Showering: what's your m.o./strategy/order of events

I have been on a lifelong quest to find the most efficient way to shower. Because I don't luxuriate -- I want to get in and out with utmost haste. I still think I'm a long way off from the ideal.

But for now it goes: quarter size squirt of shampoo which I lather into my hair and use the excess to wash my face, ears and neck.

Next is the dirty parts, genitalia and butt. I wanna get to these quickly because they are the nastiest parts of the body and even the drip-down is contaminated.

Next is the feet because I wanna get that out of the way. For some reason I don't enjoy washing my feet, who am I, Jesus??

Then I clean my torso and back. I use the same soap for the whole body, even the hair. It's all cheap ass sulfates. Unless you're super bougie.

Last is legs. For men, easy to forget. But I run a little soap over them. Then my legs won't stick to my jeans. But you could make racks upon racks just pulling out high end pants and selling them online

my M.O. is no B.O.

I have come ton accept that guys can stink "down there" as bad or worse than girls

I have come ton accept that guys can stink "down there" as bad or worse than girls

*to

I have needed a new hot water heater for years but still haven’t gotten around to replacing it, the upshot bring I usually only have about two minutes of hot water when I shower. I basically just rinse my hair, lather shampoo in hair and now in my quarantine beard, apply soap to armpits and swimsuit area, then rinse. I don’t wash my legs, I guess that makes me gross

id soap from chest and shoulders down, not sure starting at bollix and spreading up makes any sense to me at all

I start with soaping what little hair I have left on my head, then I rinse it off. Shampoo would be overkill. Next, I lather my washcloth ('flannel' for non-USAers), take a quick swipe at my armpits and arms, then I wash the remainder of my head and progressively work my way down to my feet, then I rinse off whatever soap residue has not already rinsed away on its own.

poll: soap to skin or washcloth / loofah?

former

i mean youd have to wash a facecloth every time otherwise, or so itd seem to me anyway

soap is good for dissolving skin oils and whatever matrix of dirt, sweat and bacteria is embedded in such oils, but a facecloth or loofah provides some extra friction to remove dead skin cells and leaves one's skin just a bit better cleared of detritus.

I have come ton accept that guys can stink "down there" as bad or worse than girls

― i will FP you and your entire family (rip van wanko), Saturday, May 16, 2020 5:32 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

WTF obviously dudes get worse smells. Girls bits are tucked in and self-cleaning, guys have hairy balls and all manner of moist crevices getting funky.

not to mention well not to mention it i guess

First thing in I shampoo + rinse, then conditioner to set. i spend the conditioner time absorbing heat to sustain me for the next 24 hours or konjac sponging my face/neck and soaping front. After conditioner time, rinse conditioner. Then soap back of the body. I alternate between mitt/loofah and no mitt/loofah every other day or so.

Christ I remember a really smelly guy who got multiple verbals + eventually a disciplinary warning at work in a letter that warned that his self-hygiene was that bad he was a "health and safety hazard". He started turning up stinking of deodorant after this but was still essentially emanating a stale sweat and general decay kind of B.O. which was an improvement btw. The last straw was when his mum phoned in sick for him and I am not making this up, she said he couldn't come in today because he had to go to the local surgery with a very painful boil on his penis! They sacked him after this for other reasons obv but it went down in legend that he got sacked for having a septic festering carbuncle on his cock!

buy a shower cap and shampoo your hair way less than you already do

exfoliate however you can

quincie otm
and buzzfeed and reddit lead me to believe that some straight men are terrified of touching their butts so it's an entire exclusion zone down there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-U61RS_q-0

I pretty much go from top down which makes sense to me.

- Shampoo, rinse
- Wash face/head/neck
- Use my wet/dry rotary electric shaver & cleanser to smooth face
- then continue downward in about four steps till feet are clean.

Bidet built into toilet seat (highly recommended) often used beforehand.

Also:

Last is legs. For men, easy to forget.

WTF? How do you forget your legs? Like forgetting your arms...

('flannel' for non-USAers)

FP’d you for racism

my hair looks and feels terrible if I don’t shampoo at least every other day but I’m sure I’m DOiNG IT WRONG

shave my head obviously

Funky balls smell is so bad. I’m amazed that there are men out there that don’t realize this is a thing.

