On our recent camping trip I discovered the BEST showerless hygiene program!

LEMONS. A lemon a day is plenty-- maybe even enough for two people, if each has their own washcloth and you divide the "soap" into two containers.

Cut the lemon in half and squeeze it into a paper cup, then add an equal amount of room-temp water. (Don't discard the lemon!)

Squeeze the now-"emptied" lemon HARD into the cup, wrapped in a clean, dry washcloth. More juice will run out, and the cloth will now be lemon-oiled. Before discarding the lemon, rub it well with the cloth to get more lemon oil.

Dip the cloth in the water and wipe your cleaner parts first (your hair for instance). Keep dipping and wiping till the last parts are the nastiest ones. And that's IT, your're done!

Rinse your hands and the cloth. You will not believe how fresh you get, how good it feels, and how good your skin will look.

Lemons don't need to be refrigerated. You don't need to get naked all over at once, and it can be done in cooler weather with no harm-- just uncover one body poart at a time (that's how you freshen horses in winter, under their horse-blanket, with well-diluted liniment).

This also removes/neutralizes chlorine from swimming-- that's how I first discovered it. I'd been swimming earlier in the day and then had a full day of activities, but I was too tired to take the shower required to stop the chlorine itch. Then I remembered an old trick advised for getting chlorine out of hair-- orange or any citrus shampoo. We had a pile of lemons already on hand, and I reckoned the effort couldn't hurt-- we made sure we carried lemons the rest of the trip.

My "travel towel" is the other essential-- I've written about it before. Two and a half yards of cheap flannel wraps and overlaps around just about anyone, and makes a robe, a towel, a light blanket, a lap robe, a table cover-- and dries a LOT faster than a heavy, bulky terrycloth towel.

~Susan