One year, my husband and I actually made a new year’s resolution to bathe our daughter more often. Our goal was to increase frequency from once a week to twice. Now that we have two kids, it’s still a work in progress.
But my children aren’t the only ones that probably need more bathing.
It started with a selfie
A few weeks ago, after taking approximately 50 photos of my 1 year old playing in the leaves, I decided to try a selfie with her. She was ecstatic! Honestly, I have never seen anyone so excited about a selfie before.
As we took the photo, I realized I was perhaps bringing down the Facebook worthiness of the photo. It wasn’t the maternity sweatshirt I was wearing (though not pregnant or postpartum). It was instead, the beginning-to-be-evident fact that it had been several days since I had showered.
Although I love taking a long hot shower, most weeks there are a few days where I go without. Given the talk I hear from other moms about dry shampoo, I know I am not alone.
Sometimes, especially if we don’t have any place we have to be that day, my thought line as a stay-at-home- mom goes like this: “I didn’t shower yesterday and look, I’m still alive and people are still talking to me (never mind these people are my offspring). Why would I shower today?”
I think we sometimes consider our lack of daily showering and regularly spaced child bathing a sign of bad time management, lackadaisical child rearing, letting ourselves go, etc. when in reality it’s been environmental activism in disguise (a disguise mostly known as grease).
The Ice Cream Test
What I’ve determined is that taking a shower is like eating a bowl of ice cream. Could I eat ice cream every day? Yes! Should I eat ice cream every day? Probably not.
The first person I told my analogy to was my husband.
Me: “Showering is like ice cream!”
Husband: blank stare
Me: “There are times in your life when you absolutely need ice cream every day.”
Husband: “When in your life would you need ice cream every day?”
Clearly striking a chord with my first explanation
There are times when you definitely need a shower every day, for a variety of reasons, including the following:
- When you’re a mix of baby spit, leaking breasts and other liquids and you just want to be clean. For a few minutes.
- When you want to cry but not make it look too obvious.
- When you want to get out of making breakfast. “I’m going to run through the shower – can you give the kids their breakfast?”
But do really need that long hot shower every day?
How does my shower impact the environment?
The Washington Post’s article “Your shower is wasting huge amounts of energy and water. Here’s what you can do about it”
says almost 17% of water used in American homes is due to showers. Similarly, almost 17% of American home electricity is used to heat water.
According to The Eco Guide’s “Have you tried the five minute shower challenge,” 0.18lbs of Carbon Dioxide is created to heat 1 gallon of water. Comparing a five minute shower to the average 13 minutes shower, the author states: “Taking five minute showers for a whole year would save as much CO2 as is sequestered annually by half an acre of U.S. forest.”
Read more on energy and heating water here.
“I try to say goodbye and I choke, try to walk away and I stumble,” Macy Gray describes my shorter showers
I decided to try “The five minute shower challenge” the other morning, since the benefit sounded really good. I debated setting a timer on my phone but since I knew there was no way I would be done in under 5 minutes, I knew I would be in one of the following situations:
1) I would have to get out of the shower and drip all over the floor and phone to turn off the timer.
2) I would have to yell loudly for my husband to come into the bathroom and turn off my timer.
3) I would have to continue showering with the timer going off.
Like Bridget Jones in the first movie where she’s picking out underwear, my decision was also “very tricky.” So, I just looked at the time when I went in and then again when I got out. End result: 8 minutes. That was pushing it for me.
Since I don’t relate well to pounds of CO2, let’s take a road trip
Using the formula from above, my 8 minute shower created 1.44lbs of carbon dioxide (CO2). Unfortunately, I don’t relate to pounds of CO2 very well.
What I can relate to is driving. Using the EPA’s Carbon Footprint Calculator as well as the EPA Fuel Economy Listing for my car, I determined how much “driving” my shower was doing in a day and a year.
One 8 minute shower is equivalent to me driving about 1.5 miles in my Subaru Forester. If I took an 8 minute shower every day for a year, it’d be equivalent to driving 581 miles or roughly from Boston, MA to Virginia Beach, VA.
Let’s talk about ice cream again
If I skipped eating a bowl of ice cream for a day or two a week, I would feel good about this decision. So maybe I should take the same approach with showers.
And here is the beautiful thing about the ice cream test. It means that by doing nothing I am actually helping the environment! So I’m not an irresponsible parent for not bathing my kids more than once or twice a week and I’m not lazy for skipping a shower (or two or three). That’s why we have deodorant.
I want to do this! AKA not a to-do list
If you want to try to cut back on your showers, here are some suggestions. See what works best for you!
- Cut out one or two showers per week
- Give your kid a spit bath
- Try the five minute shower challenge
- My personal favorite, a suggestion from one of my friends. Listen to music while you shower. After a few songs are done you’ll know it’s time to get out. I tried this with my phone and as a bonus got to shower to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston.
I have spit-up in my cleavage, please give me the bullet points!
*Grab any nearby cloth (dish towels, throw blankets, pillows are not off limits) and read the rest of this later.
*Showers are great but have significant environmental impact.
*You can think of taking a shower or bathing your kids like eating a bowl of ice cream. Sometimes necessary on a daily basis but usually not.
*5 minute showers are difficult for the author but better for the environment.