I’m gonna be TMI honest with you guys- I don’t ever skip showers. I can’t imagine working out and not washing off that sweat. I mean come on, I live in Florida. I’m not sure if that’s just how I’m wired or if I’ve just gotten used to it. However, I do know people who don’t shower constantly and don’t seem to mind (my editor only washes her hair like once a week- I can’t even imagine that!!!).       
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But, what if it was actually healthier for us to skip a shower (maybe not permanently but just far less than we normally do)?You see, we have these natural microbes on our skin and they are supposed to do the job of helping to keep us clean and not smelling ripe- without the help of any additional products. (This isn’t to say if you are gardening for hours that you shouldn’t wash the dirt off your hands.)

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And so, with this in mind, journalist James Hamblin from The Atlantic, spurred on by watching fellow journalist Julia Scott, decided to give it a try. (For her part, Scott actually sprayed herself every day with a bacterial body spray called nitrosamonas eutropha which is supposed to replace all of your personal care and beauty products and keep you clean and fresh-smelling. Check out a similar one here.)

Here’s what they learned:

1. You won’t actually smell

While there may have been an initial odor, it was while their bodies were adjusting. And after that, they didn’t smell like store bought perfume, but they also didn’t smell like B.O., Hamblin explained, “You just smell like a person.” 1

2. Your skin will moisturize itself

“During Scott’s experiment, she said that not only did she feel her skin producing its own, completely natural moisturizer, but that her stubborn acne completely disappeared. ‘I wasn’t embarrassed because I didn’t have acne, in spite of not using any products to ward that off,’ she explains.” 1

3. You’ll save so much extra time

When I first saw this I thought, “No way.” In fact, I was just about ready to do the math and then I saw that Hamblin already had. At 20 minutes a day washing, conditioning and moisturizing our skin and hair, in our lifetimes we spend 12,167 hours or 506 days washing (if you live to be 100). Can you imagine what else you could do if you skipped even one day of showering?

Let’s also remember that giving up a shower one day a week or even a month would really help our environment too because we’d be consuming less water. So, what do you think? Are you willing to give it a try? Are you willing to give it up for a MONTH? If you do, let us know in the comments how it worked out for you and what you learned!

XO- Erin

Sources and References

  1. Huffington Post, October 23, 2016.