wife of baths

[metaphortunate]

Hey people who take baths, and claim it is relaxing:

How does that work? Like, specifically, how often do you clean your bathtub?

Currently Rocket is bathed in a small baby tub, and the Junebug takes baths in our ordinary tub, and let me tell you I am counting the days until he grows out of reacting to showers like we have chosen to wash him in the special Flesh-Flensing Acid Shower of Death. Because right now he gets washed twice a week, ordinarily, and I have to scrub the tub down first, at least a quick wipe with one of those Lysol wet wipes, because, Jesus. I mean, we shower in that thing daily. I’ve seen what we pull out of the shower drain. It’s gross. I don’t want him sitting in that. Instead I worry about how well I’ve been able to rinse the tub and about whether it’s poisoning him sitting in Soft Scrub residue. So, like, I walk by Lush, I look at the bath bombs, it sounds nice, but then I think about the choice of sitting in dregs of hair and scum or else scrubbing the tub and then sitting in bleach eddies. Plus, if I got a bath bomb, probably scrubbing the tub afterwards as well. How does it get to be relaxing?

Comments

[roadrunnertwice]

Well... I wash myself AFTER the bath is done, with the showerhead. Other than that, I basically try not to think about it. I don't clean the tub very often.

My filth tolerance is pretty high in general, though. If stuff was floating up out of the drain I'd be like hell no, but since we use a rubber plug instead of a built-in one, it's just whatever's on the surface of the tub, which is soap scum and a bit of dirt and hair. I figure I probably eat that much dirt/hair/soap over the course of the week, so I just... don't really worry about it.

So, I guess my answer is "be more disgusting than the tub," which probably doesn't help.

[kalmn]

Well, two of us have now given that answer.

[metaphortunate]

It is apparently everyone's answer, though. :)

[kalmn]

You know the part where dividing the household chores evenly means you have to stop being quite so worried about whether or not some of them get done or get done to standards? Yeeeah.

Also, last time my knees permitted regular baths I lived with someone mildly obsessive about it.

[metaphortunate]

Yes, it is sometimes a bonus. :)

[karenbynight]

I seriously doubt I've taken a bath since I became a parent, so I'm not so sure about the relaxing part. In fact, I had *planned* to take a bath on an east coast trip 18 months ago, but was thwarted by the fact that DC-area business hotels don't appear to have baths. Sadness.

But. Melamine foam (aka "Magic Eraser" in your grocery store, though it's MUCH cheaper under other labels in Asian grocery stores) is the bomb for cleaning tubs. It's basically flexible, extremely fine grit sandpaper, and once I figured that out, I realized: wet shower walls are practically frictionless when clean; soap scum provides the friction. Therefore, the more often I clean with the foamy sandpaper, the less work it is, by far, to a limit of taking about 90 seconds every day at the beginning of my shower to wipe down the tub and walls, cleaning soap scum I can't even see yet.

Not that it actually works that way for long, of course. I forget, and some mornings even the 90 seconds before a shower seems like too much. Still, even with tons of grime built up, it's much easier than the Soft Scrub route. And I looked up the toxicity of melamine foam residue, and it looks like even though you definitely don't want to eat the stuff, it's probably not any worse to put into the water supply than Soft Scrub is.

[veejane]

wet shower walls are practically frictionless when clean; soap scum provides the friction.

This is also true of shower/bathtub floors. I figure that my slovenliness is saving me from a horrible accident and subsequent naked trip to the ER.

[metaphortunate]

Wonderful! I shall look for some of this.

[snarp]

I also have no idea how this works. Bathtubs are gross, you can't sit in the bathtub, it's traumatic.

[metaphortunate]

I have accepted "nucular". I'm gonna learn to live with this.

[ironed_orchid]

The last time I took a lot of baths I lived somewhere my bath and shower were separate, so dirt from showers wasn't an issue, and I took a lot more baths there than in any other place I have lived in.

One thing is to get out (or in your case, get the kid out) of the bath, and then give the bath a quick scrub with a soft brush as you let the water out. That way any grime and oils that have collected from skin and whatever products you use get swished down the drain rather than sitting around on the walls of the tub.

