CathInfo.com

When your hair gets oily, throw it up in a ponytail!

Matthew said:

We don't take daily showers. We don't even necessarily take showers EVERY OTHER day. It depends on what season it is, and how much sweating we've done. When I work outside, I always take a shower (pretty much have to). During the winter, twice a week is *plenty*, otherwise our skin gets dried out.

Even if one doesn't take a shower everyday, I would think that at least a sponge bath would be necessary, especially for those areas of the body prone to B.O.

Ladies, please note: when you don't wash your hair too much, it stays much more healthy (softer, less dried out, less split ends, etc.). I guess God made our scalps produce oil for a reason!

Depends on how you define washing your hair too much.  Personally, I have always had oily hair and when I was younger I absolutely had to shampoo daily.  Now that I'm more mature, I still have oily hair but not as bad.  After two days my hair needs a good shampoo.

Moral of the story: we might have 5 loads a WEEK

I only have two children and when they were young each week I had six loads of laundry.  One for the sheets, one white load, one load of jeans, one load of towels, and one load of dressier or work clothes and lastly one load for things like blankets.  I could never understand why some people had to do laundry everyday.  If I had done the same, there wouldn't be enough of each type to make a full load.  I only did laundry once a week on.  Also we never used things like towels more than once and changed our clothes everyday.  I must have had a machine that could accommodate extra large loads.

There's a hint for you on how it's possible to live on one income!

I was a stay at home mother at the time and we managed to live comfortably on my husbands income.  Of course our income was supplemented a little bit by my babysitting a couple of kids.

Morning and evening?! That is effeminacy right there. Excessively "soft" living.

The oldest (boy, 5) gets his own bath. The girls (3.5 and 2) share one, and the baby (3 months) still fits in a baby bathtub.

I know from experience just how dirty little kids can get in a day.  I used to give my kids a couple baths a day when the weather was warm.  Okay I admit maybe the morning bath wasn't always necessary.

All of the above describe a life the OPPOSITE of a life of mortification and penance. Experience those "simple, licit pleasures" too much, and you become "soft". Americans, as a whole, are very "soft". With the exception of the satisfying meal and the alcohol, FEW PEOPLE experienced the pleasures I listed 150 years ago. Showering was more rare when you had to heat & pour a bucket of water in an Old West-style shower.

 I'll have to keep this in mind.  Offer up my greasy hair as a penance.  Btw, wasn't there a saint who never bathed and had maggots crawling on himself.  He had been so fastidious about cleanliness in his former life that this was his way of doing penance.  I think his name was St. Leonard something.