Personal essays
On toilet seats and the placement of light switches
Up or down
I never challenged the requirement that I should lift the toilet seat to pee - but, when I was younger, I didn’t see the point of putting the seat back down.
“It’s polite,” my mother told me.
But, I thought, if the next one to use it is a boy, then they just have to lift the seat again. Isn’t the politeness making sure it’s up in the first place.
My parents told me a story of when my dad was young. He had two brothers and a much younger sister and their mother was always yelling at them for not putting the seat back down.
She would get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and not turn on the light first. She’d sit and get an uncomfortable surprise.
Over time she learned to put down the toilet seat in the dark before using it.
One day, so the story goes, one of the boys did put the seat back down. My grandmother came into the darkened bathroom and though she was putting the seat down but actually put the lid down, sat, and had an unpleasant accident to clean up.
I’ll grant you, there are many holes in this story.
But the point is that decisions we make regarding toilet seats and light switches are decisions we are making for ourselves, for others, or for both.
In or out
A friend posted that he’s moved from the UK to the Netherlands and one of the things he’s had to adjust to is that bathroom lights are outside the bathroom in the UK and inside the bathroom in the Netherlands.
When I’m staying in a hotel or an apartment by myself, it’s kind of convenient to flip the switch on my way into the bathroom.
But when I’m sharing a room with someone, I hate having the light switch on the outside. It means that I risk disturbing the other person as the bedroom floods with light when I turn on the bathroom light.
I try to open the bathroom door as little as possible with the light on. I’ll even reach my hand out from behind the door and reach for the switch to turn the light off before exiting.
Decisions we make have impact on others.
These are some of the high-level discussions I engage with online.
Someone added that he’s stayed places where there are two doors between the bathroom and bedroom to solve just this problem.
Solutions
I’m sure people meet and spend a lot of time on whether the light should go inside or outside.
Airlines have solved it by having no light switch. The lights come on when you fasten the door lock behind you after you have entered the bathroom. They turn off when you unlock the door.
We could do that in home bathrooms I suppose.
There are many arguments against it. One would have been raised by my grandmother who doesn’t want any light at all at night. That’s probably wiser for getting back to sleep more quickly.
This past trip I stayed in a room with one of my favorite solutions. If the room is dark and the toilet seat detects someone standing in front of it, a nightlight comes on. It’s not very bright and it only illuminates the areas you need to see.
I’d seen something similar on a houseboat I stayed on in Amsterdam. Not only was there a houseboat, but a button illuminated that would lift or lower the toilet seat for you.
Of course, this is not an essay on toilet seats and light switches.
But you knew that.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 339. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe