Solution to a National Problem

The Oatmeal has the right idea about solving this challenging public toilet delimna.

theoatmeal.com/blog/public_toilets

Thanks Oatmeal
http://www.theoatmeal.com/

Toilet Sink

Did you know that an average commode uses approximately 6 gallons of water each time you flush? That doesn't even include the amount of water you use to wash your hands after each visit to the bathroom. That's a lot of water considering how many times you and each of your family members visits that special room each day.

Most commodes are structured to store the water that flows into the bowl in a tank behind the seat until it's needed. The water is completely clean until it hits the bowl. All that clean water just sits there used only to wash down the remnants of your last night's dinner. Wasteful, wasteful.

We reduced this water consumption in our home by installing a commode sink. It's the cutest thing. A little sink that sits on top of the tank of our commode. Each time you flush, water is routed directly from the outside pipe through the sink before going into the tank. After each flush, clean water automatically runs out of the little spigot until the commode tank is full. Plenty to wash your hands and all done without ever turning on the sink. It even has a soap dish. What an ingenious little device.

The commode sink usually causes questions when guests visit. Returning from the bathroom, they're likely to say, "What is that thing on the back of your commode? It looks like a little sink." "Well, that's what it is" I reply. "You're supposed to use it to wash your hands."

That's when the "oooooo-ing starts. Use water on the toilet to wash? I think not.

After assuring them it is clean water, most people think it's clever however some are completely grossed out. They just can't get their head around using commode water to wash with, even if it's "pre-bowl". Oh well, each to his own.

We love our little commode sink. It conserves water and it reminds us to conserve in other ways.

Now I wish we could somehow convert it into a bidet!

Most Important Room

I love my bathroom.

It's where I go to think.....to relax...to read...to do my business.

It's the room I enter stressed and uncomfortable and leave with a feeling of relaxation, clarity and lightness. It's where I ponder the meaning of life. What's it all about Charmin?

I go there to wash all my cares away. It's where Calgon TAKES me away!

It's where I hear the morning traffic report or what the weather's going to be like out there. Or that other people's cars also make weird noises, motivating them to call those two goofy mechanic guys, you know Click and Clack? They're a hoot.

It's like I KNOW people from my bathroom. Seriously...Ira Glass, Diane Rehm and I have been hanging out in there for years.

I listen to Opera in the bathroom. I don't really like Opera but in there, somehow, it's OK.

It's my daily stepping off point, whether I'm staggering from the shower dripping wet and preparing to face the day, or soaking to the aroma of a cinnamon mango bubble bath with a washcloth on my head, trying to forget what just happened.

It is my little cocoon of safety. When I'm in there, I completely have the right to proclaim, "Sorry, I can't (fill in blank here with appropriate annoying task), I'm in the bathroom."

That's a rule, right?

It's the most useful room in the house. I would go so far as to say it's the most important room in the house. I mean, when you gotta go....you GOTTA GO!! You gotta get IN there! Sometimes I think I could live there. I want to shout to the heavens....I adore my bathroom!

Back in the day...before bathrooms, or maybe I should say, before indoor plumbing, bathrooms or "outhouses" were located outside (somebody spent some time coming up with that name) way off in the backyard. Yeah, like in the woods. With the bugs and spiders and.... poison ivy...and bears! Yikes!

What if you had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? What if it was raining?? What if ....well, you can come up with your own horror stories. Heck, you can probably rent horror stories ABOUT outhouses at your local video store. What a scary concept. Certainly not the cozy right-down-the-hall-with-a-fuzzy-rug-and-a-vanilla-candle bathroom of today.

An outhouse was usually a simple affair, consisting of a small building containing a bench seat with a hole which was positioned above a pit dug in the ground. Sometimes the bench had more than one hole....so there was no waiting.

Bench seat? Hole in the ground?! Good Grief! Could it be more uncomfortable?

And two seats? Group defecating? Do you suppose that was some kind a sport??

How many big hairy spiders do you think hung out under one of those bench seats, ready to take a bite out of an unsuspecting exposed rear end.... just for kicks??! Shiver!!!!

I am thanking my lucky stars for my lovely ceramic toilet in my nice clean well-lit bathroom just thinking about this stuff.

Anyway, the pit dug beneath the bench seat was the holder of all things peed and pooped. I'm sure other items were tossed down there but that's another story that I'm just too grossed out by to go into today.

To use the outhouse, you just sat on the seat and voided whatever needed voiding. No water, no flushing...just a long drop and then....Ker-splat! That just sounds wrong.

As for the inevitable clean up.....reading materials (a long held bathroom tradition) were usually available.

How about that? You could wipe and voice your opinion on a writer's view simultaneously.

Pages from a mail order catalog, such as the longstanding Sears Roebuck variety, were a common choice.

Other materials...and let's hope these were from sheer desperation were....corn husks and corn cobs. OK, corn husks sound pretty rough but....a corn cob?? Really?!? Are you kidding?? Can we all say chapped ass???!

Apparently people were TOUGH back in the day.....all over tough!

As time went by and if the outhouse was visited regularly, the pit would eventually fill up. When that happened the outhouse was moved; positioned over a new empty pit, just waiting for more pungent packages to fill it's odoriferous basement.

The old hole was filled in...it's usefulness in the cycle of poop complete and that was that. What an ingenious and somehow beautiful system.

I sometimes wonder what people back then did without the luxuries of today's bathrooms. Where did they take baths? Where did they shave? Where did they apply makeup? Where did they stare into the mirror for long periods, contemplating a mole, gray hair or why your nose continues to get bigger and bigger....uh, well,... all I know is that I could not survive without my modern-day bathroom.

It's my eventual daily destination....a moist oasis in the dusty desert of life.