Bath Day

You might think that mail day would be my favorite day out here - but you'd be wrong, it's bath day. Every second or third day, however the math works so that we are sure to be all bathed up on Tuesday nights for Wednesday mail day, we get to have bath day! Don't get me wrong - I love going out and seeing our neighbors from far away on Wednesdays, but bathing is my happy time. For 30 minutes, my OSB walled bathroom is bathed in candlelight and lantern light and is transformed into a bit of a spa, if you have a good imagination...

After lunch on bath days, I get all the pots and kettles out. I fill the big 6 gallon canner first - that makes up the hot water portion of the bath. It takes a few hours to heat that much water in one kettle, so we wait until after supper to bath to make sure it is as hot as can be. I also fill anything else that will hold water and fit on top of the stove! These are the "warmups" for the water after it has started to cool off. I might as well say it right now so you don't wonder, yes, we share bath water out here. I usually go first though, I don't get terribly dirty out here and I like the water hot! Then the kids go, because they are ready by then. Tim goes last, usually because he is outside working in the shop until late. Let me tell you - during beaver trapping, bath days could come everyday for he and the kids as far as I was concerned. If you have never smelled beaver before (stick with me here...) it has a very distinct odor. The kids get right in there helping with the work so they smell like it too.

We had hooked up a hot water heater from an old camper, but it didn't put out as much water as was needed for baths. We decided it was much faster to heat water on the wood stove in the volume we needed. It also was using a lot of our battery power to run the 12 volt pump to fill the tub. If the sun doesn't shine, the batteries won't charge, and we would have no power for the pump anyway. We decided to save the battery power for using the internet and watching a movie here and there. We had also thought about getting a tankless hot water heater, but that didn't eliminate the pump running, so we just decided to do it the old fashioned way. It's not luxury, but for 30 minutes, it sure feels like it!