Home Guru: Musings on Bathroom Oddities, Manners and Etiquette

By Bill Primavera

The bathroom.

While it may not be the room you spend the most time in, it’s probably the room you visit most times during the course of the day. If you’re in my age group, you may visit it more frequently than when you were younger.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the bathroom lately, forced by an unexpected experience I had the first day I was in my new digs at the gorgeous Trump Park Residences in Shrub Oak. This joint is outrageous, outfitted with the finest materials and fixtures you might imagine: granite, marble and brushed steel everywhere you look.

So when it was time for me to visit the bathroom for the most serious function for which one visits the bathroom, and I started that slow descend, I realized that I wasn’t reaching my destination when I usually do. I kept bending lower and lower, convinced that I would be in a full Lotus position before I would finally come to rest.

Why, I wondered, with all this luxury in a place originally built for the 55-plus crowd would my new friend Louis Cappelli have built such low-rise toilets? As soon as I finished my business, I visited www.HomeAdvisor.com to find a plumber to install high-rise toilets in all three of my bathrooms.

As circumstance would have it, the next day I had another bathroom experience, this time with a real estate listing client. When I visited the home to make my presentation and sign a contract, I was greeted at the door by the husband. His wife had not yet arrived home, but his two sons were with him, both I would guess in either their late teens or early 20s.

This house had three full baths. Each time we entered one, the wife, who had returned home, would walk in and, seeing that the toilet seat was up, would immediately walk over, lower the seat and shut the lid. The first time she did it, she lowered them gently. In the second bathroom, she did it with less patience and by the time we arrived at the third bathroom, she slammed down the lid in frustration.

It’s important to pay attention to the toilet’s seat being down and the lid closed, not only so that women won’t fall into the bowl but also for health reasons. According to scientists at Leeds University, when a toilet is flushed with the lid open, bacteria sprays into the air around the toilet.

But the best reason for closing the lid is that it prevents anything and everything from falling in. You may have had the experience of not hearing from friends for several days, only to hear that their cell phones had taken the plunge.

There are other rules that should be considered concerning bathroom etiquette and manners, and it’s not only because of airborne germs or the differences in plumbing between the sexes and actual plumbing.

For instance, not to get too personal, while I’ll do one bodily function in someone else’s presence, I won’t do the other. Is anybody else the same or am I just too Victorian? I was quite impressed when, years ago, I first saw a bathroom where the toilet bowl was separated from the rest of the room and you could do your more private business in, well, private.

And what about something as simple as replacing the toilet paper roll when it’s depleted? I am always in such a rush, I’m guilty of just grabbing a new roll and leaving it on top, rather than going to the trouble of actually inserting it on the cylinder. Shame.

For those who go through the trouble of replacing it, there’s the question of positioning the roll for “over” or “under” dispensing.  My work associate, Lorin, tells me that it must be “over” so that the last sheet can be “folded” as in a hotel.

“You fold your last toilet paper sheet?” I asked astoundingly?

“Yes,” she responded, not skipping a beat. “You never know when guests are going to stop by.”

Oh, my God, where did I go wrong in learning bathroom etiquette?

One other item I know about toilets. Did you notice that some are round and, in the past couple of decades, some are oblong shaped? Nobody mentions the obvious, but designers finally figured out that the male anatomy had to be accommodated.

And finally, did I mention that there should always–ALWAYS–be some kind of automatic air freshener in the bathroom?

There’s so much going on in my head on this subject that might be categorized as “in the toilet” that there will probably be a Part II to these musings.

Bill Primavera is a Realtor® associated with William Raveis Real Estate and Founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., the longest running public relations agency in Westchester (www.PrimaveraPR.com), specializing in lifestyles, real estate and development. His real estate site is: www.PrimaveraRealEstate.com and his blog is: www.TheHomeGuru.com.  To engage the services of The Home Guru and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.