I find that well written western novels, such as Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, and Ralph Compton, are full of fairly accurate period based survival information for a time before modern technology. Reading those books, which are often well researched for authenticity, you get a good sense of how people lived off the land in remote and not necessarily comfortable environments with very little to work with. When caprentry consists of little more than slapping boards together with a few nails like a house of cards and the only way to purify water was to add coffee grounds and boil it for an hour over an open fire, well, you start to understand that you don't need a bath every week to get by, and toothpaste in the form of a little baking soda or salt on the tip of a finger if you were fortunate to have either handy and enough to spare.