Bought a towel rack today-- DECADENT SELF INDULGENCE alert!!

[TygrBright]

When we first moved into the new house and I was looking a bit frazzled and forlorn, surrounded by boxes, my darling husband decided to take me shopping at Bed Bath and Beyondreason. You kinda have to know us both to understand what an incredible gesture of love this is, but suffice to say that I am NOT a recreational shopper and not really fond of shopping at all. However, my aversion pales in comparison with Himself's, he turns pale and breaks out in a sweat at Albertson's.

Anyway. I had a long list of fiddly houseware-y things we needed --shelf and drawer liners, shower curtain rings, blah-blah, the usual, and was sort of dreading Yet Another Foraging Expedition, so he said "C'mon, I'll go with ya, we'll get this over with together."

I should know better than to go along with this because, as always, we ended up with a fair number of items that weren't on the list, which is what happens when we egg each other on, because we both want each other to have anything and everything the other one wants...

Anyway. The biggest unplanned purchase was one of those plug-in towel holders that heats up your towels. We keep the house very cool in winter (it was December by then) and first thing in the morning the bathroom can be pret-ty icy, so this was our pre-Christmas present to ourselves.

Should have known. The darn thing worked great but started to fall apart within 6 months. It was only held together by screws in bits of plastic, and, sure enough, they started coming apart, plastic bits started falling off, and anyway, right now it's sort of leaning against the wall. So I thought I'd go ahead and replace it with something that could be hard-wired and mounted on the wall, with no nasty little plastic bits to fall off.

At least, I thought I'd do that until a search among bathroom hardware suppliers showed prices from $400-$2000 for electric and 'hydronic' towel racks, YIKES! Holy moley rocky! I had no IDEA people paid that kind of dough for a bathroom fixture that doesn't even pour water or flush...

Anyway, a friend steered me toward the Comfort Channel (www.comfortchannel.com) and after tiptoeing through the plumbing supply places, the hundred and fifty bucks for this model:



...looked right reasonable as an early birthday present for the Darling Husband. Decadent self-indulgence, indeed, since I'll have to have an electrician install it which will cost almost that much again around here.

But I'm so excited! What a cool thing to have!

What's your favorite Decadent Self Indulgence? Share the guilt here, now...

wheedlingly,
Bright

[Stinky The Clown]

1. My most decadent self-indulgance ......

....... was marrying the love of my life after half a lifetime of 'making do'.

[NMDemDist2]

2. awwwww

that is so sweet :loveya:

I keep telling her that too yanno

[TygrBright]

7. Now THAT, I understand poifeckly...

...since that is precisely what happened to us. Geezer love and all that. Forty years of scraping by with whatever isn't as bad as everything else, and then suddenly, WHAM! The jackpot!! The Love Of Our Lives comes along.

Not being fools, we grabbed while the grabbing is good. Everything else is sprinkles on the cupcake.

Glad to hear we're not the only ones, sometimes I feel guilty about being so lucky and so happy when there are so many miserable and half-assed 'making do' marriages out there.

happily,
Bright

[NMDemDist2]

3. this whole house has been a self indulgence

I somedays look at what we've spent and especially to the guys who did the crap work and sigh

I coulda saved a bunch but needed "instant gratification"

and how Ms. Bright, you have me thinking of cold winter mornings and warmed towels

Blast you, Woman!

[Warpy]

6. Install a towel rack above the econo heater outside the shower

Turn the heater on, put a towel up. just make sure the towel doesn't touch the heater.

By the time you shower, not only will the bathroom be warm, but that towel will be toasty.

Some fixes are simple.

[NMDemDist2]

8. GMTA (Great Minds Think Alike)

the exact same thought had occured to me

and we'll see how the house does this winter, it may end up like that

[politicat]

17. Just so you know, even really flammable stuff won't with

the eheaters. They just don't get hot enough. I can touch the one in the bedroom without getting much more than warm, and you've seen the pictures of Miss Elderly and Pitiful kitty sleeping Right. Next. To. The. Heater. If she could get any closer (like behind it, between it and the wall) I'm sure she would be delighted to do so. DH did a real dumb thing last winter and hung my robe right on the heater and it was warm, but not even hot (and it was there for most of a day, since I'd left the house before he did).

