Toilet Brush

My week off, and my discovery of my shopping problem

This week, I took time off work to rest. In my mind, the plan was to build a healthy routine consisting of things that I have been neglecting. Things like cooking, exercising, drawing, writing and sewing. I also wanted to do some cleaning around my apartment. 

In the end, I did end up doing some of those things, but not some others – as of now, I have yet to do any drawing, exercise or sewing. I am at least now getting some writing done, even if it is only to document how my productivity goals were derailed this week. 

It seems that I have recently come to develop a bit of a shopping habit. I have spent so much time curating wish lists on Amazon, and hours looking through product review articles and videos. And since a lot of the things I’ve been buying are for the apartment, I’ve also been measuring and remeasuring and moving furniture and things around, imagining how I can make space for just one more gadget and a couple more pieces of furniture and hooks or containers or bins or shelves for storing all the gadgets and the furniture and things. 

Looking at my order history, it seems that it’s only started becoming a bit out of hand more recently. This year, I’ve apparently placed 87 orders, but 55 of them were from the past three months:

But it truly has climaxed only very recently, with 30 of the orders having been placed in the last 30 days. That is, on average, one Amazon order per day in the last 30 days. 

The orders don’t even just contain single items. Many of them are for multiple items, like the following order of two purple coloured mops and a folding step ladder that I made just 5 days ago: 

Of course I needed to get 2 mops, because one of the mops had a bucket while the other mop had an attached water reservoir with a spray that could be activated from the handle of the mop. The first one would be for the serious regular mopping once a week or so, while the one with the reservoir would be for quickly mopping up spills and whatnot, without needing to bring out a whole bucket. Although now upon reflection, I suppose I could just use the first mop anyway, without using the bucket when it’s just for cleaning up a spill. 

But the point is, I have been shopping too much, and it has reached proportions that one might characterize as problematic. And this has really come to surface for me this week, because it is precisely shopping that has derailed my plans for building a healthy routine. 

Shopping for a toilet brush and bathroom bin

It was not until day before yesterday when I found myself having spent more than 3 hours shopping for a toilet brush and a small pedal-operated dustbin for my bathroom that I realized I might have to reassess my shopping habit. 

I woke up around 6.30 am two days ago, and had thoughts of doing some of the things I had hoped to do this week, like finally getting around to drawing, or doing some administrative tasks that I’ve been putting off for too long. But as I had been to Darty on Monday to get a quotation for adding a storage unit in my kitchen, and I had rearranged the kitchen and cleaned up the balcony on Tuesday, naturally on Wednesday I felt like I needed to do something for the bathroom as well. And so it was that even as I was getting out of bed, I thought to myself “well, let’s get a new bin for the bathroom. One with a lid, to replace the current one that’s just open and isn’t very pleasant once there’s tissue papers and balls of hair in it. And let me just get a toilet brush so that each toilet has its own toilet brush and we won’t have to take the toilet brush from one toilet to the other. Then I’ll get started with my day”. 

So I plonked myself down on the living room sofa, and started looking through Amazon for a blue pedal bin and a blue toilet brush and toilet brush holder. Immediately, I found one that looked appealing: 

It seemed to be a nice shade of blue; not too bright, and not too dark. I liked that it was matte, and that it had a soft-close mechanism. Unfortunately, it was not in stock.

This toilet brush and bin set was available in Royal Blue instead, but that shade seemed a bit too bright compared to the tiles in my bathroom, so I did not want to settle for it. Also, I need to have the bin on the right side of my toilet and the toilet brush on the left side, but it’s all wrong in this product picture, so that was definitely not going to work:

It occurred to me that I could just wait until the dark blue one would be back in stock and order it then, but my desire for immediate gratification overrode any rational though. It was as if I was somehow convinced that I needed to have the perfect blue-tinted bathroom set for my bathroom before I go back to work next week or I would be unhappy and that the time off that I took this week would have been completely wasted.

So of course, I kept hunting for a toilet brush and toilet bin. I found other sets as well, and this one in particular that looked like it would match the tiles in my bathroom quite well:

I added it to my list for further consideration, but eventually it wasn’t the right one because it didn’t have a soft-close mechanism, and the lid didn’t even look like it was well-aligned with the body of the bin even in the main product photo (which to me didn’t look like a good sign at all in terms of the quality of the product). And despite the 4.4 star rating, several comments mentioned the poor quality of the bin. 

