A Toilet for Spongebob

It's only Tuesday and already I've accomplished more than I did in all of last week.  Yesterday morning I went down and dealt with the basement.  There are many cobwebs there, but I took the radio with me and listened to AFN, which had a surprisingly good cleaning playlist.

I didn't so much unpack a ton of boxes as I did organize and sort and move stuff around.  I opened up several boxes just to see what was in them and went "Huh...don't know what to do with that." and closed them back up.  There are an unholy number of boxes marked "Books" stacked against one wall.  I have claimed one corner of shelving for my yarn supply and with it all in one place, I have the happy yet financially disturbing impression of having an entire yarn store in my basement.

Today I took care of the living room boxes and tried to make that room look less like a cargo container.  While having our stuff unpacked makes the place feel much more like home, there's no denying we are far, far away.

This is a corner of my kitchen.  Two outlets there, plus some kind of phone or tv connection.  Note the white adapter that my microwave plug uses.  You would think you if you could plug the microwave into the one on the left, then surely when you moved the microwave off the counter onto the cart, you could easily plug into the one on the right.

No.  You are in an Italian house.  They are stingy with outlets here anyway and most rooms only have one.  You will require many trips to Brico, the Italian version of Home Depot, to buy plug adapters.  Every time you think you have bought every possible kind of adapter, you will find a plug or an outlet that does not go with anything you possess.  These two outlets are right next to each other and are different.

The outlet in the garage was giving me such a fit that I finally took a piece of paper and rubbed the side of a pencil lead over it to give me an impression of the holes and took that with me to Brico. We have a huge bag of adapters now and whenever we need to plug something in, we bring it along and play "how 'bout this kind?" till we find one that fits.

Here is my toilet in our upstairs bath.  Yes, I'm putting a picture of my toilet on the internet.

 

Because it is square.  I don't know what genius designed this thing, but they must have been trying to ensure that no one sat there for too long.  A round bum does not belong on a square seat.

There's no flush handle on the toilet.  (That's another fun game to play overseas.  "What Makes The Toilet Flush?"  Is it the button, the lever, the weird looking panel thing?  I'm continully amused at the variety of flushing mechanisms here.)  To flush this toilet, you push this button on the wall.

 

This concerns me.  It seems to flush just fine, but what if there's a plumbing problem?  There's no taking the tank lid off and jiggling the thingy or whatever.  I think I prefer my toilet parts to be right back there where I can get to them.

The house does have two full baths, but we all mostly use the upstairs bath for showering, teeth brushing, etc.  The downstairs bath doubles as a laundry room and has a really small shower stall.  Mostly we just use the toilet in there when we are too lazy to go upstairs or the other one is occupied.

I'm used to having a master bedroom bath that DH and I shared and the kids had another bath all to themselves.  Now we're all kind of crammed together and it really hasn't been as bad as I'd anticipated.  We just need places to put our stuff in there.  Shelves, a medicine cabinet, more towel rods, anything.  Above the sink is nothing more than a mirror with a small shelf.

 

Oops, sorry about the blinding flash there.  One of the first things on DH's to-do list when he gets back from Germany is putting in a medicine cabinet with lots of shelves.

To the left of this sink is a bidet.  I don't even want to get into the questions I have about bidet use, but it's not something we need and it's taking up space.  In a moment of absolute brilliance, I improvised this bidet cover.

How classy is that?  Who needs Ikea? 

Me.  I need Ikea.  I need it badly.

Comments

[hokgardner]

While we were at the beach, we stayed in a house that had a bidet. I had a very difficult time convincing the three-year-old that it wasn't a drinking fountain.

[Carolyn]

Patrick thinks the picture of your mirror looks a bit like the Death Star. He's got the Death Star on the brain ... but if you compare it to the Lego Death Star (I, not II) he does have a point. Red imperial guard on the left, laser on the right ... basic round shape...

He's REALLY hoping for the Death Star for Christmas.

And I bet you'd be happy with a 'one size fits all' adapter, right?!

[Valerie Cagle]

OMG - a bidet!?! Talk about luxury! Looove the bidet...so jealous you have one! Try it and you may, I say! (keep going with the Sam I Am theme and see if you don't start giggling)

Sounds like it is slowly coming together. I'd love to come shopping at Becca's Forward Motion Yarn Store, except you like very fine yarn and I like bulky (why do I feel like a sanitary pad commercial here?)

And for all my dreams and big talk of coming to visit, I'm not sure there are enough sedatives to get me on a plane. Maybe general anesthesia?

Sorry for the kooky comments. I'm brain dead and disgusted I can't just call you whenever I &%[email protected]#! feel like it. Love you and miss you!

[Orghlaith]

You may want to ignore this comment. But I am laughing and designing a knitted bidet cover in my mind. A bidet cozy? Yes, insanity can be enjoyable.

[Melissa]

You and I should go to Ikea soon. I'm thinking I'll go sometime after payday. I need storage things, lamps and pillows in a bad way.

[Suna]

Thanks for the laugh about the bidet cover. I second the bidet cover cozy idea.

[Valerie Cagle]

I swear if you put a bidet cover on Etsy or Ebay I bet you could sell it!

[tana]

LOL at the last two sentences. That toilet is bizarre but as I have not been out of the country (US) much, I'd just be thanking the Gods that the "toilet" isn't just a hole in the ground. But square? Interesting...

This is so interesting to me. Thanks for sharing it with me/us.

[Barb]

Our American-made, er, American house had a very similar lack of storage in the bathroom. WTF? Ikea to the rescue!!

[castors]

Nobody says that being square is a bad idea, it sure really is a good thing to view different designs. I love how it postulates with other toiletries.