# only water?



## ghostman (Dec 11, 2014)

i was wondering in a post collapse scenario we all know sanitation and keeping clean are a must but can you stay clean without soap or shampoos and only use water? I know you wont smell as great without out the shampoos and stuff but can you at least stay clean bathing with just water?


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## RNprepper (Apr 5, 2014)

Try it for a month and let us know! Soap emulsifies oils and loosens dirt. It not only gets the crud off our skin, but also from our clothes and dishes. I guess that is why even agent peoples used soap in different forms to clean themselves and wash their hair.


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## HuntingHawk (Dec 16, 2012)

I think you mean ancient.

Without soap you are going to be looking at high probability of infection from even a minor cut. Clothing can be cleaned in boiling water but that still leaves your body & dishes. Fleas, lice, & other creepy bugs can easily become an issue. Dawn works well for dishes & your body as well as dogs. But I also have some four packs of Irish Spring in my stores.


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## Prepared One (Nov 5, 2014)

I have a lot of extra bars of soap on hand. Didn't think about the dawn however. I will start keeping that on hand as well.


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## HuntingHawk (Dec 16, 2012)

Dawn is said to kill flea larve in dogs. And I believe it does as I've used it when I've run out of Adams flea shampoo for the dogs. Can't use it repeatedly as it will dry out their hair & skin by reducing oils. Fish oil oral for the dogs can compensate for it. And I've used Dawn when I have run out of laundry soap.


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## Moonshinedave (Mar 28, 2013)

In this day and age, I worry a lot more about finding clean useable water, than soaps, if a SHTF happens. My guess to the OP's question is that yes water could, if it had to be, used without soap to achieve being clean, but I can't foresee not being able to find or make soap if needed.


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## HuntingHawk (Dec 16, 2012)

All depends on where you are with your emergency stores. If you aren't worried about infection from not staying clean then don't.


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## Big Country1 (Feb 10, 2014)

We keep quite a bit of bar soap on hand, and dawn dish soap as well. Dawn is a good all-around detergent. Making soap isn't very hard and for longer term we will make what we need. Hardwood ashes are some of the best producers of lye. Add a bucket of rain water and some left-over cooking fat and you can easily brew up enough soap to clean everybody and everything.

This is a very good article on how to make soap, with some history on soaps. It is quite long tho...
Colonial Soap Making. Its History and Techniques

You can also add flowers and herbs, for scent, and you can get good benefits from them too. Such as lavender and rosemary is good for antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, and beneficial for treating wounds, blemishes, boils, dermatitis, herpes, fever blisters, and more


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## ApexPredator (Aug 17, 2013)

Water is sufficient its all about frequency but you will prolly smell a bit. The ancients did it for smell, they didnt understand microbes one bit (maybe the Romans).


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## Spice (Dec 21, 2014)

Cold water does nothing to lift lipids, or things trapped in lipids...such as bacteria imbedded in skin oils. Warm water is better but not great. Soaps dissolve lipids and let them (and whatever was imbedded in them) get washed away. They're worth their space. It isn't only infection from cuts; there's a host of skin issues that cleanliness helps avoid. (And if being miserable from a rash isn't as interesting as an infection, keep in mind that skin broken by rashes is far more likely to infect.)


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## Kauboy (May 12, 2014)

I can speak directly to this.
I've mentioned it before, but I'll do it again. I've severely limited my use of soap on my skin for the past year to see what the result would be if the time ever came when soap was a luxury.

My personal results have concluded that bathing with nothing more than hot water is sufficient for the majority of my body.
Any portion that has good airflow to stay reasonably dry requires only a good scrubbing with hot water. This includes my arm pits, which I found to be surprising.
It does NOT include the groin area. Too much moisture and warmth there to go without additional cleansing. If you could maintain a regular, twice a day, habit of a cleaning, it could probably work. This is not conducive to my schedule, thus I do still use soap in this area when I bathe.
Also, my hair has been abused too much to go with just a water cleaning. It has been stripped of its natural oils for so long, the follicles now overproduce. Without an astringent to remove the oil, it simply collects more dirt and feels greasy with only water. With time, this is supposed to diminish as your body returns to normal, but I don't have that time to spend being stinky and gross in order to re-calibrate.

