Maintaining good off-grid hygiene can be hard, but it is critical for staying healthy. It is a key factor in fighting off infection, illness, and disease. It’s easy to forget how important off-grid hygiene can be. In World War II, many items were rationed, including soap! There are many accounts during that time that paints a vivid picture of how important soap is in maintaining good health. Here is an excerpt from the Guernsey Literary book:
“Around about the middle of the German Occupation, soap became scarce; families were only rationed one tablet per person a month… There wasn’t enough soap on Guernsey to keep clean—not our clothes, our houses, or ourselves. Everyone had skin diseases of one sort or another—scales or pustules or lice. I myself had scabies on top of my head—under my hair—and they wouldn’t go away”.
Although this book is historical fiction. It’s based on facts and personal witnesses during the time of World War II.
On the show Survivor, the contestants develop skin sores around week three. They bathed in whatever water was available, but they didn’t have soap to wash themselves or their clothes. There are plenty of episodes where the Survivor participants brush their teeth with twigs for off-grid hygiene.
Tips & Ideas for Off-grid Hygiene
1. Foaming Soap Dispenser
Maximizing your resources is important in any situation but especially when resources are scarce. It’s common to have liquid soap around the house. You may even be surprised at how much you really have in your home. For example, dish soap, hand soap, shampoo, and laundry soap. You can make liquid soaps last longer by using a foaming soap dispenser. Add 1/5 of liquid soap and fill the rest of it with water. It will make your soap supply last five times longer.
2. Grow your own sponges
I picked this Loofah out of my father’s garden some time ago. As you can see, it stores really well. It just needs to be picked and then dried out. Once the skin is brittle, remove the dried-out casing.
3. Off-grid Shower
There are a lot of options for portable off-grid showers. Here are a few things to consider: pressurized or gravity feed; solar heated or cold.
4. Build Your Own Sweat Lodge
For more about this sweat lodge, visit Needful Provisions
Products to consider stocking up on in the event water is scarce:
1. Baby Wipes – If a shower is unavailable, baby wipes are a great off-grid hygiene option when my family goes camping. A wipe has it all: a cloth, soap, and moisture all in one. They are compact, light-weight, affordable, and have a fresh, clean smell.
2. Hand Sanitizer – kills 99.9% of most common germs that may cause illness without soap or water.
3. Pocket Body Wash Leaves – cleans hard to remove gunk with very little water. These leaves are amazing! I use them to get tree sap off my hands.
4. No-Water Soap -this is the soap NASA uses for all shuttle flights so you know it must be good.
5. Disinfecting Wipes – these are a great option if your pipes freeze or you lose power, but you still want to disinfect your dishes, tables, & counters.
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I’ve never heard of No-Water Soap. I’ve used no rinse wipes in the hospital before but not the No-Water Soap…interesting. Gotta check it out, thanks!
HandyShower is a 3-in-1 personal hygiene system that can function as a faucet, a bidet, or a shower. The device is equipped with a patented-self closing valve which facilitates water conservation. The whole kit fits in a small sachet and weighs not much more than a pound. (More details here: http://handyshower.org/ )
The main idea behind the project was to help citizens of the developing world where sanitation conditions are often very poor. However, our device also has the potential to be a very useful piece of outdoor gear.