"CATWASH" – VINEGAR, EGG-YOLK and other things

We take many things for granted today, such as having access to a bathroom and a toilet is one thing we take for granted

In today’s world we feel that unless we shower every day, we are unhygienic, and we take it for granted “that we have a bathroom” with all different kinds of soaps, shampoos etc.

Today that might seem strange to most people, but when I lived in Denmark – until I got married – my parents never had the luxury of having a bathroom.

OUR TOILET NEEDS – when I was a child 

When I was little, we lived on Munkebjergvej 53, Taarnby in a nice house, but there was no bathroom.

Munkebjergvej 53, Taarnby, Copenhagen, Denmark

There was an “inside locum” which was in a room attached to the house with cement floor and two small rooms. One for the “locum” and the other room was “our pig” which was raised to be slaughtered.

The “locum” was hole in the ground with a pail and a seat.  My Dad had to empty the pail every day into the garden.

HOW DID WE KEEP OURSELVES CLEAN?

Our daily cleaning was “Catwash” – in Danish “kattevask or klatvask” which was cleaning of face and below.  It was done in the kitchen with a small pan.

Once a week we had our hair got washed – “bending over the head into the small pan” in water with vinegar and rinsed with an egg yolk.

THE BIG BATH

My sister Birgit, to the left, me - the weird looking one and three of my friends. Having a bath.

We could only get a BIG BATH in the summertime, because it had to be done outside in a huge wooden tub. My Dad would heat water enough on the wooden stove to fill the tub.

We took turns to take the bath – in the same water.

I guess they did the same in the United States – where the baby was the last one to get the bath and from where the saying is “Don’t throw out the baby with bathwater”, assuming by then the water was so dull looking that you might forget there was a baby in it.

GOING TO PUBLIC “BATH PLACES ON VESTERBRO, COPENHAGEN.

My mom, sister Birgit and I moved into Vesterbro 1947 - when my parents divorced. It was two-room apartment with a hallway and a kitchen. No toilet nor bathroom

So, once a week we went to a “public bath place” where you could get a shower and go in the sauna.

They would give you “træuld” – which was a small ball of flaked wood -  to wash yourself with.  It was tough on the skin, so our bodies would turn red from the harshness of the “træuld".

TRÆULD

In the apartment on Kongshøjgade there was no access to neither shower nor even our own toilet.

We had to go out of the apartment – from the backdoor - for the toilet.  There was only one toilet on each floor which was a “shared toilet” with the neighbor next door.

But we still felt we were lucky, since there were many huge apartment buildings in Copenhagen that only had “one” shared toilet outside in a room outside in the back.  So if you lived on the fourth or fifth floor you had to walk down all the stairs and go “outside” to go to bathroom. My ex. Bent Lindhardt lived in a such an apartment on Østerbro – when he was a child.

MY FIRST REAL BATHROOM

It was not before when I got married – 1957 in Copenhagen, Denmark – my ex and I moved into an apartment in Husum “where there was a bathroom with a “sit-down” bathtub and shower.

We were both so excited. Personally, I felt I had moved in to “heaven”. I had never had that “luxury” before of sitting and soaking in a bathtub.

BATHTUB WAS ALSO USED FOR HANDWASHING OF CLOTHES.

We also used it for rinsing clothes that we had to wash by hand every day, since we only had access to “the common washing room in the basement” once a month where we could wash our clothes and linen etc. there was also huge rollers for ironing and we ironed everything, incl diapers.

But the daily washing of cloth diapers had to be done cooking them in a huge pot on the stove and then we rinsed them in our bathtub and hang them up to dry over the tub. No such luxury of disposable diapers.

But again, we still felt it was an improvement over “our childhood experience on Vesterbro of washing clothes”  where we had to walk four-five floors down to the basement.

It was a whole day affair where we had to heat water in a huge pot to get our clothes clean. After they were cooked and washed on a washboard, we had to carry all the clothes up to “the loft” which was five floors up -  above the apartment – to hang the clothes to dry.

Nevertheless, there are still many places in the world where they do not have the luxury of having access to daily showers and clean toilets with toilet paper etc.

Vibeke Lindhardt

Vibekesonja.blotspot.com