All along, I've subjected myself to the "smell test" from my better half. She claims to be able to smell cigarette smoke from 4 cars away, windows up, so she claims authority on identifying all things smelly. Each time I've presented for inspection, I've passed.

When we get down to it, we are looking at the biology of our bodies versus the science of "clean".
Our bodies are naturally self-cleansing, but society has deemed some functions to be gross, and so we perform alternative rituals to avoid them. The pores of your skin produce a natural oil. The purpose of this oil is to trap things on the skin, and prevent them from getting through. This means dirt, bacteria, ect... However, if we don't give it a rinse and scrub once in a while, an odor begins to be produced from the bacteria that is feeding off of the skin cells and oil. To combat this odor, the science of "clean" created cleaning agents that eliminated the odor. Others took it even further, and decided to attack the cause of the odor, the bacteria. Still others decided to remove the reason for the bacteria hanging around in the first place, and sought to remove the oil layer. No food for the bacteria, no feeding bacteria, no odor from bacteria! Sounds brilliant, right?
BUT... somewhere along the way, we forgot about the original intention of the oil.
We were now producing oil-stripping soaps that left our skin "squeaky clean", but didn't contemplate what this might mean. Well, if the skin produces oil to act as a protective barrier, and we are stripping that oil away on a constant basis, allowing unfettered direct access to our skin, what is likely going to happen? Infection! Well, mother nature isn't about to stand for that, so our skin reacts to this state of emergency by producing more oil more quickly. Now we feel greasy, don't understand why, and hop back into the shower to scrub the oil off again... and so the cycle continues. Some companies, realizing that their soaps cause skin to feel dry, added moisturizers to their bars. The hope was that the end result would feel better, but it still harms the skin by first removing that layer, even if you do re-moisturize it.

Many ailments within the human body are caused by an imbalance in biology, whether chemical or microbial, and things get out of whack for long enough that severe issues can arise. The same is true with your skin. Just look at all the failed acne products on the market, and look at the ones that work. The harsh astringents leave your skin dry, irritated, and exposed. The pores overproduce oil to compensate, and get clogged up again. The products that gently clean and massage the skin are much more effective at cleaning the pores, but not sending your skin into distress mode.
Treat your skin the way it wants to be treated. Gently clean the skin with non-astringent cleaners, if necessary. Leave that oil layer to do what it does best, protect your skin. 

If you aren't willing to go to the admitted extreme I have, do this simple comparison test.

Use a big name brand soap, like Zest, Irish Spring, Caress, etc... for 1 week, bathing once a day.
Note how your skin feels when you dry off. Is it dry? A bit scaly? Can you get a "squeaky" feeling when you drag your finger across it?

Next, buy a bar of Dove. Yes guys, you too. Perform the same regimen of washing as before.
Note the difference.
If you're like me, your skin will no longer feel irritated or itch when you dry off. It will feel smooth and soft.

Dove doesn't include harsh astringents in their soaps, and they don't even call them soaps, as that implies astringent. They call them "beauty bars", which normally stops us men from ever touching them. That's why they released a men's line of bars and washes too.

If I have to use a chemical to clean my body, I use Dove. So far, it's the only one I've found that doesn't harshly irritate my skin.


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## paraquack (Mar 1, 2013)

As a Boy Scout I was on a week long jamboree in the hottest part of the summer. We were not allowed to go swinging in the lake because of no life guards. One of the guys came up with the idea of taking a bar of Ivory (it floats) and go take a bath in the lake. It worked great and only on troop master yelled at us until we held up or bars of Ivory. Then walked away shaking his head. One guy did stand at the end of the pier with a life line and ring, just in case. 
If the body of water is big enough, or if your down stream, I'd bathe in a heart beat unless security risks are high.


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## Sasquatch (Dec 12, 2014)

One can also make soap. If shtf and the stores are no longer functional with the right ingredients it's pretty easy. Might want to you tube a how to and commit it to memory.


