Sunday, April 18, 2010

Adventures in Australian bathrooms


Those of you who ever visited my old apartment in Southie will likely recall the one tiny and awful bathroom. My current apartment is much newer, and one of the benefits is a nice, big shiny bathroom. It's so clean and big- it has a glass shower with excellent water pressure, and the nozzle is high enough so I don't have to resort to odd yoga poses in order to wash my hair. It even has a separate bathtub, and although I haven't taken a bath in over a decade, I pulled a muscle in my soccer game today so I might go for a soak tonight. But here's the weird part- right next to the bathroom is....a strange little room that I refer to as the Toilet Closet. It is literally a closet with a toilet in it. No sink, no window, no shelves or cabinets. Just a toilet. Apparently in older Australian homes, the toilet was often located in a separate room from the tub/shower, but this is a modern apartment and the normal bathroom already has a toilet. The presence of a second toilet really doesn't make any sense- the apartment is a two bedroom and not very big, and doesn't have any closets outside of the bedrooms or any sort of pantry area at all, so some additional storage space would be a lot more handy than a second toilet. But hey, I guess it could be useful if I ever throw a St. Patrick's Day party and/or accidentally eat a plateful of fettucini alfredo.

In other news, bank card restored, dongle recharged, so I'm back online again.

6 comments:

TacoTuesday said...

Older houses in San Francisco are like that too. Maybe it was a Victorian fad.

Kevin said...

A lot of UK apartments and houses have these very narrow toilet rooms as well. They usually have a tiny sink (think about 5 square inches) in the room as well, but I guess the Aussies don't go for cleanliness. ;p

Beth said...

Clearly the person who designed your apt. was a married woman who knew she'd be a lot happier if her husband had a separate toilet and toilet room. Trust me, it's better than a pantry or more closet space!!

eileen said...

Ha! Beth, I think you have a point. I do think the thing that bothers me most about it is the lack of a sink...I mean, c'mon now!

Suldog said...

Truly a water closet, eh? By the way, have you noticed that the water swirls in the opposite direction down under? One of my favorite weird facts...

Andy said...

Everyplace I stayed in Ireland/France this year had this. Often, the sink would be OUTSIDE of this "water closet". WTF?

I LOVE AMERICA! Jingoism 4-eva!