Carliving.info - Free information about living in cars, vans and campervans.

I have found that washing small sections and drying as you go tends to limit how cold you get. I also found that if you make a real effort to minimize perspiration, that you can generally get away with cleaning arm pits and groin only. However, you will find you do have to do an all over body wash at least every few days. Deodorant and using baby wipe towels can also help keep you clean and smelling nice. And let's face it, even in the cold with cold water you can do a simple body wash, you can use baby wipes or moist towlettes to wash and you can apply deodorant.

Basic hygiene can be achieved, and you can maintain a good appearance relatively cheaply. I estimate that a small bucket, a couple of face washers, a soap pump pack and disposable razors will cost you about $10 or less if you shop in discount stores. Maybe $15 tops. Plus the bucket and face washers will last for ages and the soap pack will last quite a while too. This isn't a daily cost, soap, razors and deodorant will last you about a month.

Other washing methods, more buckets and using pump packs.

Although using face washers tends to be easiest, if you can wash outside of your van, or you have a waterproof floor, you can try the two buckets method. If you have a large enough bucket that you can sit or squat it you can wash in it. Or you can stand in it and pour water over yourself and catch it in the bucket you are standing in. I have tried this and found that unless the bucket you are in is really big, it gets too messy. Water ends up all over the floor of your van. I did manage to get hold of a bucket a bout a meter wide / 3 feet wide that I could sit in cross legged. This allowed for effective washing and even short baths. These big buckets can be brought in hardware stores. They do take up a lot of space though.

I've also read about people who swear by those little spray bottles. The sort that have a spray nozzle. You can apply the water to yourself using a misting bottle then wipe yourself down with a face washer. I can imagine that in some circumstances wile living in a car that this might be easier than the bucket method.

I can definitely recommend a pump pack of liquid soap over a bar of soap. Liquid soap generally will clean you better than soap bars. Soap bars also tend to need crap in them to hold the soap together as a solid. However almost any soap that will lather with water will be fine. If you can pick up hotel soap for free then by all means use it. Be aware that many hotels and motels throw that out once you have opened it, so take it with you as you go.

When it comes to washing your hair you will need a bit more water than washing your body. A bucket full or water will probably be needed. One thing though is that any sort of soap will do the job. Shampoo, a cake of soap, liquid soap, any will do. Basically you wet your hair, later up and wet your hair again. It is so simple you can do it in a mountain stream or even in the rain. Of course heating the water or obtaining warm water first makes it a lot more of an enjoyable experience.

Wash rooms / toilets.

Truck stops, caravan parks, hostels and some community facilities generally have access to showers at a low price. The town I live in has a free shower block right across the road from the police station and court house. I don't know if many people use it. I've seen free or cheap shower blocks in many towns. Caravan parks and youth hostels will normally let you use their showers for a nominal fee of a few dollars if you ask politely. Some will even let you use them for free. Caravan parks also don't change the combination on their showers all that often. However if you are noticed you may be asked to leave and won't be welcome back again. You will also make it harder for others to use the facilities.

Washing up and shaving in sinks is easy. I've done it many times. Surprisingly in airports, train stations and even bus terminals it does not look too out of place. Nor for that matter does it look too out of place in hotels, some fast food restaurants or places where travelers congregate. If you can locate a bathroom that is seldomly used, or one Which has a private sink then you can use the sink to wash your face in, to shave at, even to wash your hair in or conduct a face washer wash in. You can also obtain warm water at these locations for taking back to your vehicle for washing. As you may get a few second looks if you wander around with filled containers of water, by all means put the water containers inside of a back pack. Or better still put them in side of a plastic bag inside a back pack so they won't leak or form condensation.

If you have the guts, and can pull it off you can some times sneak into hotels or hostels to use communal shower facilities.

Solar shower.

I brought a solar camping shower once to try it out. It is basically a large plastic bag like container, one side of Which is black. You lay it down on a flat surface in the sun with the black side up. Over a number of hours the container absorbs heat from the sun and heats the water up. You can then hang it up in a tree and have a shower. The one I brought was pretty good. It came with a nozzle and tap at the end. One problem with it was that I filled it with more water than it could carry and the handle broke off. I quickly realised that you don't fill it balloon like. You want it to lay fairly flat while laying down. So it should only be filled about one third of the way up.

You'd be surprised where you can heat up the water in one of these. You can leave it on the roof of your car with a towel or blanket to insulate it from your car roof. You can lay it on concrete or a rock. You can leave it on an overhanging building roof where people will not notice it from below but where you can reach up and grab it. You can even use a stick with a hook on top to hoist in on to and off of some roofs.

This solar shower was also very useful for carrying water, and as a pillow when sleeping. As a pillow it was great for keeping cool at night because the cool water inside cooled me down. Covering it with a towel was adequate insulation for using it as a pillow during cooler nights.

Electric shower unit.

I saw these selling on eBay some time ago and figured for the $30 or so they were selling for, it was worth a try. So I brought one. Basically it is consists of a length of plastic hose with an inlet nozzle at one end, a shower head at the other and a small water pump in the middle. The pump plugs in to a 12 volt outlet. You dip the inlet into a container of warm water, stick your body over a container to catch the water and have a shower. I gave it a try and it works fine. Through some experimentation I would suggest the following:

Electric shower unit showing the intake nozzle to the left, the shower unit in the middle and the plug and switch on the right.

