Today I have a delicate question for you.
This may be a bit of a shock. After all, I write about religion, politics, and double-pointed needles without warning anyone of impending controversy, so what could be so delicate that it requires a warning?
Well, it is the week for thoroughly cleaning the master bath on the HGP, and the question has arisen: what about reading materials in the bathroom?
I like to read in the bathtub, I admit it. And there are often magazines left in the bathrooms at our house. So — should reading materials be carried in with an individual and carried out again, as are clothes? Or should they have a place to stay, like bath toys?
And if they stay in the room, should they be tidied away into a cupboard, or should there be a shelf for them or something like that?
How do you arrange things at your house?
I have some small shelves between the commode and the tub in our bathroom and one of them collects magazines and books and such. Every now and again I go through the stack and get rid of the old ones. I have a friend who keeps a magazine basket in her bathroom (as does my sister).
Oooh, no toys or reading materials in my bathroom! Too much clutter. Not to mention the fact that I read a Readers Digest thing years and years ago about a study they did on the splatter a toilet makes upon flushing! Couldn’t use a public restroom for months and months after that one. *shudder* I surely wouldn’t want to subject any of my books or magazines to such a mess either. They say to keep your toothbrush at least ten feet from the toilet too!
Sorry for the grossness, but bathrooms give me the willies! Even my own! 😀 Now I feel like that Monk guy.
Here ya go… a similar type thing as to what I read…
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f02/web2/stan.html
Don’t have a bathtub so can’t read in it 🙂
RYC: I think the characteristics you describe are more common than we think. Two of my family at least have similar characteristics (and no, I don’t think I’m one of them 🙂 I have kept a diary on and off since I was 12 years old, not a good idea if one wishes to create alternate realities) although not as marked as what you describe. I would imagine that the greater the imaginative power of the individual, the more marked the tendency. I have never had to deal with it in a public context however – anyway no one in the right mind would believe any extraordinary stories featuring me, I’m a little too ordinary for that 🙂 If anyone believed them of you I’d take it as a compliment if I were you – it probably means that you are not perceived as ‘ordinary’.
How about having a designated place for reading materials to be kept until they are finished? You can trade them out with new ones when you’re done and keep down the amount of books, magazines, etc in the bathroom.
I usually just carry in and back out, since I rarely can put anything with printed words down for long. I do keep a book of Russian short stories (non “mainstream” authors) in the bathroom for “emergencies” though.
no, no, no… no reading materials allowed to stay in the bathroom. too much clutter. too much risk of water damage. then again, I don’t ever read in the bathroom, so it hasn’t been an issue… 🙂