What We Love Wednesdays!! Baths or Showers?

Okay, so here’s the situation - we couldn’t decide what to do this week's WWLW on, so during lunch we decided that maybe we should skip this week, and as always that was the moment it hit us….well technically it hit Laura - as Sarah said ‘Well, I'll have a nice long bath instead- there’s nothing I LOVE more!’ and viola! Our WWLW topic was started.


Except it’s not quite than simple, as we share somewhat different opinions on this subject. For those of you that have followed our many posts, you may recall ‘The Valentine’s Debate’ - another subject we can’t quite agree on. So here is a WWLW post on another great debate: ‘Baths vs. Showers’.


From Sarah’s point of view:
I have been a water baby pretty much since birth, as a youngster I swam for my city and county and even tried out for the Olympics, so being in water is something I LOVE. Couple that with being a Cancerian, a water sign, if you follow zodiac stuff and you have someone who feels most comfortable surrounded by water - and where better to do that than a bath?

For me, a nice hot bath has reviving qualities only likened to an ice-cold Diet Coke. After a long hard day, soaking in a nice full bath transports mind and body to somewhere else. Surrounding yourself by candles, soap and bubbles and there you have your own private spa. Obviously I don’t get to do that EVERY night but any opportunity I can I will disappear for a bath – whether it is to relax, to ease my weary feet (running for London buses is more of a sport than a way to get around) or to do the ‘all over body maintenance’ I just don’t think a shower quite does it.

And I’m not alone – hot baths and their reviving qualities have been celebrated from Homer onwards and the oldest bathtub on record is in the Queen's bathroom in the palace of Knossos on Crete, dating from 1500BC. It was made from fired clay, and sat alongside one of the earliest water-flushed lavatories.
You also have the fact that bathing has always meant more than hygiene – most religions use water, literally and metaphorically, to clean away sin and purify the body. The Ancient Egyptians washed twice a day to honour Isis, Jesus washed his disciples' feet, and the Odyssey's sorceress Circe washed her head to entice dreams. 


Plus you get those bath wrinkles – that's when you know it has been a truly wonderful bath! One theory for what causes wrinkly skin after a bath is that the outermost layer of skin, contains dead keratin cells which absorb water. This makes the surface of the skin swell but not the lower layers, so the surface is forced to pucker as a result.


And if you’re not quite convinced it’s also better for the environment as the average bath uses 80 litres of water; compared to an eight-minute power shower of 136 litres.

Laura’s point of view:
I am a shower advocate. I LOVE the clean, refreshing, revitilising effects of a shower. I don’t see the point of sitting in your own dirt and dead skin cells when you can have warm water washing over your body and leaving you feeling immediately better – a shower does in 5-8 minutes what a bath takes half an hour to do.

And then you have the different types of showers – rain showers (hell yes), massage showers (ohh yeaaaah), showers that come at you from all angles (first discovered in Sarah’s Aunt’s house - I thought it had sprung a leak!) and then my all time favourite – the POWER shower! None of this water trickling, no thank you!


The main pleasure in a shower, for me, is that fact that the water always remains at the temperature I set it at, it doesn’t go cold after I have been in for 5 mins, I don’t have to give it a shot of boiling hot water to make sure I don’t get cold. More importantly I can lather up, wash off and step out and not have to have wrinkly fingers and toes that make me feel like I’ve aged 50 years. 


Showers are obviously a newer invention, so I can't go on and on about the history of showers as Sarah did with baths - but I think this is a good thing. People improve things over the decades and centuries - just because something is old, doesn't mean it isn't outdated and out of place in today's busy world. All the pleasure of a hot bath delivered in a short 10 minute package? That leaves us with more time for tea, or anything else we enjoy! I bet if Homer had the option of a massage shower, the Odyssey would have...well, made a lot more sense. And maybe wouldn't have been such an odyssey haha.

Where does your vote go - baths or showers??

Lots of love,

Sarah & Laura