Why I went without hot water for a year

by aspirant • 16 years ago

92 108 16 years ago

confuzatron2• 16 years ago

"One day I was showering there when a friend in the next stall said, “Boy, you must really be enjoying this hot shower."

I require more information here. Actually... on second thoughts, I do not require more information here.

DrSprout• 16 years ago

This is a lot like how I became a vegetarian. One day I just stopped eating land-dwelling creatures. A couple weeks later I gave up seafood for Lent.

Though I don't think I'll be going back. Unlike the shower experiment, what I discovered was that not only did I not feel any different, nothing had really changed. I still enjoy my food more and more every day, learning new recipes and finding new restaurants. Main difference is I don't have to worry as much about sterilizing my kitchen.

nhooey• 16 years ago

I cut meat on my cutting board all the time, and for years I didn't even really use soap to wash it off. I would just scrub the meat juice off with a brush. Now I use just run-of-the-mill dish soap. The whole idea of having to sterilize everything that meat touches is pushed really hard by the soap companies on TV. I don't think it's necessary to use anything stronger than normal soap.

Also, giving up meat completely isn't easy if you go out to dinner with other people. And it gets exponentially harder the more people you go out with, given the low odds of everyone being vegetarian, or wanting to go to a vegetarian restaurant.

I think that severely reducing meat consumption is a good idea in general, but quitting cold-turkey is pretty inconvenient.

Groxx3• 16 years ago

I tend towards the "that which does not kill me, makes me stronger" approach to sanitization. A good immune system is valuable, and oversanitizing definitely weakens it, because you've had less exposure. Health-care people really are immune(ish) to a vast amount of diseases because they're exposed to them while they're healthy, and they develop defenses against them.

Clean things, sure, but sanitization is overkill because the world is not a sanitary place to begin with. If you're not living in the world when it intrudes, it seems unlikely you'll be prepared. And antibacterial soap is ridiculously excessive for anyone not in healthcare; it all washes down the drain in the end, boosting diseases' resistance to it.

As to meat, I generally have found that less is better, and American diets tend to have a ton. I have doubts that zero is more healthy (and don't bother quoting / linking, I've read tons) than small amounts, much less veganism, but I definitely do better when I keep it pretty low.

fierarul• 16 years ago

>This is a lot like how I became a vegetarian.

Me too, except that after about 3-4 months I restarted eating meat and I've been dreaming of going back to vegetarianism ever since.

So you can't actually willfully induce these 'sudden' decisions.

ryanwanger• 16 years ago

Great article.

Pretty incredible to think about how almost everything consumed in the developed world is a luxury...yet we tend to think of them as necessities.

aspirant4• 16 years ago

That's what half of Thoreau's Walden is about.

pavel_lishin3• 16 years ago

Everything period is a luxury, then. I mean, at which point do you draw the line between luxury and necessity? Okay, hot water is a luxury. What about running water? Clean water? Enough water to clean yourself? Enough water to avoid poor health?

aspirant4• 16 years ago

Not true. That is what Abraham Maslow spent his life trying to tell us. People have needs. Physiological ones (air, water), and also psychological ones (challenges, self-esteem).

Therefore, we can know a want from a need because a need is anything that if you were to go without it, would result in your death or stunted growth.

This piece, like Walden, is about how we can trade what we have mistaken for physiological needs for legitimate psychological needs.

CodeMage• 16 years ago

I think ryanwanger's original statement is a sort of a false dichotomy. I don't think you can divide things into "luxuries" and "necessities" without a context. What might be seen as a luxury from one point of view might be a necessity from another point of view.

Drawing on what aspirant said, Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a very good way to provide that context: at the level of physiological needs, you can consider "safety" level needs as "luxuries"; on the other hand, you would consider them as "necessities" from the "love/belonging" level.

wizard_2• 16 years ago

I would stand there giving myself little pep-talks out loud, convincing myself to follow through. “Do this. It won’t kill you. It’ll be over soon.” And when I got out of that shower clean and covered in goosebumps I felt stronger and more substantial than when I’d gone in. My resolve had been tested and affirmed.

