I have been writing for a while that we have no running water, we haul our water and we now have a working sewer, so I can do dishes, flush the toilet and do cleaning, but when it comes to bathing, we are still frequenting the laundromat or the UFA truckers showers. I am not sure how long this will go on but for now this is our new norm.
I have some bad and very sad news, the laundromat which has my totally favorite shower has had to replace the shower head in their shower…I found out my last visit and was stunned to hear one of the ladies say, “I do not like that new shower head….”
After trying it, I sadly agree, now instead of a “hallejulah” shower it is just a shower, it may be better than the one I have but it is disappointing. It struck me that it is a “new” shower head and it got me to thinking that not everything “new” is a good thing.
We can get a new knee, a new hip, but just because it is new that is not to say it is necessarily “better”. I often find this very true of new recipes and end up going back to the old stand by’s because they are tried and tested. Nothing is worse than trying a new recipe and having all your families faces scrunch up into puckered up looks when biting into a new dish that you took the time to create. You don’t even need the words, you just know not keep that recipe while your hubby gets on the phone to order take out.
I was despairing over the shower and it caused me to head to my Canadian Tire and buy a “camping shower”. I figured that we should give it a try. Now I am going to be totally honest here, it was $14.99 and for that price I did not hold out a lot of hope for it, although the packaging and picture on the box was very impressive looking. I mean even the fact that it says, "since 1885" speaks of lasting value!
Basically, it is a rubber sack that you fill up with warm water, it holds 17 liters of water, you hang it up and pull the shower tube with the small little shower head straight so the water can flow down. The head itself must be pulled out and turned to open it up to allow the water to flow.
The first obstacle I found was that the shower has to be hung up very high to get the shower tube to stay straight. I had hung the rubber bag onto our existing shower when I tried it out. Well, that shower tube hung down around my navel. In order to do the top part of my body, I had to do some kind of limbo dance moves to try to get the water over the top part of myself. It you bent the tube, the water stopped.
Now when I say the water stopped, it makes it sound like the water was “flowing”, shooting out of the water head like a normal shower, but that would be a stretch. The water came out of the shower head at a trickling kind of pace, a steady trickle but a trickle. If you were hoping to wash your hair – you would be hard pressed to ever get the shampoo out.
So, there I was limboing in the shower, trying to get the water to reach all the appropriate places. I did feel cleaner after the shower but it was quite the process. It truly made me covet the laundromat shower head, you know, the 2nd replacement one and I quickly decided it was not so bad.
I think what really sealed the deal for me about loving the laundromat shower was about a half hour later, dried, dressed and siting on the couch when I could say that I smelled something. I took a whiff of my skin and discovered that I had on a new cologne – Eau de rubber sack.
Yes, my skin now smelled like rubber. I now know that if you try out the camping shower you should run some water through it first to clear out the rubber smell that will come out of the bag.
Live and learn, after all that is basically what life is all about and I obviously still have a lot to learn!
Product review: the camping shower did work, and I think depending on what you were going to use it for will decide how you like it. If you are camping at the beach and need to "shower" off the sand and dirt before you go inside, it will be your friend, if you hang it high enough. If you are hoping to replace your indoor normal shower with this camping verison, I would venture that you will be disappointed. I give the camping shower a thumbs up and a thumbs down, but please remember to do a couple of water runs through it before you actually use it to eliminate the Eau de rubber.