At The Sink

Approaching the bathroom on the top floor of the house, we can see the sink coming out of the wall in front of us. Right above the sink is a mirror on the door of a medicine cabinet. These items were installed in houses in Greenbelt as part of a project to provide housing during the Depression.

The sink below the medicine cabinet is a simple sink, made out of white ceramic and steel. At a quick glance, it looks just like a sink we use today. You may discover a simple difference if you ever tried to use it: it has two separate faucets.

Americans use the sink for many of their daily grooming rituals. They wash dirt and oil from their hands and face using the sink and sometimes soap. Americans have a standard practice of keeping the body clean to prevent disease and odors, and to give it a more pleasant appearance and comfortable feel. The sink is also used for other rituals that involve water such as toothbrushing and shaving with a razor.

Americans use the sink to maintain sanitation and appearance. The American viewpoint that a clean body is a better looking body hasn't changed in the last century. In addition, modern medical science supports the view that a clean body has significantly lower risks of infection and other health problems, a belief which held in the 1930s, when this sink was installed.

The most unusual part of this sink is evident in the hardware. The faucets are steel, which is not unusual. Making a sink body out of porcelain or another ceramic has never been unusual. The dual faucets are the strange design technique, one that is unquestionably old fashioned. If you attempt to use the sink the way a person of modern times would, you wind up either freezing your hands or burning them. The correct technique for using the sink is to stop up the sink, and then turn on both faucets. Then the user tests the water until the mixture in the basin reaches the right temperature. After this point, he or she begins to wash hands in the sink, and may even dump in a bar of soap until all the water becomes soapy.

You could investigate the technical details of setting up a sink, if you want to know more about the design concepts behind this.
Modern sinks use a single faucet and one or two handles, avoiding the complex two-faucet design.

Continue with a look at some soap, with naphtha.
To learn about a "sink-related" topic, you can read about furniture inGreenbelt.