Five years ago, I stopped showering.
At least, by most modern definitions of the word. I still get my hair wet occasionally, but I quit shampooing or conditioning, or using soap, except on my hands. I also gave up the other personal care products—hand sanitizers and exfoliants and antibiotic deodorants—that I had always associated with being clean.
I’m not here to recommend this approach to everyone. In a lot of ways it was terrible. But it also changed my life.
I’d like to say I stopped showering for some noble, virtuous reason—like because an average shower uses 17 gallons of perfectly good water. Or because that water then gets filled with petroleum-based detergents and soaps made from palm oil grown in the rainforest. The body-care products shipped from around the world contain antimicrobial preservatives and plastic micro-beads that end up in our lakes and streams and make their way into our food and groundwater and back into our own bodies. Aisles upon aisles of these products are sold in pharmacies around the world in plastic bottles that will never biodegrade, and that end up floating together like islands in the oceans. Islands that whales try, tragically, to mate with.
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