Google search definition of bathroom: a room containing a toilet and sink and typically also a bathtub or shower.
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Dear Designer:
What's up with your trap?
Back in time, in some places, a bathroom was built a couple feet from a house. And in some situations it was the last room attached to the rear of the house. The bathroom in those locations had windows for proper ventilation, and a thick heavy secured door for privacy. The bathroom was the ultimate comfort zone where most people read magazines and newspapers while using the toilet. Looking back, it wasn’t hygienic because accidents do happen when it comes to body fluids and waste matter.
Modern times haven't changed that habit. People continue to read magazines and newspapers as they use the toilet. To an interior decorator it’s fabulous, appealing, and classy to place a magazine stand in bathrooms. But has the interior decorator taken into consideration the presence of a paperless society. People are reading from their mobile phones when they sit on toilets to pee or poop. Their cell phones go with them in every nook and cranny.
Modern times have also afforded us easy access to bathrooms. They are now located next to our bedrooms. There is no need to go outdoors anymore. Neither trek a long passageway to the inside bathroom. Sounds great but the modern accomplishment comes with a shortfall. The bathrooms are without windows. There is no natural airflow from the outdoors. The designers, or architects leave us trapped in all kinds of bathroom stench and noisy ventilation devices. Using aerosol air freshener to eradicate the malodor only makes matters worse. It has the ability to mask itself as perfume, adding scent to clothes and hair. Sometimes we walk by each other no doubt smelling like toilets. We can’t dodge that fact which is a real messy situation. And just when you think the regular bathrooms were bad news, here comes the powder room which is always built in the middle of the house or next to the kitchen. Imagine visitors using the toilet and the flow of air streaming on the outside leading to the kitchen and elsewhere.
The embarrassment caused by the windowless and inappropriately placed bathrooms in our dwellings often makes me wonder if builders, contractors, architects and designers are penny pinching. Do they really care about our health? They seem not to understand that the air ventilation system has the potential to fail like everything else. These modern bathrooms, I surmise could be subtle fallout shelters and bunkers. As my thoughts come and go I can only further express that sometimes the convenient and modern things are not to our betterment. They are current and long term humbug to our minds and bodies.
Tah-tah! Change for better, not for worse.
Grace Dunkley-Asphall, Copyright © 2024
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