I considered so many many many more options after that, including some elegant looking toilet brushes like this one: 

As I looked at toilet brushes like this, I thought to myself “Wow, I would have never thought that a toilet brush could look so beautiful”. 

I did consider this one briefly, but I really wanted something matte, and there weren’t any designs like this that came in matte colours, so I moved on. 

After nearly 3 hours of searching, I had finally narrowed down my picks to two options: 

I could go for the Stardis pedal bin and silicone toilet brush, or the Zone Demark designer bathroom bin and ceramic toilet brush. 

Both options looks really sleek and even better than the first option from Spirella that caught my eye but which was unfortunately out of stock. Both these options were more expensive as well, so before I committed to this purchase, I needed to be completely sure. So I read the comments of each of the 4 products. 

The vast majority of the 556 comments on the Zone Denmark bathroom bin were positive. Reading the comments was also somehow reassuring to me, because some of them were very long and full of detail and seemed to be so passionately written. It made me feel a bit more sane despite having spent more than 3 hours shopping for a fucking toilet brush, because here were hundreds of other people who had taken time out of their days to write paragraphs of praise for the elegant design of these designer bathroom bins. 

The comments were validating not just the bins, but also my own irrational shopping addiction and insistence on finding the perfect toilet brush and bin. Here deep in these Amazon product review comments, I had found my people. Or perhaps a lot of these were bots and AI-generated, but at least they made me feel validated. 

The comments for the Stardis bin were also great, although there were not as many of them (just 263 compared to the 556 for the Zone Denmark one). I also somewhat preferred the colour of the stardis one, and found that the Stardis toilet brush holder was also more elegant. 

But before I could go for the Stardis one and confirm my order, I checked the comments of the toilet brushes, and that’s where things became more complicated. 

For the Stardis, there were some glowing reviews, but among them were several reviews complaining about the quality of the product and its lifespan: 

Given its 30 euro price tag, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the risk of it only last 3 months. 

Looking at the comments for the Zone Denmark, it was also a mixed bag:

That first comment felt so relatable, because I too would never have imagined that I’d invest so much time into hunting for a toilet brush. But the comment mentioning that the lid of the toilet brush enters the toilet water was the dealbreaker for me. That’s just bad functional design and also not very hygienic.

So now I still had to keep searching, at least for a toilet brush that somewhat matches either one of the bins. I kept looking, even considering looking for gold coloured toilet brushes instead of blue (because my bathroom is blue and gold/brass, so gold could have worked as well). After much searching, I found this one: 

Only the holder was blue, which the handle itself was black. It wasn’t quite as nice as having everything be blue, but at this point I had spent nearly 4 hours searching for the perfect toilet brush and toilet bin pair, and I was just tired. I was more than ready to compromise on my stringent criteria and high standards at this point, so I did a visual comparison of the colour of this toilet brush and the colour of the Stardis and Zone Denmark bins, decided that the Zone Denmark was closer, and put in my order. 

Then I quickly looked for a more items to match the bin: a blue toilet paper holder, a few blue bathroom rugs and a blue and gold decorative sculpture to tie everything together: 

Bejewelled Brushes

With that out of the way, finally I could get on with the rest of my day. So one would think that I would not be looking for any toilet brushes any more. But the thing is, while looking for toilet brushes, I saw so many interesting designs, that it had piqued my interest, and I simply was not done. Here are some interesting toilet brushes I had seen during my search that morning:

There are the animal-inspired toilet brushes:

I think the swan shaped ones are particularly clever and elegant:

There are toilet brushes designed like flowers or fruit:

There are also political toilet brushes: 

And there are toilet brushes that look like other objects:

Seeing all these made me curious about just how fancy of a toilet brush could be, so that afternoon I started looking for the most luxurious toilet brush I could find, and there are indeed some very expensive toilet brushes out there.

I was actually somewhat tempted to buy the 24 carat gold toilet brush, only because of how ridiculous that would be. This time, however, I was able to remain rational and refrain from such frivolity. 

And while investigating all this, I discovered that Ben Affleck once gifted a jewel-encrusted toilet seat to Jennifer Lopez. That is such a ridiculous gesture, and I absolutely love it.

