Although baths were not a daily ocurrence for the ancient rome or medieval times, they did use oils, grease (lards and fat), and it sticks like nothing else. Without soap, how did they cleaned themselves? I also don't think the old rags were abundant, so there must be some clever way of doing it.
EDIT: I know soap-like stuff existed, but was it commonplace enough for the average farmer, butcher, baker, etc, to have it for general cleaning like we do?
All you need to make soap is fat and some form of alkali, so some form of soap has existed for a really long time. According to Hilda Butler's book Poucher's Perfumes, Cosmetics and Soaps: "The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BCE in ancient Babylon." I don't know if there's much written records on cleaning if you want to go back even further than 2800 BCE. In ancient China people puree pig's pancreas and mix it with lard and potash. The enzyme in pancreas turn the lard into fatty acid and reacts with the alkali in potash to remove stain. This recipe was documented by herbalist Sun Simiao in the 600's and likely originated even earlier.