The Untouchables

We’ve all seen them… covered in lace, embroidered with monograms, emblazoned with cutesy appliques, folded over rods, draped through loops and perched on the edges of sinks. They are… the decorative hand towel. And the only thing worse than the decorative towel you know you’re not supposed to touch… is the decorative soap sitting idly next to it. How dare you get it wet and begin to smooth out its carefully carved and molded edges!  Just imagine what would happen if just anyone used that soap. Why that seashell would just be a sad little triangle, and those initials, well who would be able to read those anymore? It’s just barbarism!

Nothing seems more pointless to me than soaps and towels you’re not supposed to use being on display in a bathroom.  First of all, I can only assume the people who own these items are trying to impress the guests in their bathroom. And surely nothing impresses more than wet unsoaped hands you have to wipe off on your own jeans.  Not only is this impractical but, wasteful. I for one can honestly say that there isn’t a single item in my house that I have not, do not currently or will not in the future actually use. And just to clarify display/decoration is a use for a painting… not a hand towel. I am willing to bet the same people who get upset when people use their decorative hand towels also own candles that they have never and will never light, and vases that have never held flowers and never will, and that at least one piece of furniture somewhere in their house still have some sort of protective coating of some kind on it. And that’s what really bothers me. Not the towels and the soaps but people need to impress and build a facade. It’s a bathroom, not a museum.

In today’s materialistic world people talk about the need to have everything, but some people seem to have a need for two of everything. Their “nice” set and their everyday set.  The only version of this phenomenon which exists in my house is that I have everyday dishes and I have fine china. But to be fair, the china does actually get used occasionally. It’s like buying a new wardrobe and still only ever wearing your old clothes because you’re afraid the new ones with get dirty.  Or buying a brand new computer and using your old own because you don’t want the fancy one to get a virus.  At the end of the day things get dirty, and scratched, and bend and broken.  But guess what,  that’s why we clean things, and we glue things back together, and we pick things up and dust them off and move on with life.  And that’s why my guest bathrooms each contain two solid colored hand towels, and metal liquid soap pumps.  It’s not the Ritz but guess what… no one is wiping their hand on their pants.