Shampoo hair then condition and brush teeth while the conditioner is doing it’s thing. Then use shower gel usually without a sponge or poof then shave legs last.

i follow PEMDAS strictly

Face with just soap and water, then neck to feet in descending order, with scratchy Korean washcloth, pausing 2-3 times to add more body-wash (Aveeno), wash hair quickly and then a safety check for smell pits/biznizz, second wash as necessary, turn the shower office and get sad again.

wash my legs?

why?

1) Wash legs
2) Wash torso (chest and stomach, arms, underarms, genitalia)
3) Wash back and ass

Shampoo hair every other day; on non-shampoo days, wash behind ears
On Mondays, shave face before showering
During warm months, finish by turning the water as cold as it'll go and shoving head and shoulders under it for as long as I can stand it

shave before showering?

!?

Madness

It is uncivil to condemn a man's Monday shaving regimen without first compassionately seeking for its cause and its logic.

im startled, maybe a little wary, but ive not yet attacked

purely nonsense to suggest that i have bristled, what

not worth getting into a lather over

brush it off

the regularity of shampooing is very much determined by hair texture and skin oiliness and/ or ethnicity.

hair presence

hair intersectionality and moonphases

this thread is gross, sorry

you should wash every part of your body, every day

organs????

legs?

Inside AND out?

don’t want to be with anybody who doesn’t think it’s important to wash their legs

theyre right under me when i shower, theyre not "unwashed" like

I guess since have to give myself an intramuscular injection every week in one of my thighs I’m really aware of leg hygiene

you should wash every part of your body, every day

― Dan S, Saturday, May 16, 2020 6:39 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

“every day” nah

theyre right under me when i shower, theyre not "unwashed" like

― spruce springclean (darraghmac), Saturday, May 16, 2020 6:48 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

generally the point of cleaning yourself is removing dead skin cells. soap from the upper part of your body sliding down to your legs doesn’t do this job

i mean this is the impression i’ve gleaned over time i could be full of shit

people who aren’t interested in hygiene, ugh

you should wash every part of your body every day isn’t controversial

does one's tongue count as inside or outside one's body, when it can move between these two states?

how do night showerers handle sleeping with wet hair? do you just cap it during the shower so it stays mostly dry?

I use a hair dryer. Max hot at first but change setting to cool air once hair is partially dry.

there is like a lot of body neurosis in this thread! showers are fucking fantastic. why not enjoy them? i'm pretty sure i do the same thing out of habit but i don't like keep track, i kind of go by feel. that doesn't mean i miss anything. a few things:

your genitals aren't as dirty as you think they are
your asshole is probably dirtier than you think it is and needs a little tlc
your feet are probably dirtier than you think they are and need a little tlc

other than that, just like fuckin rub some nice soap and shampoo over yourself where it feels good to clean and sing a carly rae jepsen song

also it's not "bougie" to be decent to your skin and hair with what you put on it. natural soaps with some essential oils you like are a beautiful thing.

i just sleep on it wet. I have since I was a kid. I don't own a hairdryer. xpost

your genitals aren't as dirty as you think they are

sorry this needs a postscript - if you have foreskin it needs a careful clean

i don't know why i'm being a shower explainer other than this is a weirdly gloomy thread for something that's so enjoyable and i hope more people give themselves permission to enjoy showers.

i keep wanting to post some things but then it makes it too serious when I think ilx needs some non serious things...but yeah.

On a side note, it is a fact of life that hair tends to accumulate and hold onto smells. It is a fact of human evolution that growing luxuriant hair around our genitals and armpits happens when we become sexually active. These two facts are related. Hard as it may be to believe, but one must conclude that for most of human existence smelly pubes and pits were particularly sexually attractive.

You all may now carry on.

in my experience, the best a vagina can smell is very close to an armpit at the end of the day, so I have come to love that smell

Wow

showering before sex is just not a thing in my life

i keep wanting to post some things but

Haven't used anything more than water on my hair or face for 20 years or more.

Actually I shave twice a week so I guess I use shaving gel on my face, never soap tho.

in my experience, the best a vagina can smell is very close to an armpit at the end of the day, so I have come to love that smell

― i will FP you and your entire family (rip van wanko), Thursday, May 28, 2020 2:15 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

rvw coming THRU with the true-to-username Content

showers are so awesome, sometimes I think the shower is the one place where I can truly relax

your genitals aren't as dirty as you think they are

sorry this needs a postscript - if you have foreskin it needs a careful clean

i don't know why i'm being a shower explainer other than this is a weirdly gloomy thread for something that's so enjoyable and i hope more people give themselves permission to enjoy showers.

