Bathtubs for Sale - Cleaning Up!

I remember my grandmother telling me about what baths were like in the early 1900’s, perhaps trying to get me to appreciate the fact that we had a nice one ready for me at the end of the day, whether I wanted to jump in or not.

Those stories she passed down and that I have since used on my kids to try and motivate them like she did me, always involved what amounted to a big bucket.

Think of a metal bucket about the size of a stove top and you get the idea. Her mother would haul buckets of water from the well, warm it up on the stove and the bath was ready. There were 5 kids in her family and her father always went first. That means the same bath water for the same 7 people including her mother. That story hits home more today that it did as a kid.

"Bathtubs for Sale" was not a sign you saw in the early days of the bathtub’s history. Actually in the days of the Roman Empire , baths were used as a religious ritual, literally washing away a person’s sins. Later they were used to wash away disease. At this time bathtubs were not in people’s homes but rather were a public gathering. You couldn’t be shy if you were a Roman apparently.

As time went on people began to understand the need for daily hygiene and bathtubs began to appear in people’s homes. (Although it would be hundreds of years before people used them daily as we do now.)

One of the first designs that began to cross over to all homes was the claw foot bathtub. Some of these designs were very ornate and became a source of stature in the community. Of course there was no running water widely available until the early 1900’s and in some neighborhoods it was much later than that.

Until running water, families much like my grandmother’s, went to the well and collected the water, a chore in itself, then putting that water on the stove which sometimes required you to build a fire to heat. It’s no wonder that people were slow to come around to daily baths.

Today a "bathtubs for sale" sign has replaced the signs of the old west that said, “Baths 25 cents”.  We have indeed come a long way.  Kind of makes you appreciate the baths of today and a good story to tell the kids.

There are many sources of quality discount bathtubs throughout this page.