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## csi-tech (Apr 13, 2013)

My daughter in law makes some awesome soaps. Here is their beautiful little family. She made me a pine scented (pine tree scented) bar that I took hunting and it made an exceptional cover scent. Making soap right, or so I'm told is not a cakewalk.

About Us - Beulah Brand Soaps


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## Kauboy (May 12, 2014)

Sasquatch said:


> One can also make soap. If shtf and the stores are no longer functional with the right ingredients it's pretty easy. Might want to you tube a how to and commit it to memory.


If memory serves, combing ash from a fire with a bit of water produces a crude lye. Mix that with a rendered and filtered fat like grease or tallow and you've got yourself some basic soap. BEWARE, lye is not a safe mixture. It is caustic and will eat skin when reacting with moisture. Be sure of your mixture before using it. I'll never forget that scene in Fight Club...


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## HuntingHawk (Dec 16, 2012)

Sauna or sweat lodge would be an option. But not compared to stocking some soap.


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## just mike (Jun 25, 2014)

Two of the Sam's packages of Dial soap ( about 20 bars each). 1 gallon of Dawn. One of the packages of dial lasts over a year and when we open a new pack out of the closet it is replaced immediately.


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## Sarkus (Sep 11, 2014)

Kauboy has it right. Our modern idea of "clean" is out of whack. Our ancestors did fine with only occasional warm water baths and rudimentary soap- like products. Even as recently as 50 years ago washing your hair more than once a week and taking a bath more than twice a week was unusual, and that generation had long lives.


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## RNprepper (Apr 5, 2014)

Sarkus said:


> Kauboy has it right. Our modern idea of "clean" is out of whack. Our ancestors did fine with only occasional warm water baths and rudimentary soap- like products. Even as recently as 50 years ago washing your hair more than once a week and taking a bath more than twice a week was unusual, and that generation had long lives.


So true. It is not necessary to bathe twice a day, or once a day. Twice a week with some clean up "down there" is really all that is needed. BUT..... with SHTF, hygiene will be a life saver. Our environments will become dirty overnight. Garbage, trash, waste, excrement will be issues. Flies, flies, flies. Lack of medical care. Increased infections and injuries. People will start dying from infections at higher rates.

Let me tell you from an OR (operating room) perspective, that people with dirty skin get more infections than people with clean skin. This isn't just from the operation, but from contamination from their own bodies, fingers, hands after the operation. If you have a load of bacteria on your skin to start with, once the protective skin barrier is broken, you are at higher risk for infection. Now take it out of a sterile OR and into real life. You get a cut with dirty skin and you are going to get infected. Post SHTF, even simple infections can go to the bone or blood, especially in this age of resistant organisms.

When I lived in Papua New Guinea, the dirty children were the sick children. Even in very primitive surroundings, the moms who kept their kids and clothing, and huts clean were the healthiest ones. Less lice, less scabies, less bacterial infections. There really is a correlation. One of our main health teaching points was to keep the kiddos clean.

Cleanliness and hygiene will be important considerations when SHTF. It doesn't have to be to the extreme that we practice now, but it is important to keep as clean as reasonable possible.


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## HuntingHawk (Dec 16, 2012)

One of the basic hygiene things often missed by men is under the fingernails. Bad place for bacteria which can easily be transferred to your food.


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## RNprepper (Apr 5, 2014)

just mike said:


> Two of the Sam's packages of Dial soap ( about 20 bars each). 1 gallon of Dawn. One of the packages of dial lasts over a year and when we open a new pack out of the closet it is replaced immediately.


Soap is cheap. Easy to store. Great trade item. I do not intend to make my own soap when I can store up many years worth quite easily and cheaply. I will save limited labor hours for gardening, cooking, and laundry. Save labor where you can by storing up the easy stuff now.


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## HuntingHawk (Dec 16, 2012)

I've some bar soap been put aside for 30 years & still seems useable.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 25, 2014)

Depending on the scenario, you may have pplenty of soap. In an Earth Abides scenario there would be few people and lotsa resources.

