The Story of a Bathroom

I was looking at Pinterest or something the other day and I couldn’t help but notice how far bathrooms have come since I was a kid. Seriously, I think my own kids would be stunned to know what bathrooms were like before. None of that outside business, of course, because I’m not that old. I mean, we had all the functioning parts-shower, tub, toilet and sink. It’s the looks that are so drastically different.

There are things that used to be considered commonplace in bathrooms that would baffle my kids. Or at least kill them with laughter.

Like colored toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper used to come in colors, but only ugly ones. Nothing fun like stripes or anything like that. All pastels. Pink, Peach, Mint and Baby Blue. Why the hell would anyone want TP that was peach colored? To match their bathroom of course! Bathrooms used to be decorated in pastel colors too. And covered in fur! I know, that sounds weird, but truly, there were shower rugs, rugs that hugged the toilet and covers for the toilet lids that were all in this plush shag. And they were pastels. To top off the look, the walls were usually painted the exact same shade of whatever hideous pastel you had chosen. Just for shits and giggles, there were also cloth covers for the Kleenex and all sorts of other things. Go ahead and look up the good old Fingerhut catalog to get a nice overview of just how bad bathrooms could be!

Then there were Readers Digest magazines, a staple of every bathroom. Hell, even people who didn’t get Readers Digest had some in their bathrooms. Since we didn’t have telephones and couldn’t make very important phone calls while we were taking a shit, we needed something to do. If we are being honest, everyone flipped right to the page called “Laughter is the Best Medicine” and read the short funny stories. It’s hard to understand now, but when something funny happened, people would sit down at a table and write it all out in a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, pay money for a stamp and mail it to RD in the hopes it would get published in the magazine. They would have to wait months or try numerous times to get one published. Just so we could have something to giggle over while we were peeing. Today it’s called a “Facebook status update” and everyone does it all day long.

All soaps were bars of soap back then and people had special bars that were for company and special ones for the holidays too. Maybe some people still do this? No one I know, but I bet they are still out there. And OF COURSE they came in all the ugly pastels colors you could imagine…so they matched the bathroom! Also, soap on a rope was a big deal. Don't ask, it was a weird as it sounds.

Your toilets, tubs and sinks all used to come in those colors too, just in case you are wondering. It was spectacular and I hope that no matter what, I do not live long enough to see it come back into style!