[metaphortunate]

I could certainly do that! I mean, I could do that if I took a bath; while the water drains from the Junebug's bath I have to be drying him, keeping him from running around the house dripping wet, etc. For me, though, any ritual that ends with scrubbing a tub is not a relaxing ritual.

[ironed_orchid]

Yeah, the important part of me was "quick".

It also helped that my bathroom had heatlamps, so standing around naked in it was pleasant.

[veejane]

The only reason I take baths is to soak my sore body in water as hot as I can stand. (Which is not boiling by any means, but might be hot enough that a chicken cutlet would be fully cooked according to the FDA.) I am not really that worried about (a) the tub or (b) my body being clean when I am taking a bath. I am worried about whether my back will ever unkink, or whether the tub will overflow before I can get all my parts submerged.

Still, I think of a bathtub as a free do-over space, like how it's okay to serve the cooked eggs with the same spatula you were using when the eggs were raw. The process in which you used the tool consecrated the tool against any potential process-related contamination.

[metaphortunate]

You're sous videing yourself? :)

[veejane]

I am moist AND delicious. And now with 40% less back pain!

[copracat]

Um... this really excellent person comes around once a week and cleans my bathtub for me. That's pretty relaxing for me and the company uses environmentally friendly cleaning stuff.

When I was young bathtub scum - which mostly my mum wiped down just before next bath - was atrocious, but that could have had to do with the size of my family. Three kids having daily baths is a lot of dirt. I don't think mum was particularly concerned that she cleaned the bath with non-enviromental-or-kid-friendly 'cream cleanser' because that was the time and her culture. She's also a nurse; she's used to hospital strength cleaning.

How does it get to be relaxing?
You take a glass of booze in with you, and get your spouse to remove the kids from the house. And get someone else to clean the bathtub. (Yeah, so very practical!)

[metaphortunate]

I shall look forward to that in 3 or 6 years, then!

[snippy]

For the kids part, I told myself firmly that kids who aren't exposed to enough germs get more allergies and asthma. For me, I'd clean the tub, rinse thoroughly with the shower head, and then take a bath. I don't like to use any bath bombs or bubbles or oil because I have dry, sensitive skin: just water and a good book.

[metaphortunate]

That is what I tell myself about daycare and public transportation. :P

[tyger]

I don't really take many baths any more, because my hair is long enough that it's a PITA to wash it, and I'd rather relax with a blanket and a heater vent than hot water, but when we were kids we always had baths. Bath got cleaned once a week, and other than that it was just water in, bathe, water out again, nothing fancy. There was never much of a gunk build up of any sort, really. (Not like now, when the bath gets covered in layers of dust, and needs a good clean before it gets used because dustbunnies are not relaxing.) If there was bubble bath residue, enough water got splashed on it that it went down the drain too, and that was pretty much it. I dunno if that helps, but yeah, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

[thistleingrey]

I fall asleep if I try taking a bath, for probably obvious reasons. But I find baking soda and a stiff tub-intended brush adequate for cleaning our foot grime (and the occasional bit of red mold) off the tub enough for my daughter to sit in it without my guilt. Then too, my daughter tends to stand and have little buckets of warm water poured over her; she splashes in a filled tub once a week or so, by her request. (Really little bucket--plastic thing with pot-type handle from an Asian supermarket.)

I scrub once every 2-3 weeks. If I can't see the dirt, it's not worth messing with my knee more often than that. I dunno. Shrug.

[metaphortunate]

Okay, ours gets washed every two weeks too.

[rosefox]

We use only no-dye-no-perfume liquid soaps and they rinse very cleanly. I've never seen soap scum on our bathtub and it sure isn't because we scrub it. (Unless J and X have secretly been scrubbing it all the time and not telling me.)

I take baths with powdered oatmeal (SO NICE) and rinse the tub (and myself) pretty thoroughly afterwards because the oatmeal can get quite slippery. Beyond that... uh... I guess I give it a quick scrub after washing out the catbox every couple of months?