On longer trips I have used different natural elements to clean with. Sand, dirt, and even charcoal will remove some grit in the same way that active carbon cleans water.
But soap is better. 

Lye is supposed to be fairly easy soap to make, but the stuff is so damned caustic to skin and clothes that I have always figured I'd rather use dirt.


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## James m (Mar 11, 2014)

I thought it would be a lot easier to make animal fat soap. You tend to not notice how bad you smell until you wash. And people who wash two to three times a day will notice how everyone else smells and say something constantly. Im a one shower in the morning guy.

http://m.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-Soap-3/all/

Thoughts on deodorant? Lots of physical activity will surely increase the smell factor.


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## tinkerhell (Oct 8, 2014)

Isn't soap and deoderant items that can be extreme couponed in the USA? If so, why not stock up, and do it cheap?


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## RNprepper (Apr 5, 2014)

tinkerhell said:


> Isn't soap and deoderant items that can be extreme couponed in the USA? If so, why not stock up, and do it cheap?


I agree. I started stocking up on soap, deoderant, toothpaste, tooth brushes, dish soap, laundry soap, shampoo, hand lotion, TP, sunscreen, skin wipes, etc. a couple of years ago. The little things really do matter. I figure that whatever we use regularly will also be needed (or regretted not having) when SHTF. You can find stuff cheap and buying a few items at a time doesn't break the bank. Personally, I started out buying a month's worth of these items at a time, adding another month's worth each month until I had enough. Once the little grandbaby came, I started adding baby stuff like lotion, cloth diapers, baby shampoo, and butt cream.


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## paraquack (Mar 1, 2013)

The idea of making soap scares me no end. I've seen the result of lye getting on the skin. My boy as a youngster was at the neighbors. He and his friend (5-6 years old) got into a lye product. Neither kid got it in his mouth, but both kids had second and THIRD degree chemical burns on the face and hands. My boy was is hospital for 10-12 days. Let me tell you, you want to avoid lye if at all possible. Soap is cheap, stock up, it's safer and probably a lot cheaper.


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## Ralph Rotten (Jun 25, 2014)

True enough, soap should have a fantastic shelf life if you keep it sealed. 

Not to get off track, but I have a really cool book aroound here called "How to clean anything"
It's a cool book because it essentially suggests the best solutions for specific types of messes. Sometimes if you use the wrong compound you only make the mess worse, like grease dust in the kitchen. Try to wipe it down with a wet rag and you just rubbed it in deeper. Whhen supplies are finite, it helps knowing exactly which of your precious reserves will clean that panel you are salvaging. 

I guess I should start a soap repository. Prolly put it right next to the candle and flashlight resevoir. Every time we get gift candles or LED trinkets, I throw them in there. Now I have a stockpile iof lighting.


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## Jakthesoldier (Feb 1, 2015)

The medical professional in me says you absolutely need soap. Water will only help remove visable dirt and grime, not bacteria, viruses etc. However, the person who spent 2.5 years homeless, and the person who grew up on a ranch in me says that if you maximize your exposure to the elements and bacteria you increase resistances. So by NOT showering at all, not washing before you eat etc. You build resistances to things that will wipe out people who are clean freaks. 

That being said, while homeless I bathed throughly once every month-2 months, soap and water. Then I would stink for 2-3 days. Then I would get a "protective layer" going. Bugs stopped biting, I stopped smelling, I was warmer.
Trial and error.


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## kevincali (Nov 15, 2012)

Ya know, I was contemplating the "only water?" Question myself tonight. I was mopping my tile floor and I had no cleaner. Just water. It worked ok. No dirt deposits anymore. It's not sanitary (as in eat off it clean) but its better than nothing. 

I read (or heard?) that an old Indian trick is to take smoke showers. The smoke suffocates the bacteria(?). 

And, although I tore out all my yucca trees, I have made soap out of the leaves before. You smash the leaf until its pretty beat. Then dunk it in water, and use it kinda like a sponge. It foams up. It works ok, you smell "green" after but you don't smell. As bad lol.


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