shower rod to the rescue

here i am, sitting down to write what i thought was a follow up entry but when i went to find the original blog to link to, it turns out i apparently never actually wrote it. i took the pictures though, so i'll just give you both parts at once.













for $11 each i've outfitted both my bathrooms with extra shower curtain tension rods. you ever hand wash something and hang it to dry on the shower rod and find yourself trying to arrange the shower curtain so your stuff gets dry without getting the whole bathroom wet or sticking to the curtain?











so maybe it was just me. not anymore though. i put one in my hall bath above the shower stall a while back and liked it so much but i kept having to move things off it because i shower in there daily. my master bath has a great whirlpool tub but i rarely use the shower in there. when i moved in it had a crappy shower head with no pressure and even after i replaced it with an aerator head with great pressure, i just wasn't in the habit of using it for the shower.

instead of moving the rod, i bought another one, and use both regularly. the hall bath i now use for things that will drip dry quickly overnight, mostly because that room also has an overhead ventilator fan so i can circulate the air for better drying. things like sweaters that take longer go in the master bath.










part 2:
when i was really sick a few years ago and had no body fat at all, sleeping was nearly impossible due to the firmness of my mattress. every position i tried was jarring to my sticking out bones. i couldn't afford a new mattress but i could afford a down alternative mattress topper*. it's long since outlived its usefulness on my bed and now serves as the only comfortable part of the incredibly firm futon in the living room.
*hereafter referred to as 'the monster'

except for when it goes on camping trips with me. either use, even with a sheet over it, tends to leave it susceptible to dirt and spills. it must be washed once in a while. it's a monster of a thing and doesn't fit in a washing machine. so i wash it in the whirlpool tub. you would not believe how awesome it is to be able to do that. a little detergent, hot water, run the jets for a couple of minutes, drain, rinse, repeat without detergent. it's like having a large open topped washing machine. sure you have to hold the fabric away from the intake valve, but it's way better than trying to haul the monster to the laundromat and trying to stuff it into a commercial megawasher and without the added expense.


drying it, however, is a much more complicated endeavor. which just got way easier.
last week was camping with small children and regardless of the sleeping bags laid over the top, it somehow came home sticky and pinkish in some places. into the tub it went.
and as i sat there, thinking of how i usually have to place a plastic heavy duty laundry basket in the tub as a support and move the monster around every few hours for days until it's dry, i looked up.
and immediately climbed up on the side of the tub, loosened the extra shower rod, and relocated it to just above the tub rim.











i admit i was a little worried about the weight snapping it, so at first i just put a corner of the monster over it and left it for a while. but when i came back, enough water had drained out that i could hang it pretty much in the middle, letting the heaviest parts rest in the tub. it's been drying marvelously since with little attention from me.

march 23rd,update: looks like the monster will be dry days before it usually would with the old method where there was too much contact with flat surfaces. even with the a/c temporarily off due to frozen coils which means it's really humid in here.