The shower unit in use. It filled the bowl rather rapidly. It can be a bit messy to use if you don't have a tub to sit in.

Gym.

I've seen many web sites and some books on being homeless that advise people to join a gym if they become homeless in order to use the showers. When it comes down to it, that's a pretty expensive way to have a shower. Even the cheapest gym where I live in Australia was $37 a week. If you are living in your car the odds are on that you'd rather be spending that $37 a week on food and fuel. Paying $37 a week just to use a shower is a bit of a false economy. If you are into fitness though then gym membership might be for you. You can use the facilities to keep fit, and keep clean. There is also the social aspect of interacting with people in a gym. You might want to consider going to a swimming pool instead.

I read a good idea on the Internet. Some gyms have free trial periods. If you are traveling around then there's no reason why you can't be trialling free gym membership for quite a while. Mind you, I have yet to find any gym with a free trial membership.

Swimming pools.

Entry to most swimming pools is reasonably cheap, from a couple of dollars up to about $5 for inner city pools. You can have a swim, relax and the have a shower. Some have weekly tickets.

Sailing club and golf courses.

I know what you are thinking, what the? I would have never thought of a sailing club or a golf course for a pace to have a shower. I am a little into sailing though, and I volunteer as crew down at the local sailing club to get some experience and to have something to do on Sundays. I have borrowed life vests from the locker rooms plenty of times and after a while I realised how easy it was if I just acted like I was supposed to be there. A little exploring and some polite questions revealed that there was a change room with showers. Which was great for washing up in after sailing. If you can look the part you can get away with it. I know this may sound stupid, but getting in to sailing is fun too. On the rare times you do look a mess and people ask you can tell hem you've been out sailing and if you can talk the talk suddenly they look at you in a whole new light. Instead of a homeless person you're a boatie and boaties must be people of some wealth.

Back when I was in university my mates and I decided to learn to play golf for something to do, and so we could caddy and earn some money on the side. So we rocked up at the local golf club, explained that we had to learn golf for a subject at uni and asked if we could be volunteer caddys so we could pick up the game. We were greeted with a bit of laughter, but the club house owner said sure, we could if we wanted to. So we offered our services to golfers if they would teach us the game and explain what golf clubs to use. After about two weeks of it we figured out what clubs were most often used at what holes and that the longer the planned hit, the lower the number golf club used. Woods would be used for really long shots. Sand wedges would be used for sand traps and the putting wedge would be used on the green for putting.

So we started to offer our services as caddys for a small fee. We dressed smart casual, looked the part, knew the game enough to offer basic advice but best of all, we carried the players clubs. We'd usually carry the clubs, offer basic club suggestions and then sit on the grass in the shade out of the way as the players played their game. It was good because we could chat about stuff that we were studying. We also learned the trick of swinging by the club house to pick up drinks for the players whenever play came within easy walking distance of the club house.

Once we were accepted in as part of the furniture we were allowed access to the locker rooms with great showers, and even a spa bath, we were given access to the gym and got our drinks at a discount. We were never members, but we got access to all that stuff and even earned a little money. We learned who were the big tippers and made sure we gave them good service like buying them soft drinks or beer instead of just cold water.

If you fit in, you can access showers in some places you might not have considered.

Going to the toilet.

Going to the toilet on the road. I've read lots about all sorts of methods that people come up with to go to the toilet on the road. Stories of buckets, going to the toilet using plastic bags or in a kitty litter type sand. Okay, fine, that's all right for some. For me I figure if there's one thing you have to fork out for it is a porta potty. They cost about $100-$125 new in Australia. You can occasionally pick them up at garage sales or on eBay for about $60-80. They do tend to hold their value. If you can get hold of one of these, living in your car will be a lot more bearable than almost any other method of going to the toilet. If you can get hold of a porta potty it will make you life so much easier. They generally have a container to store wastes in, a container for flushing water and air tight seals to keep the smells inside of the container. They are usually easy to empty and have been designed to prevent spillage.

I've read of some people who live in cars, both male and female using a funnel attached to a small hose to pee in. The pee drains out via the hose and a partially cracked open door. I've even read of one person who used this method but drilled a small hole in the bottom of his van for the pipe to drain out of. If it works, then by all means use this device. It would only cost a few dollars to make. It could be easily hidden inside the vehicle and if you use a small bottle of soapy water to rinse it out, it would remain fairly odorless. The main issue would be keeping the funnel level and not peeing at a rate too fast for the funnel and pipe to handle. This device could be used by both males and females with practice.

I have had to use a bucket to go to the toilet in a car before once when camping on an overnight trip to Sydney when I got the runs. It was not at all pleasant. I wasn't very impossible, but it was not pleasant. The bucket was half filled with water and I did have toilet paper but it was not all that easy. A variation on this is to have a bucket half filled with saw dust or sand and bury the shit. I've never tried it myself.

I have also read of some car dwellers who pee into a small bottle and later empty it when they can. This would obviously be easier for males than females. Wide mouth bottles like the Gatorade or fruit juice bottle seem to be ideal. Of course you don't want to use that bottle for anything than a pee bottle.

Some car dwellers don't have any real toilet facilities in their cars. They opt instead to park within close distance to public toilet facilities, or to pee in the woods. I could imagine that such an arrangement would not be too easy. Ensuring privacy would be difficult. Having to hold it when it was not convenient to leave the car or to pee in the woods would be a major inconvenience. It also could have some health implications.