Bathroom Break

Most people keep at least a few things in the shower: soap, shampoo, a scrubber. I have a few others, like face wash and shaving cream. Even in a household like ours with only two adults, it's difficult to avoid shower clutter. (This is not exciting stuff, but it is necessary.)

Years ago I lived in a very old house in Somerville. The bathroom had a footed tub with one of those old shower curtain rods that goes all the way around, and a shower head fed by a length of hose from the faucets. There was some shelving built into a corner where two walls met that worked nicely for holding the necessities. Later, when the Mrs. and I moved in together, we tried a variety of storage solutions, including one of those plastic buckets that attaches to the shower wall via a suction cup. This was fine except that it decided to de-suction every once in a while.

After moving into this apartment six years ago, we settled on one of those pole things with shelves on it. It provided enough space, but we had to pay attention to how much we put on the shelves, because they were held in place by tiny rubber rings and couldn't handle too much weight. After several years that unit started to show some rust, even though it was made of stainless steel coated with a white vinyl outer layer. We replaced it with a similar unit that was just stainless. It started to rust literally within a week of installing it, and after a while both of us were sick of looking at it.

While flipping through a recent catalog from The Container Store, I found this shower head-mounted caddy. Not only was it attractive and on sale, but the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, including one that claimed no rust after two years. It's made by simplehuman, whose products are well made and well regarded; we already have one of their kitchen trash cans. I'm generally not a huge fan of over-the-shower-head organizers, but we both liked the adjustability of this one.

So on Friday we headed out to the Natick Container Store, which is a bit of a drive from our house, but there is also a fabric store nearby that the Mrs. likes quite a bit. (The shower caddy also comes in a version with bamboo elements, but it was not on sale and $20 more, and it would look out of place in our shower and bathroom anyway.) As a bonus, the Mrs. found a nice little work desk on clearance in the back of the store for about 75% off its original price, so she decided to buy that too. It had to be disassembled to fit in our car, but that small inconvenience was worth it.

(The Proper Bostonian asserts that Shower Caddy Organizer was a semi-underground band back in the 1980s, but I can't find any evidence to support her claim.)

By the way, The Container Store is opening a new location in the Northshore Mall in Peabody in October, which may be more convenient for some Boston-area shoppers.