I wonder what things I do to test my resolve that I'm not currently aware of. It took him a year to figure it out for himself.

shawndumas10• 16 years ago

'I often went three or four days between showers or until someone told me I smelled.'

-- Ok I'm sorry, maybe this is superficial of me, but I just cannot fathom consciously choosing to wait till offense overcomes decorum to decide when to shower.

10ren2• 16 years ago

The modern sense of a romantic character may be expressed in Byronic ideals of a gifted, perhaps misunderstood loner, creatively following the dictates of his inspiration rather than the mores of contemporary society - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism

scott_s2• 16 years ago

Which sounds noble until I'm forced to share a confined space with the person.

shawndumas10• 16 years ago

Mores change with time and place. Negligent malodourousness is to be avoided at all times and places.

Besides, he wasn't "creatively following the dictates of his inspiration". He was wimping out of the consequences of his 'inspiration'; man-up and shower. Unhygienic!

edit: bad speller

aspirant4• 16 years ago

If you want more context, it was usually the employees of the company I founded that told me I needed to shower. It's not like I had flies swarming around me. Rather, they'd walk into my office and sniff and let me know it was about that time.

This seemed very efficient to me. Why go around guessing when you need to shower when others can more tell you more accurately?

But different strokes for different folks. I'd rather be known, not for my complete lack of odor, but for having an independent intellect.

petercooper2• 16 years ago

I agree, though the notion of showering every day is a reasonably modern American innovation (that has, thankfully, spread further afield). As a kid in 80s Britain, my parents and I all had our baths on Sunday, and that was that. When I reached my teens, of course, I decided to become a little more regular!

All that said, people clearly have different washing demands. Manual workers, people who sweat a lot, and people, like the GP poster, who clearly smelt to third parties. There are folks, though, who can go a while between washing without becoming pongy though, in my experience.

eru7• 16 years ago

I use to shower everyday. However, when I was on a vacation in Mongolia we jumped into a lake, say, once a week. Strangely, we did not smell. (And I did not smell the other guys, even when I just had a bath in the lake.) On the other hand, this was around 2700m above sea level.

malloreon• 16 years ago

I do something similar, except I only take cold showers at the gym, before and after using the steam room. At home I take slightly longer warm showers.

It takes about a week to get used to cold showers after which the "holy shit" feeling lasts for about 10 seconds, and after 1-2 minutes you enjoy it.

SapphireSun3• 16 years ago

I dunno man, I tried it a few times and I started shivering uncontrollably. Maybe I set the temperature too low?

Super_Jambo• 16 years ago

I find that whenever I'm coming down with some kind of illness or am overly tired my ability to cope with cold showers drops through the floor and my body lets me know this ain't acceptable. Maybe that was it? Or could just be you have lower cold tolerance? Uncontrollable shivering is probably best avoided though!

smokey_the_bear• 16 years ago

The temperature of your cold water will depend on where you live too. In Florida the groundwater is 70 degrees. I live in the mountains at 7000 feet, the water is much colder.

eru7• 16 years ago

Get into a proper Finnish sauna at around 95 degrees Celsius. After ten to fifteen minutes you will long for the cold shower. And it will actually feel good.

dhyasama• 16 years ago

The parents of my college roommate didn't have hot water. They lived in a fairly well-off Connecticut town next door to an ESPN anchor, so money wasn't the issue it was just a personal choice. Showers were a love/hate thing for sure and I always wondered about sanitation. Will water that's not so hot it will burn you be hot enough to kill bacteria?

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

> Will water that's not so hot it will burn you be hot enough to kill bacteria?

no.

That's why sterilization uses steam and / or boiling.

aspirant4• 16 years ago

Right. Washing dishes in nice soapy 90 degree water doesn't kill any germs. It just feels good on your hands.

