What did people use to clean themselves before inventing soap?

‘It’s bath time’, something I hear every afternoon. Sometimes I love it, at times I dread it. It’s something we should be doing at least once a day. I always wondered why we used a different thing for our hair (called shampoo) and another thing for our body (called soap). For that matter, what did people use to clean themselves with before we invested soap?

Before we get there, let’s find out what soap really is in the first place. Soap is made up of chemicals (fat or oils) that need to mix with water to create what we know as soap. The soap then attaches itself to grease, dirt and grime when we rub them on our bodies during bathe time, carrying it with them when we wash them down the gutter in our bath. To make bathing interesting, color and smells are added to the soap to give us our lavender and flower smells we see at the supermarket.

So how did people clean themselves before soap was invented? Well, they used many things like sand (just like my hamster’s sand bath), wood ash and animal fat (yuck!). I read that people in Ancient Rome even used urine, double yuck! This wasn’t much of a problem because in those times, you weren’t expected to bathe every day or change your clothes so frequently for that matter.

It’s good to know that we can sleep clean every night now. Thank you to whoever you are who invented soap!