Disillusion and Disappointment

The next day, I could hardly wait for all the things I had ordered to arrive. Clearly at this point I was completely obsessed by toilet brushes and bathroom bins, so my heightened anticipation was no surprise. I ended up going to a friend’s place all afternoon, so I was not home to receive the 3 different packages (because I’d placed the orders separately, in my compulsive purchasing fervour of the day before).  I had my housemates receive the package on my behalf, because heaven forbid I have to wait even one more day to receive them. 

At the end of the afternoon when my friend dropped me off back home, I rushed to open all the packages, excited to place them all in my bathroom and to marvel at my excellent taste. To witness the fruits of my laborious 3 hours plus search of the previous day. 

The first package I opened was the Zone Denmark bin. Even before I opened it, I noticed the picture of the bin on the packaging showed a much darker colour than I was expecting. I thought that they might have just shipped in in the wrong box, and went ahead and opened the box, hopeful that the illustration was just a mistake. When I took the bin out of the box, it definitely was a much darker blue than I had expected. In fact, I thought it was black at first. 

I wondered if they’d sent me the wrong colour item, so I checked the box again. The packaging did say “Royal Blue”, which, despite not being the adjective I would use to describe the shade of blue that was on the product listing, was the name of the colour that the brand used. There was no mistake in the product they had shipped. The only mistake was that I had spent 4 hours picking this fucking rubbish bin only to be disappointed by the actual product I had in front of me. 

At first I tried to cope with the disappointment, and told myself that it’s not too bad, and that it’s “sort of blue I guess”. I opened the next package, which contained the toilet brush and toilet brush holder. 

That one was closer to the colour that I had seen on the listing, but it was such a different shade than the bin. I tried to shake off the disappointment, trying my best to cope with the outcome of my decisions. I placed the bin and the brush in the bathroom in their designated areas, trying to placate myself by saying “they’re not placed right next to each other, so the colour difference won’t be too bad”. 

But all I could think of was how the fucking bathroom bin that I had paid sixty-two euros and seventy-one cents for was fucking black instead of blue, and I could hardly contain my disappointment. 

And when I finally opened up the bathroom mat and laid that out in the bathroom, I just knew I could not ignore the colour differences. I had not spent nearly 4 hours and over 100 euros to have a fucking toilet brush and bathroom bin that didn’t match. 

I mean, just look at that bin and tell me it’s not black. None of the blues in that photo match each other. Not to mention the tiles hardly even look blue anymore next to all these other shades. I had invested way too much time into this hunt for this to be an acceptable outcome. 

The Return and the Re-order

Finally, I requested a refund for both the bin and the brush. Because I refuse to have them haunt my bathroom and taunt me daily with a reminder of this absolute failure. 

Right after I finish writing and posting this, I will head to the drop-off point to return these items. 

Meanwhile, immediately after requesting the return of the bin and the brush, I put in order for that Spirella bin. The one that I had seen right at first. I ordered that last night, telling myself that I will order the matching toilet brush once it’s back in stock. 

And today, as I was writing this article, when I checked the product listing for that Spirella toilet brush in matte dark blue so I could take a screenshot of it, the damn thing was actually in stock. If I had just waited one day, I could have ordered this brush and bin set which I had first set my eyes on, and saved myself so much time and heartache. Anyway, I ordered it.

And yes, the bin was delivered today, just as I sat down to write this. And the parcel was indeed handed directly to me, right at the gate, just as the delivery man was making his way in. Because I was following his GPS tracking on the Amazon app and as soon as I saw that he was nearby, I went downstairs and intercepted him because clearly I am unhinged and unable to wait for anything anymore. 

But I am satisfied with the colour of the bin, and  I have not ordered anything else now on Amazon. I do not plan on ordering anything else in the 9 remaining days of this month, and I promise to only buy a maximum of 5 things in December, and then never buy anything again for a decade. Or at least, not until I’ve paid off all the installments for the orders that I’ve made in the last 30 days. Because obviously I used buy-now-pay-later for some of the orders and it’s started to add up. And anyway I really need to do something else than shopping.

The moral of the story is: don't spend almost 4 hours shopping for a toilet brush and bathroom bin in the perfect shade of blue on Amazon because it's probably going to arrive black and disappoint you. And also, a toilet brush is not and will never be the key to your happiness, even if it is made of 24-carat gold. But if you can afford it, go ahead.