― crystal-brained yogahead (map), Thursday, May 28, 2020 10:51 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I was like "offtm" when I read your initial post lol.

it was very soothing to read matthewk's and mh's routines

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Thursday, May 28, 2020 12:15 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ASILXoR

my only strongly held shower opinion* is that showering at night is disgusting. what's the point of showering if you are just going to lie down for several hours and marinate in accumulated dirt and grease and sweat and soggy wet-hair pillow, thus undoing the shower? why wouldn't you want to be the cleanest when you are actually around people, not when you're either alone or around someone who's unconscious anyway?

* with the caveat that all such opinions are bullshit, unless you happen to know the showering routines of every single person you encounter; chances are they do something you find either gross or excessive, and yet the outcome was acceptable to you

Or you have a job that requires you to be there at 9, but you don't really function well before 11.

showering before bed sometimes helps me sleep.

it's called keeping it real, look it up

showering before sleep is called "keeping it real"?

I like showering at night. the feeling of getting into bed afterwards is the best, I used to do it regularly when I came home feeling gross from my job.

admittedly this is one of those things where I just have no ability to comprehend the other side -- like, you know how mattresses get gross before it's time to replace them? that's what you're soaking in, for hours. and then you just... go out in public like that?

showering at night is called "keeping it real"?

just didn't seem to be too real

omg A+++

idk about ya'll's mattresses, but mine has a mattress cover that is regularly laundered along with the bedclothes

I mean not as frequently as the bedsheet but, y'know, regularly

if someone wants to make the bedding thread, I will prepare my list

do night showerers also have a shower first thing the next day

wasn't there a "how often do you wash your sheets" type thread at one point?

i don't sweat in my sleep and I launder bedsheets very regularly so I don't experience this "marination" problem. But if it's very humid/hot I will do a quick shower in the morning. Just like if it's exceptionally hot out or if I exercise, I will have another shower when I get home but I usually always do another shower at night before bed.

I want one of those japanese tubs that you can program and it shuts off by itself. So, nice to have a hot bath waiting for you right after dinner.

I wonder if there is a similar divide of people who wash the day away before bed and the people who take their shoes off in homes.

I wear my shoes to bed

i wear my shoes in the shower while washing dishes.

I wear a thong in the market

I use a laundromat that serves real pizze Napolitano

if someone wants to make the bedding thread, I will prepare my list

you could use this one: Your Bedsheets and These Changing Times

ooh I did share some good stories over there

I feel like there is a venn diagram to be made from this data.

I do sweat in my sleep, especially during summer (it's bad enough that I usually have a box fan running full blast at the foot of the bed)

(also have a mattress cover, but the whole point of a mattress cover is as a barrier against all the gross shit that is produced by one's body by the act of being a body. hence. showering in the morning, to get rid of it)

it's not as if you're shedding tons of gross shit every month, it's a slow accumulation.

I usually morning shower but I know night shower friends who don't smell like stinky poopoo

*every NIGHT

I have revived the bedsheet changing thread

I imagine that where you live affects how you feel about frequency and time of showering. I prefer morning showers but don't shower every day. I have a baseline of every other day but will shower more often than that if I've been swimming or working out or just feel particularly sweaty. But when I lived in NYC I showered more often because the air was so dirty that I always came home feeling grimy. And when I lived in Sitka, which is basically a rainforest, it was so humid that I started showering every day. When I lived in Fairbanks, otoh, and the air was cold and dry and I didn't have running water in my house, I could easily go more than two days.

The only time I put real energy into washing my legs is if I’ve been outdoors (like nature-y outdoors) in shorts/sandals. Usually I wear pants, I don’t sweat a lot, never have my legs been a source of blemishes, no one is ever interested in my legs and bending over is annoying for my 80-year-old-man back.

More aggressive showering schedule comes into play when the bugs are out and I have to cover myself in DEET and permethrin to be outside.

i am on the 3rd round of every other day hair washing and it's getting better. i will try every 3 after i warsh tomorrow. i feel so accomplished.

now I cannot take a shower without a mental rehash of my post here and/or a loop of Kenny Loggins playing in my mind