I was going to say a basin left overnight so there was moderately non-cold water to rinse your face with in the morning. Really dry heat in that arrangement, you don’t want a bunch of the water evaporating overnight.Report
We forget, often, how astronomically standards of cleanliness have changed as time has progressed. Tobacco was once favored because, among other reasons, it gave a people and possessions a distinctively smoky smell. In modern standards we interpret that cigarette smell as a stench but in past standards, prior to easy frequent bathing, washing and the lack of availability of copious perfume and deodorant products, that tobacco smell was considered clean and benign compared to the body odor it likely covered up.
So, in addition to Michael’s point that covering the container limited evaporation from warmer water into what would have been extremely bone dry air, a lid also prevented an assortment of ‘stuff’ from settling onto the water. Covering containers of fluid is always a good idea, even now, but back then doing so often made the difference between having a bowl of clean water and a bowl with a coating of ‘something’ on the surface.Report
Yeah, that coating of something.
For a year-and-a-half 20 years ago my sister and her family lived in Daegu, South Korea. Horrible air quality. She said that she had to dust the window sills every day, and the rest of the apartment every other day, because of the accumulated soot that leaked in around the closed windows.Report
What’s on the chair?Report
Basin of water/snow, probably thawing near the stove.Report
Hrm. With a lid?Report
I was going to say a basin left overnight so there was moderately non-cold water to rinse your face with in the morning. Really dry heat in that arrangement, you don’t want a bunch of the water evaporating overnight.Report
We forget, often, how astronomically standards of cleanliness have changed as time has progressed. Tobacco was once favored because, among other reasons, it gave a people and possessions a distinctively smoky smell. In modern standards we interpret that cigarette smell as a stench but in past standards, prior to easy frequent bathing, washing and the lack of availability of copious perfume and deodorant products, that tobacco smell was considered clean and benign compared to the body odor it likely covered up.
So, in addition to Michael’s point that covering the container limited evaporation from warmer water into what would have been extremely bone dry air, a lid also prevented an assortment of ‘stuff’ from settling onto the water. Covering containers of fluid is always a good idea, even now, but back then doing so often made the difference between having a bowl of clean water and a bowl with a coating of ‘something’ on the surface.Report
Yeah, that coating of something.
For a year-and-a-half 20 years ago my sister and her family lived in Daegu, South Korea. Horrible air quality. She said that she had to dust the window sills every day, and the rest of the apartment every other day, because of the accumulated soot that leaked in around the closed windows.Report
Oh.
Ew.Report