They're safe enough for nurseries and with oxygen tanks, which most heaters aren't. And ten minutes of towel on heater is not going to be enough to get the cotton even remotely close to combustion temp. The heaters run about 160 F on the surface, about the same temp as a piece of cooked chicken. Cotton's combustion point is about 800 F IIRC.

[TygrBright]

9. Now, now... it's not "instant gratification." It's...

...Sanity Maintenance Procedures. This is NOT a luxury, well, at least not MUCH of a one, it's what makes moving possible. Otherwise we'd scream and kick and hold onto the doorframe not one thing would ever get into a box, much less moved and out of the box at the other end. It's only the knowledge that we will have some modicum of order materializing fairly quickly from the sea of chaos that enables us to even contemplate moving as a voluntary action.

Am I right, or am I right?

Just common sense.

And Warpy's dead on about the towel rack thing, you have a great fix right there-- if we had anything like that econoheater I'd be doing exactly that. There are some very neat double bars that are relatively inexpensive, and you can use the outermost bar for the big bath towels that will hang low enough to be in front of (but not touching) the heater. Then use the little closer bar for hand towels and/or washcloths that won't hang down far enough to be in danger of touching the heater.

heheh... of course you can also use it to dry your hand laundry, on occasion. The DH used to refer to the toasty towel rack as my "bra baker."

enablingly,
Bright

[NMDemDist2]

10. LOL

you are so bad! :spank:

but i'm thinking about it hard and if we have a winter this year it may happen

[eleny]

4. Those are so cool... I mean HOT!

We don't have one but i've always thought the indulgence of one is well worth it.

I'll be thinking of my luxuries to post. What a fun idea for a thread!

[Warpy]

5. I had a bathroom in my last place in Boston

that was so cold that on bitter days I'd have to break the film of ice in the toilet to use and flush. It was small enough that the steam from the shower heated it OK, but the trip into the shower was misery. Also misery was that 3 AM trip to the toilet, until I discovered the greatest comfort of all, a hair dryer. Spending 30 seconds heating that seat up made all the differnce in the world.

I really haven't bought any dumb luxuries except computers.

[wildeyed]

11. iPod, which you will pry form my cold dead hands

and when we had the yard landscaped, I got the automatic sprinklers. Now if I could just get an automatic weeder......

[NMDemDist2]

12. ....

[wildeyed]

15. lol, I will have to tell the neighbors it is a dog. n/t

[NMDemDist2]

16. name it Rover

who's to know?

:rofl:

[Warpy]

23. Can I have him when you're done?

Please?

[Longhorn]

13. I have the Warm Rails brand of towel warmer from Linens & Things

and I love it! It's a standing model and, if I recall, only cost about $40. The only plastic on it are the endcaps. I've had two of them, one for my bath and one for my husband's for two or three years without problems. I also gave one to my mother and to my in-laws. Once you're treated to warm towels, it's hard to go back! ;)

I think my "decadent self indulgence" is my Air Desk.



www.airdesks.com

Mine doesn't have the extra shelves. Put together with my La-Z-Boy and laptop with wireless internet and I can surf for hours! :)

[NMDemDist2]

14. I have an Airdesk too with one shelf

it totally rocks!

[politicat]

18. Laptop, ipod, wifi, PDA, fountain pens, cat fountain, deep freeze....

The first four are essential for getting my work and life done, but I could make do with the radio, a desktop and hardwired connection and a note pad and paper books (I have lots of those, too). But I love having the luxury of being able to sit outside on my porch at midnight and futz off while posting at DU and burning CDs, being able to take my music or audiobooks everywhere and always having something to read or a game to play.

