Originally Posted by somedude

Bathing was not conducted this way in the 16th Century. There were public bathhouses, as few homes had the means to heat a substantial amount of water at one time. There is no literature stating that people bathed in the manner of man-of-house down to baby and the practical considerations of keeping that much water warm during such a ritual are not plausible.
Lastly, children of the 16th Century were bathed far more often than adults (see numerous works by J. Brundage, F. Braudel, M. Block, and many others) and anyone who has ever been charged with the care of an infant knows personally the obvious requirement to clean them daily. The notion that a mother of any century would lose her child in a bath of clouded, cold, and filthy water is laughable. The idea that this was part of a yearly infant cleansing ritual, as suggested above, is simply nonsense

Originally Posted by Another dude

Most peasant cottages did indeed have dirt floors. Some peasants lived in homes that sheltered animals as well as themselves.1 When livestock was enclosed in a peasant home, it was usually partitioned off in a separate room, sometimes at right angles to the family's living space. Yet animals could still occasionally find their way into the house proper. For this reason, an earthen floor was a practical choice.
However, there is no evidence that the term "dirt poor" was used in any context before the 20th century. One theory suggests that its origins lie in the Dust Bowl of 1930s Oklahoma, where drought and poverty combined to create some of the most horrific living conditions in American history; but direct evidence is lacking.
In castles, the ground floor might be beaten earth, stone or plaster, but upper stories almost invariably had wooden floors,2 and the same pattern likely held true in town dwellings. Straw was not needed to keep people from slipping on wet slate, but it was used as a floor covering on all surfaces to provide a modicum of warmth and cushioning. Reeds or rushes were sometimes supplemented with aromatic herbs like lavender, and the entire floor would usually be swept clean and strewn with fresh straw and herbs on a regular basis. Old straw was not simply left down when fresh straw was added.
If such were indeed the case, it might be logical to think of the little raised strip in a doorway as an item intended to "hold" in "thresh," except for one significant detail.
There's no such thing as "thresh."
The word "thresh" is a verb which, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means "to separate seed" or "to strike repeatedly." It is not, and never has been, a noun used to designate floor rushes. The word "threshold," like "thresh," is Old English in origin and dates to before the twelfth century. Both OE words appear to relate to the movement of one's feet; thresh (OE threscan) meaning to stamp or trample3 and threshold (OE therscwold) being a place to step.4