Why I Oughta...

This past March, I posted a photo of a couple of Tawashi Scrubbing brushes that we bought from the Daiso (dollar store) up in Niles .  We recently went back and I found a couple of different scrubbing brush products that I brought home.  The first one, is what you see at the top of this post: they call it a toilet brush, but if you look at the photos, you'll see that it is designed to clean the Toto toilet washlet .  The other scrubbing product - below - is also for the toilet.  But this one is for the bowl.  They bill it as having 'pumice abrasive'.  With two exclamation points.  I haven't used either of them yet, but you can bet that I'll report back on the outcomes here.  I mean...who isn't sitting on the edge of their (washlet) seat just wondering if these dollar store items are any good?  Gross?  Or the good kind of gross?

I've posted a few times about Japanese bathrooms here on the blog.  Actually, I've posted about toilets in general a few times - which, I suppose is weird.  But, not that weird? The oldest toilet-related post was when I was first exposed to Japanese-style toilets at Google in 2011 .  That same year, I marveled at a toilet that Menards was selling that claimed it could flush a full bucket of golf balls .  Yeah...full bucket! Then just this year, I shared the functionality of the toilet I came across in Tokyo that played bird chirping noises to sort-of, umm, muffle or suppress or combat whatever noises are being made.  And most recently, I posted a photo of a child-restraint made by Toto that is in the corner of a public restroom that you can strap your child in while you go about doing your own business.  I've been so moved by my experiences with Totos that I had one installed in our house in Downers Grove. Today, I'm continuing the celebration of toilets and J

Not only do they make toilets (excellent ones at that, btw), they also make this child restraint system.  So Moms and Dads all over Japan can sit on the pot in peace. 

I don't think I've mentioned how the addition of a Toto Toilet to our master bathroom has fundamentally altered my life.  And, that's probably best.  If she is reading this, Nat is seriously cringing right now.  So, I'll just move along.  TMI, Nat?  Sorry!  Briefly...I'll just say this: Yes...I'm proud to be totally #TeamToto. But, before I move along, I wanted to flag this for all of you:  some of the public area toilets (think....bathrooms that are adjacent to a multi-tenant high-rise office building) have not just the normal front/rear wash and pressure but also the button marked 'privacy'?  And the 'volume' toggle underneath it?  That's basically a white noise function.  White noise, chimes and bird chirps.  For real. During my time in Tokyo, I didn't come across this very often so I'm not sure if this feature is rare? The first time I came across Toto's in public was during my time at Google.  Here's a post from