Modern bathroom style is a direct reaction to pandemic preparation

I invested the first 2 weeks of my quarantine shitting in a portapotty in the car park of my building. It wasn’t terrific– but hey, a minimum of it was always stocked with hand sanitizer.

The professionals I ‘d hired to remodel my bathroom were not so great on timeliness or interaction before the pandemic begun. And it only became worse from there. So I drove 300 miles in late March where I could at least be with my pregnant other half, and where a minimum of I might shit indoors.

I returned home recently to find that the bathroom still wasn’t completed (though a minimum of I could shower and shit now). Disappointed, I started to unpack my things, and wound up listening to this brand-new NPR Short Wave podcast, which strangely made me feel better. It traces the history of indoor pipes– consisting of the uphill battle of attempting to get individuals to understand that no, actually, a central sewage system will be much better for your sanitation, and you shouldn’t fret about the shit from other individuals’ shit contaminating your house. It goes on to describe how things such as porcelain/tiling and first-floor “powder rooms” actually served practical functions, making it much easier for people to distance themselves from possible illness carriers, or tidy things off after hosting visitors with uncertain case histories.

To be clear, I’m not sure why this made me feel better about my aggravating restroom contracting experience. Or the fatal virus that continues to rave simply outside my doors. It did. Or at least, I got me considering what other kind of weird developments will be left in the long-term after this specific crisis finally ends. That, and I’m glad that my restroom is primarily tile now.

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How Transmittable Illness Formed American Restroom Design[Short Wave / NPR]

How Transmittable Disease Defined the American Restroom[Elizabeth Yuko / CityLab]

Image: Public Domain through Pixnio