TOILET TECH
Better living through bathroom technology.
HIYA, SQUIRT
Product: Loogun
How It Works: The toilet is a remarkable feat of technology, but toilet design hasn’t really changed much over the past 150 years. Most traditional commodes are outfitted with a hard-to-reach lip, which is where refill water comes into the bowl. That’s also where gunk can collect, and where most toilet brushes can’t reach. Enter the Loogun. It’s a high-powered squirt gun with an angled tip. Simply fill with water, hold it inside the toilet, aim at the underside of the bowl, and voilà…the dirty deposits are gone.
NO LOOGUN NECESSARY
Product: VorMax
How It Works: Bathroom fixture manufacturer American Standard has created a toilet that doesn’t need a deep, manual cleaning with extra tools. The VorMax toilet is shaped unlike any other—it has a specially curved rim that leaves few places for solid waste to collect. Moreover, the entire bowl is treated with a chemical coating that prevents sticking. That, along with powerful water jets, makes the VorMax, according to American Standard, “the cleanest flush ever engineered.”
BATHROOM BUTLER
Product: U by Moen
How It Works: Do you hate fiddling with the shower faucet, nudging it a little bit to the hot side, and a little bit to the cold, in pursuit of the perfect temperature day after day? Well, U by Moen allows you to set your water temperature digitally. The system can remember several different settings for multiple users (say, “John’s morning shower”). But wait, there’s more. Using Amazon’s voice-activated Alexa software, users can just walk into the bathroom and say, “Alexa, start John’s morning shower,” and the U by Moen will get it going.
THE FAIREST ONE OF ALL
Product: Mirror Clearer
How It Works: Besides waste elimination, the modern bathroom has two purposes: bathing and getting ready. But ironically, if you take a shower, you can’t immediately use the bathroom to shave, do your hair, or put on makeup because the steam from the hot shower fogs up the mirror. Sure, you can wipe the mirror off with your hand or a towel, but that just leaves streaks or smudges…and it quickly fogs up again. Somebody finally invented the perfect combination of bathroom and automotive technology: the Mirror Clearer. It’s basically a windshield wiper attached to a suction cup. Simply stick it on the mirror and manually run it across the mirror until it’s clear.
Just like people, cats can get asthma.
Product: GoBidet Handheld Bidet
How It Works: More popular in Europe than in the United States, bidets are bathroom appliances that assist in cleaning you up…uh…after you use the facilities, sending a high-powered stream of water to your bottom. Some bidets are standalone, others are built into high-tech toilets. The GoBidet is an external, add-on bidet that works with any toilet. Resembling a shower head or Waterpik (and operating in much the same way), this wand connects to the toilet’s water supply, and users are supposed to reach behind themselves when they use it, and hopefully catch all the water (and waste) in the toilet bowl.
URINE FOR A TREAT
Product: The Main Drain
How It Works: It’s a problem as old as the toilet: men and women living together grappling over the state of the toilet seat. Women want it down (because that’s how they use the facilities), while most men tend to leave it up. The makers of the Main Drain market their product as a solution for that…because it’s a urinal for men that attaches to a toilet without having to change the state of the seat at all. Consisting of a small plastic urine catcher (a funnel, really) attached to a tube, it clips onto the toilet and the tube empties into the bowl. The seat remains down; the Main Drain just swivels to the side when the guy is done.
HAVE A SEAT
Product: Kohler Purefresh Toilet Seat
How It Works: There’s an old saying that some people are so arrogant that they think their poop doesn’t stink. But in reality, everybody’s stinks. Toilet maker Kohler has come up with a way to eliminate bathroom odors at the source with its Purefresh seat. The seat has a carbon deodorizing system that automatically neutralizes foul odors, and a built-in air freshener that provides another, more pleasant scent to help conceal them. As soon as the user sits down, a battery-powered fan goes to work, directing the air trapped in the toilet bowl between ceramic and fanny into the carbon filter. As that air circulates out, a “scent pack” recirculates the smell of “Garden Waterfall,” “Soft and Fresh Laundry,” or “Avocado Spa.”
Weird law: It’s illegal to sleep in a cheese factory in South Dakota.