Bath-time basics

SALAMANCA, Spain – Silently, I waited in the shadows. I heard the footsteps approach the door, and I held my breath as my Spanish landlady slowly turned the knob and shut the door behind her. I froze with anxiety as she left the apartment and turned the key to lock the door. I waited a moment to make sure she was gone and then finally relaxed. I had to be secretive; I couldn’t risk my señora finding out. What I was about to do was strictly forbidden by house rules.\nI was going to take a long shower.\nLife in Spain is very different from life in the U.S. Aside from the language gap, Spaniards have a different sense of family and a different daily routine. But one of the most striking differences between here and there is the amount of electricity and water they conserve on a daily basis. The family I live with keeps the lights off in their apartment during the day and evening, and many of the IU students with whom I travel have said the same about their families.\nBut the biggest change in living arrangements for most of us has been the decrease in showering demanded by our señoras. Water shortages are always an issue in a densely populated area like Salamanca, especially during periods of drought, and water bills can go through the roof if residents aren’t careful. In the States, I’ll admit I’ve been known to take 20-minute showers, and some of my travelling companions have confessed that they used to take more than one shower every day.\nI’ve had to change, though. Here, there are strict guidelines for showering. In fact, one of my friends said her señora actually posted a set of house showering rules in the bathroom that included acceptable shower length and frequency.\nIt’s hard to adjust personal habits. On the aforementioned occasion, I felt like I simply had to take a long shower to get clean, and five minutes hadn’t been doing it for me. I felt terrible afterward, though, like I was enforcing the “wasteful American’’ stereotype.\nTypical Spaniards have managed to shower less than we do, and the amount of water they use is nowhere near what we use. Do they smell bad? Well, no. They usually are immaculately put together and fresh, despite their reduced shower schedule. On top of that, they do their laundry less often, and many of them don’t use dryers at all. Yet somehow they manage to maintain a high level of personal hygiene. In fact, I would venture to say Salamanca as a whole is cleaner than Bloomington.\nSo why do we insist on overuse of resources in the States? Maybe we have simply fallen into a routine that is inconvenient for us to change. We seem to have convinced ourselves that overconsumption is necessary for day-to-day living. But when we change our habits, we see how much we can do without and how much we can conserve.