[submarine_bells]

You seem a little stressed. Try relaxing... maybe a bath might help.
:-)

Seriously, the purpose of the bath is not to be some sort of Uber-Sterile Safe-To-Do-Surgery-In Hygienic Space. The purpose of a bath is to be a receptacle for hot(ish) water that a body can be immersed in, for the purpose of unkinking sore bits. It's also a useful retreat, in that once one is IN the bath, getting OUT of the bath involves soggy drippiness and a certain PITA factor; so if one is IN the bath, one is perfectly justified to request that other folk answer the door/floss the cat/service the death-ray while one reclines in soggy splendour and munches on bon-bons.

If, when you are about to fill it, the bath seems a tad manky, all you need to do is swish some of the warm damp stuff that comes out of the tap around, and sluice the sludge down the drain. Don't worry about icky stuff in the drain. That's why you have a plug. It separates bath contents from drain contents quite handily.

So there ya go... the key elements in having a nice relaxing bath, all nicely adumbrated. You might also want to include a trashy novel to read while immersed, and some of your favourite beverage. I personally recommend sake or Irish Coffee, but your tastes may vary.

Enjoy your bath, madam!

[metaphortunate]

I don't have a plug, I have a built-in thing.

Also, I do understand that the purpose of the bath is not to be sterile, but I persist, perhaps because it is the way I wash my children, in thinking that I want to be cleaner when I get out of one than when I go in. An individual quirk, perhaps.

[tam_nonlinear]

Well, I rarely go straight to soaking. I run the shower first to rinse myself off (don't want to soak in my own grime), and while I'm rinsing myself off, I grab the scrub brush and scrub down the tub a bit. I'll usually finish off by putting the shower head to 'high powered beads of death" (I think that's supposed to be a massage setting) and going over the tub surface with the water set to the highest temp. Then I let everything drain, and after that, stopper the tub and turn the setting to faucet rather than shower head and fill it up. But as was stated above, baths aren't for cleaning (I did that in the showering phase), baths are for 'oh god my knees' and 'I can't get warm', although sometimes 'the only way I'm getting this paint/glue/tree sap off my skin is to soak until I'm wrinkly and then scrub it off'.

[troisroyaumes]

We rarely take baths but we do clean the tub regularly -- usual method is to take the Method bathroom spray (which is pretty environmentally friendly, I think, since the main ingredient is just citric acid) and scrub manually. About once a year, I do a very hot soak, but that's just water, and I shower afterwards.

[rydra_wong]

usual method is to take the Method bathroom spray (which is pretty environmentally friendly, I think, since the main ingredient is just citric acid)

This. I have a similar eco-cleaning spray that's basically citric acid. As and when the bathtub's looking at all grimy, I spray it with that, rinse it with hot water from the shower attachment, and if any areas are left looking manky (e.g. if I've been using oils in the bath, as they tend to cling to the walls), wipe them down with a micro-fibre cloth. Very speedy, and any citric acid residue isn't going to hurt me.

[wired]

1) I have cleaners.
2) Just-water doesn't leave much residue.
3) I am not usually DIRTY when I get in the bath.
4) Dirt has yet to kill me.
5) I derive a great deal of benefit, mental and physical, from taking a couple hours out of my busy life and floating weightless in a tub. I can't imagine what my pregnancies would have been like without a big old clawfoot we had then.

[metaphortunate]

When I was about 8 months (I think?) pregnant with the Junebug we went away for a weekend to a place that had an enormous Jacuzzi. It was incredibly wonderful. I don't think the little tub in our old apartment would have had the same effect.

[oyceter]

I think this is why in Japan, you shower before getting into the bathtub... my host family basically had a bathtub that was always full and circulating water and always heated, and you could hop in any time. (Obviously this is not a good or workable solution for you necessarily! Esp. since Japanese bathrooms are designed to have the shower separate from the bathtub.)

I really do love soaking and find it really relaxing, but due to all the reasons you list above, I usually go to Asian-style bathhouses and dunk myself in various tubs and hop in the sauna every so often. (There's one in SF if you are inclined to just try soaking without thinking about cleaning the tub, but I am guessing that is not what you were asking for?) /is unhelpful

[metaphortunate]

Oh my god that sounds delightful. *sigh*