But people gave me a lot of crap about using cold water anyway. So part of my process, just to be safe, was to ensure the clean dishes dried very well, next to a window, in the sunlight.

ajuc• 16 years ago

Water has to be sth like 70 C degree hot to kill most bacteria, and it would be too hot for you at that point.

Hygiene works because bacteria are flushed out, not because water kills them (ok, antibacterial soap may kill some bacteria, but not much).

eru7• 16 years ago

And you do not have to kill bacteria. Your skin is fine with most of them. (Actually you are better of with bacteria on your skin.)

CWuestefeld2• 16 years ago

Do you think that sterilizing your skin will improve health?

Everyone has loads of bacteria all over them, the vast majority of which are completely benign. AIUI, there's a little ecology there, with all of them competing to survive.

So if you kill them all by sterilizing your whole surface, you create an opportunity for the bad bacteria to gain the initiative and take over the ecosystem when the benign stuff can't fight back as well. The end result, then, could be that where you'd had just a few of the bad guys, you're now covered with them.

bseo2• 16 years ago

A related koan: Non-attachment http://deoxy.org/koan/98

pavel_lishin3• 16 years ago

Wow, it's been years since I've loaded up Deoxy.

confuzatron2• 16 years ago

I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to think the guy is mis-applying the principal of non-attachment (or whatever it is) in the second two instances.

afterburner• 16 years ago

Does this guy live in a place where it snows?

m0th87• 16 years ago

Raleigh, NC; so not really

balding_n_tired• 16 years ago

"As for my type, it said I valued autonomy, ingenuity, and will power, and trusted my own reasoning."

And have a deep capacity for self-criticism, right?

10ren2• 16 years ago

I went alpine camping for a week once (Tasmania), and crossing a stream, the water was so cold it was physically extremely painful. But others in the group didn't mind as much, so I decided to adjust to it.

At the end of the week, I was swimming in the water for half an hour, and it didn't bother me at all. A tremendous sense of elevation.

While it does remind me of why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop, to defeat discomfort is somehow profoundly affirming of freedom and self-determination.

verisimilitude• 16 years ago

Your comment reminds me of my past winter up here in Minnesota. I bike to school, each and every day -- snow, rain... it got down to -20°F in January. And my experience is exactly the same as yours: I did it without a big down coat, without µfleece or anything high-tech: just a layer of thin wool and a layer of polyester. No GoreTex. Not even fancy socks.

People think that it'll be unbearably cold or simply intolerable without all the fancy stuff -- but you plunge in and your body adjusts so fast. You described it very well: FREEING.

hackermom2• 16 years ago

I find it amusing how many "modern" people would find his choice breathtaking, unimaginable etc. I wonder if the same people are aware of the fact that it really wasn't that many years ago that hot water was a "50/50" in apartment buildings in developed countries.

joubert2• 16 years ago

'I often went three or four days between showers or until someone told me I smelled.'

Washing oneself is not about fitting in, it is about hygiene.

wheels• 16 years ago

You mean to imply that one who does not shower more than twice a week will be less healthy?

joubert2• 16 years ago

Yes, because it probably means you're not exercising regularly.

pvdm• 16 years ago

I am doing the same as I am giving up my corporate cubicle for one year to do some programming for fun.

madmaze• 16 years ago

I could imagine doing this if i wouldnt live in Boston, with cheapo room mates that keep it barely above freezing in the winter. I must say i rather enjoy taking cool showers, im not sure that i could do straight up cold showers except when its very warm out.

scott_s2• 16 years ago

Does anyone else take cool showers during the summer anyway? Not ice-cold, but cool. I've always thought it was odd that people would take hot showers when it's hot already.

