lol... whashing loinclothes... never thougth about that, barbies singing in the river while washing clothes... really not "Conan" Style.
Well, each one of us as his kind of GameMastering, i find these details in certan situations interresting, for example you´re in a noble court and you´re unshaven... thats not a good image you give to the nobles, then there is always some spare time to spend (at least in my campain, even if not much), it really depends on what kind of roleplay game you develop...
Or what you intend to do... you are not always obliged to take this is consideration...
And i think that Conan ins´t just grabing a sword and cutting people (even if that is very fun), you can also grab events and develop diplomatic, political and religius problems for the characters to solve.
About the blades, well you have to consider that they lose sharpness, and you have a whetstone for something, we were just discussing a way to make life in Hyboria more real (and it´s not totally defined so each GM decides what he wants).
And one of the things that i like about Conan, is that you´re restrained by the human limits (if you´re a scholar that doesn´t apply, but then, few scholar are considered Human)
We were talking about giving some use to the whetstone, that exists in the equipment, but then it doesn´t do anything... except that in roleplay lets you sharpen the blade, even if the real use of the item itself is simply "none" for game matters...
And we suggested some variant rules to make it more usefull...