I love my fountain pens. Only one of them was even marginally expensive (more than $40) and I rarely use that one anyway. For an expensive pen, it sits nastily in my hand and leaks all over the place even after service. The cheap Walitys and Dukes are much better. But all of them are great fun and the endless inks and accessories are so much fun. I may look like Jackson Pollack has been using my hands for canvas after I'm done cleaning and inking them, but I enjoy every minute of it and making the blotters, pen wipers and other implements of paper destruction keeps me entertained.

The cat fountain is something of a necessity. Neither cat will drink still water unless they've just crossed the Gobi, and even then, they'd look put-upon and resentful. And their definition of still water means any bowl that has sat for more than 5 minutes. Urinary tract infections and vet bills are not something I like dealing with (and pilling a cat is even worse than writing that check to the emergency vet) and cats that won't drink enough are prime candidates for UTIs. So rather than drain the Platte River basin trying to get the picky little snots to drink, we got them a cat fountain and we change that water every other day.

And there's the deep freeze. It's only a little one (2.5 feet by 3 feet by 2 feet inside, so 15 cubic at most) but it means that I don't have to put up with the side by side freezer space that has far too many flaws for its few benefits. And I can stock up on stuff and avoid the semi-annual snow-storm supermarket race when more than 10 flakes fall in the same hour. I could live without out it, but I'd be a much more surly customer, and the household gods know I don't need any excuses.

[TygrBright]

19. With you on the cat fountain!

One of The World's Most Irritable Cat's unpleasant habits was muscling anyone using sink, shower, etc., aside to snatch a drink from the flowing water source. Used to change his bowl 3-4x a day and he still made a hairy nuisance of himself whenever someone left a bathroom door open, not to mention knocking things off the counter by the kitchen sink.

Three cheers and a rah! for cat fountains. I'm not all that keen on the expense of new filters, but it's worth it.

concurrently,
Bright

[politicat]

21. We skip the filter since the water is filtered.

We found that, even changing the water regularly, the filters seemed to contribute to algae growth. So we pulled it out and gave up. The cats don't seem to mind.

[Warpy]

24. Wow, both my cats are fancy purebreds

Rescued, but originally very expensive kittens from local breeders.

They are perfectly happy with a bowl of scuzzy water and the cheapest kibble out there.

Canned food gave them the runs.

I do love low maintenance cats.

[TygrBright]

25. heh... Don't you know that nouveau riches are ALWAYS...

...pickier than true aristocrats? AristoCATs, maybe. The World's Most Irritable Cat is a shelter boy, led a rough, tough life before landing on easy street with me.

And the Darling Husband and I suspect that he may in fact be a GOPpie, or possibly a Libertarian. He has NO scruples about taking what he wants. He doesn't manipulate or sulk or pout, he just grabs, bless him. But he did have a short bout of urinary trouble a few years back, so I'm with P-cat, any way I can get him to drink lots of clean water is good insurance against future (possibly expensive, certainly heartrending) problems.

philosophically,
Bright

[NMDemDist2]

26. i'm feeding the dogs a spendy vet food and my kitten LOVES it

:rofl:

as for the goat, I swear I'm getting one! I coulda bought 3 for what it cost to get the weeds knocked down around here

:banghead:

[Longhorn]

20. Talk about opulence -- my dogs drink out of the bidet.

Our house came with one in the master bath. Any time I'm in there, they come in for a drink -- sometimes one at a time and sometimes all four of them at once. It can be a real pain trying to get ready when I have to stop and turn it on and off as they amble in one at a time. (Well, if it was that much of a pain, I'd stop, huh? ;) )

My dogs aren't spoiled -- not much! :) But since the dang thing is there taking up space, I'm glad to have a use for it. And I've read that dogs don't always drink enough water so I'm happy to encourage them to drink.

[NMDemDist2]

22. i *SO* wish I had a bidet

we talked long and hard about adding one in the bathroom remodel

i had one in the house my ex and I built and I miss it still.......

[Warpy]

27. I know what you mean

I had a winter rental on Cape Cod (winter palace, summer shack) that had one. I still miss that thing, although I no longer need one quite as much in my dotage.

A hand held shower can do wonders for personal hygiene, though. It's the next best thing.