I understand the psychological benefits of doing something difficult that you don't need to do. I do it often with physical activity. But denying yourself hot water does not deal a blow to the status-quo. I think the benefits of doing something hard are negated if you shower yourself with congratulations over it. (Note: this is not the same as being satisfied that you did it.)

hackermom2• 16 years ago

I do. I find even the ambient temperature itself during summers unbearable.

eleitl• 16 years ago

> I often went three or four days between showers or until someone told me I smelled.

He should have omitted that sentence. It make him sound more like a whacked-out weirdo/dirty-smelly hippie, and undermines credibility of the experiment.

pavel_lishin3• 16 years ago

It wasn't really an experiment. It was just him bragging about how awesome and independent he is for stinking up his workplace.

CWuestefeld2• 16 years ago

Downvote.

The purpose of the piece, I think, is to relate his experience. And this is certainly a part of the experience, perhaps an important part because it illustrates that the experiment does have some effect on others.

In the bigger picture: why do we write? Is it that we're trying to fool others into accepting an idea? Or because we want to help them understand an idea? I can't see any reason to omit the sentence, short of being deceitful.

yason• 16 years ago

Only three or four days and that sounds like a whacked-out weirdo/dirty-smelly hippie?

So how often do you shower, then?

daten2• 16 years ago

I can't speak for him, but I shower once a day. I enjoy feeling clean and not smelling. I also appreciate when others do the same.

The whole experiment seams to be about his ego, I wish he tried to gain more insight into other reasons people chose to stay clean enough to not offend their peers with their smell instead of just concluding:

"I felt myself standing apart from the sheep-like masses who had been led to confuse their wants and needs."

silversmith• 16 years ago

At least once a day. More often in summer or if I'm doing sports that day. Vast majority of people I know the showering habits of are the same.

eru7• 16 years ago

I can go for a few days without smelling too badly. But I usually shower everyday, because my hair gets greasy fast.

jrockway• 16 years ago

If life isn't fulfilling enough, just make up some sort of arbitrary challenge for yourself. That way you can be successful!

blizkreeg• 16 years ago

The joys of manufactured challenges of modern day life.

NateLawson• 16 years ago

I always see this as a sign of how rich we are. How else could we have the opportunity to be so self-indulgent?

Things we take for granted such as paved streets or cars are tremendously expensive. San Jose (Costa Rica) has one 4-lane US-style highway that goes through town for a few miles, then it turns into a 2-lane concrete and eventually dirt road. And that's a healthy country with a decent-sized middle class.

I actually like to see these kinds of experiments since the fact that they exist means our society still has wealth and opportunity. Just don't confuse them with actual sacrifice.

timwiseman• 16 years ago

It can help if those arbitrary challenges are in some way helpful to society.

Setting a goal of say genuinely helping X number of people on stackoverflow or http://ask.sqlservercentral.com is more significant than setting a goal of a high record in Asteroids. Helping the poor or setting a goal of making a useful open source project are more significant still.

In short, succeeding in doing something both productive and challenging > succeeding in random challenge that is not productive.

rsayers• 16 years ago

I also did this for a year. Not really by choice, but simply because I lived in a developing country (Curacao) and my house didn't have hot water. It really was not that big of a deal after the first week.

wingo• 16 years ago

When I was teaching middle school in Namibia, a fellow teacher asked his kids to write something about the wintertime. A common theme was how cold it was, the time when no one wants to shower and they end up smelling bad!

unixpro• 16 years ago

Work from home.

If you're going to follow this as a regular practice while working with a group of people in a professional environment -- well that's just obnoxious.

rokhayakebe• 16 years ago

Try 19 years on (2months/year) and off (10months/year). That's growing up in a developing country. But at least that is normal there.

tjic• 16 years ago

subject line: Why I went without hot water for a year

second paragraph: I didn’t really have a clear reason for doing this

I'd argue that the blog post pretty well fails to deliver on the promise of the subject line.

0_o• 16 years ago

I started taking a James Bond shower 6 months ago and have not caught any cold since then - http://artofmanliness.com/2010/01/18/the-james-bond-shower-a...

ashishbharthi• 16 years ago

Really nice energy saving tip I received the other day.

