The Renaissance brought perfume, and the reformation brought repression. The result was that people gave up cleanliness and talked about how bad things used to be.
The link below is to a section of a Wikipedia article dealing with the history of bathing in the West.
Actually, medieval Europeans were very suspicious of bathing. They associated it with Roman pagans. They did have baths, but those were not for keeping clean. I don't know how old you are, but medieval baths were places where people did naughty things.
The Middle Ages were times dominated by religious thinking, and the belief was that cleanliness was next to godliness. You could tell the way a person cared for his soul by the way he cared for his body, and everybody wanted to be clean.
It was also a belief of the time that disease was spread by bad air. So foul odors were dealt with.
There is a link below to the European section of an article on bathing.
3rd Answer
I have to agree with the second answer here. In addition to possible religious reasons, bathing seems to have been associated with physical and social pleasure. There is art from the period that shows bathing scenes, many social, or even of mixed gender groups. There are images of people being served meals while in the bath. Bathing and cleanliness also seems to have been associated with sexuality. There are regulations from Paris that require keepers of public bath houses (there very existence of which supports regular bathing) that keep their houses free of prostitutes. The church at times did seem to appose bathing as a "time waster", further evidence that people liked to bath frequently and might linger in a bath, but even the church sanctioned periodic bathing for hygiene.
The original question specifically addresses peasants. We know from tax documents that wealthier individuals had vessels specifically for bathing at home. Peasants would not have been able to afford such luxuries, but would have used improvised facilities such as barrels, and in warmer weather used natural water sources, or simply cleaned themselves with warm water and a cloth. Even those of basic means could afford linen towels for cleaning and drying themselves.
Clothing was washed frequently as well. There was enough demand for laundry services that towns and cities had professional laundresses. A country peasant would likely do their laundry at home, but not all village dwellers were poor. Some peasants had enough land to have hired hands for farm work or servants for the household, and such servants would have likely been chiefly concerned with tasks such as cooking, cleaning the home, laundry, etc.
They used soap for body and clothes. Soap had been invented in ancient times. Soap was important enough that there was a soap makers guild in Verona during the seventh century. The people of the Middle Ages are said to have been very clean because they believed the care people took for their bodies was an indicator of the care they took of their souls, and because they believe that foul odors spread diseases.
In the Middle Ages, people barely took a bath. There was no running water, so maids would bring hot water in a tub and then people would take their bath. But sometimes people wouldn't take a bath for a long time.
to keep warm and it was classy back then
a medieval tower on a motte
The people in the renaisance were tired of the views and the ideas of the medieval time, and thought the medieval people had a pessimistic view on things.
In the medieval times people lived in wooden cottages all plotted together in a small village. they would often have well secured pens for their livestock to keep predators and theifs out!
medieval people from the medieval times obviously i mean who else is gonna live there me
well they weren't that clean cause people threw poo out the window
People should keep clean because if they don't they might smell bad and people won't want to be their friend. You should keep clean because it feels nice when you are clean and it is more pleasant for the people around you. Hope this helps! :D
to keep warm and it was classy back then
To keep the ears clean
Many medieval towns were clean by their standards, which would have meant uncluttered, without foul odors, and so on. The medieval people did not understand anything about bacteria, viruses, and disease vectors, so in some modern senses, the towns were not clean; for example you could not trust the water.
What everyone else in the world does to keep their countries clean. People try not to litter,people go around and do beach clean ups, community clean ups etc.
so they can clean themselfs and it helps it keep it clean
Yes of course, they were clean. They were clean, very clean. Like a sink. Jump down the toilet to keep clean.
Learning about different cultures can be fun. The people of the African Rain forest are known to keep clean by bathing in a river.
a medieval tower on a motte
People generally keep their clean underwear in a dresser drawer. However, if the underwear are dirty, people will keep the them in a laundry basket to be cleaned.
Brooms.