oil is my therapy and balm, where I escape, listen to music, read, feed my many WhatsApp groups. I don’t drive, I barely fly, so my contribution to saving the planet is going to have to remain using a bath towel more than once – a great and recent concession worthy, I think you will agree, of Greta Thunberg.
So if it’s all the same to you, as a tribute to my late Great Aunt Alice, I will be clinging onto my solo bathtimes with my cold, pruney, wrinkled hands.
When I was at boarding school in the early 1990s, aged about 10, we had no showers. Instead, there were baths, and also bath rotas. We weren’t allowed one every night, and when it was our turn on the rota, we had to share. It was extremely companionable, and also often a useful time: I remember learning the words of our house song with my friend Sophie while in the bath, with the lyrics on a piece of paper jammed onto the taps as an aide-mémoire.
For me, baths have always been a congenial activity. Growing up one of three girls (again, in a house with no shower), bath sharing was de rigueur, and bathtime a period in which to chat, wash and amuse ourselves by licking the soap. My middle sister and I used to play a game called Poor Island, where the one at the non-tap end would sit shivering in cool water, until the generous Rich Island turned on the hot tap and magnanimously warmed things up (I, as eldest child, was always Rich Island).
Living in America with my husband after we first married, we would regularly enjoy baths together in our enormous jacuzzi corner bathtub, and when our first son was born, he would be in there too. These days everyone is largely too big to fit in the tub together, and will just get in each other’s water (although on the last night of the summer holidays I did find all three sons squished in together, enjoying one last soapy moment of togetherness before school started).
I once infuriated a housemate by hopping into her freshly-run bath for a quick rinse before she got in; usually, I confess, my preference is to take someone else’s bath water which, as long as they weren’t engaged in too many cleansing activities, has adjusted to the perfect temperature and feels satisfyingly embracing.
Certain standards do apply: sharing is verboten if the other person/previous occupant has been shaving their legs; if the water is filthy enough to have left a ring of scum one is permitted to run a fresh bath; and these days, if, for example one of my children wants to share with me, they have to take the tap end. I also like my baths very hot, so wimps are not allowed.
I would, in fact, like a bath big enough for everyone to share. But that would be a swimming pool. And heating that to my preferred bath water temperature is definitely not environmentally friendly.
The Greeks invented communal bathing. It was not one of their happier ideas. The Romans perfected it as a social activity (initially, for men only), but it has never held any allure for me.
As a teenager, I was dragged round thermal baths in Eastern Europe, and sharing the waters with families who seemed to be incubating whooping cough, as well as elderly men whose paunches spread like strawberry jam on white bread, cured me of any desire to replicate the experience. I would rather forgo life’s non-essential luxuries, including organic meat and chilled Pouilly-Fuissé, for what I consider to be an essential right – the right to perform your ablutions in privacy and at the time of your choice.
My evening bath is a ritual as sacred to me as the Catholic Mass. My preparations are equally extensive and intense. I light candles at the altar of my tub (artificial ones, these days) and inhale the holy fragrance of Relax bath oil by Aromatherapy Associates. Like Catherine of Aragon, who brought her own bath with her to England, I believe that hot water mixed with oils has a transformative, almost mystical effect.
I have, on occasion, broken my own covenant and tried to share it with men, but the difficulty with logistics destroyed the thing entirely. Sometimes, however, I will allow my small dog, Maxi, into my bath because his bathroom etiquette is both refined and mercifully brief. He leans over the side of the tub until I have finished washing, and then he makes his way in, sitting almost motionless with joy until I wrap him in a towel. Unlike human males, he never splashes me with water, which is sometimes the cause of more relationship break-ups than infidelity. Nor does he expect me to scrub his back.
It was a bleak day when women, befuddled by the notion that it was romantic, let men into their bathrooms. There are some things we shouldn’t see. One of those things is the human body of our partner, pink and swollen, struggling to arrange itself in a bath that is too small for the two people foolish enough to be in it.
In my family kinship is skinship – and that means we all share the same bath water. Yes, there is some argument about who gets first dibs – the joyous delight of slipping into a toasting hot bath without any shampoo residues or the cloudiness of soap is definitely a treat.
So we tend to rotate that pleasure. As the bath begins to run – our taps are loud – the house is filled with cries of “First bath”… “Second bath”… “I’ll go after Mum”. Fourth bath is not so great. We are fair about rotating the last spot.
But there are rules: my younger daughter recently dyed her hair blue; that means if she gets in the bath the water goes grey/turquoise. To be honest, it looks disgusting. So dyed hair means fourth bath. As does any kind of body shaving – I’m all for shared water, but shared leg and pubic hair? No thank you!
That said, we’ve been sharing baths in our family happily for the past two decades. When the kids were small I’d come in from work and get into the bath with both of them. It was a great way to slough off the office and immediately get skin to skin contact and dive into their lives. Now they are bigger, we often have our best chats with one of us in the bath and the other perched on a specially designed seat next to it, created for just such conversations.
The family that bathes together, stays together; sharing such intimate space forms close bonds, makes us all more entwined, part of a living unit.
Maybe I do it because that’s what I grew up with. In the 1970s, we had one tank of hot water, which needed to go round five siblings and our mum, so it was a no-brainer to get in a sibling’s or my mum’s bath. In these days with sky-high gas bills it certainly makes financial sense too. So share the bath water: it’s good for relationships, the economy and the planet. A triple win!
Do you share your bath water? Let us know in the comments below
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