"Reduce your water heater temperature from 140f to 120f. you will not notice much difference and you will not have to mix cold water to bringdown the temperature of really hot water."

kscaldef• 16 years ago

And you don't risk scalding yourself.

FWIW, my tankless water heater cannot be set any hotter than 120.

mattmichielsen• 16 years ago

I do the exact same thing. You don't want to go much lower than that though, as your water heater will become a bacteria cesspool.

paulbaumgart• 16 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionellosis#Prevention_of_Leg...

"Legionella will grow in water at temperatures from 20 to 50 °C (68 to 122 °F)."

130 °F sounds like a safer compromise.

bseo2• 16 years ago

What is so wrong about body odour? I'm sure there must have been a time, not too long ago, when people smelled like people.

Sometimes, I don't shower for 3-4 days. You don't sweat that much if you are hacking away at a keyboard for 12 hours a day.

I don't see how showering ever day is hygienic. You are stripping your skin and hair of natural oils,bacteria and whatnot. Then you have to use more substances to fight the negative effects of the above. On top of that, you spray yourself with long-lasting synthetic smells or things that stop your armpits from sweating.

I shower every other day, more or less. I don't use deodorants. I don't use colognes, except on rare occasions. Haven't had any complaints from other people.

hapless• 16 years ago

In other words, no one sticks around long enough to say anything.

krschultz• 16 years ago

I have a boat, and live on it for extended periods of time (minimum still 2-3 nights a week in the summer, longest stretch was around 2 months). While we have hot water, it is in short supply. We have around 25 gallons at a time and it takes a few hours to recharge.

However, after 20 years of doing this I can tell you that you can get by using only a few gallons per shower. If you want to do this for enviromental or budget reasons, these are my tips.

1) Use luke warm rather than hot (cold is for masochists). Cold water is usually relatively unlimited.

2) Turn it on to rinse, turn off to soap, turn it back on to rinse again.

3) A hand held shower head is better than a wall mounted one, you need less pressure to affect the same amount of showering.

We also have a solar shower bag to augment the water heater, you fill it up with 10-15 gallons, leave it in the sun for an hour and rinse off with it. We would shower every day and use barely 25 gallons of hot water for 4 people taking showers. Contrast that with at home, taking 10 minute steaming showers where I'm sure I burn through 25 gallons of hot water myself each morning.

tetsuoshiva• 16 years ago

Part of me has problems with the thought that these things aren't necessary. One thing is to willingly turn down some comfort in order to become more independent in our minds. Another thing completely different is being forced to take cold showers for indefinite time. You would hate it. You would try anything at hand to get a hold on a hot shower. The more you were forced to take cold showers, the more you would hate your oppressors and the damn cold shower. Specially when you can't see a hint that in the future you will have access to one hot shower.

isleyaardvark• 16 years ago

This reminds me somewhat of how Seneca and other Stoics would deliberately take cold baths.

EDIT: To elaborate a little, they would do it in part because they felt that facing uncomfortable situations on purpose prepared them for facing uncomfortable situations not of their choosing.

PlanetFunk• 16 years ago

It's amazing to think of what we do that's governed by society/advertising.

I began my own experiment over 3 years ago, where I stopped using shampoo to wash my hair, and instead, wash it every day, but only using water.

I've found that my hair is only slightly oily. And by that I mean it has a natural coating - not something you'd notice.

It doesn't look, smell, or feel any different to when I used shampoo, but I guess I've saved a bit of money, and have removed one set of chemicals contacting my skin.

I wouldn't say it's changed my life, but there is a sense of sense of happiness(smugness?) in knowing that I don't need whatever they're(advertising) selling.

Now, how to over come my addiction to tech...

womenswrites• 16 years ago

Love the essay and the comments. You rock, Josh!!

Why I went without hot water for a year

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