Let's Just Say I'm Thrifty

My apartment has a lot of. . . . quirks. Take my bathroom, for example. The heater doesn't work. Strike that. The heater smells like a burning mouse whenever I turn it on, so I choose not to do so. (There is no mouse, by the way. But that doesn't mean that there hasn't been one in the past.) Instead, we leave the door open and let the heat from the rest of the apartment warm the bathroom. This, along with the heat from showers in the morning, seems to work well enough to keep the bathroom at a somewhat comfortable temperature.

However, quirk number 2 is that the bathroom door won't stay open of its own accord. This would be my fault, I think. When Ellie was a brand new baby, the sound of the bathroom door creaking would wake her up every time. Annoying!

So, I bought myself a trusty can of WD-40. Having never used the stuff before, I had no idea how much liquid would be adequate to stop the squeaking. As a result, I used way, way, way too much. It fixed the squeak, but created a new problem. . .

The bathroom door will not stay open. It always quietly swings shut. Now if I used the heater in the bathroom, it would not matter if the door was open or closed. But since we've already discussed that, I'll show you my solution for the problem with the door.

I use a hanger hooked to the doorknob, which is then hooked to the towel rack. I think visitors at my house are somewhat put out by this, but whatever. It works!

Well, it has worked up until recently. Makayla is starting to get to an age where she wants her privacy. She can get the hanger off for the door to close, but she struggles to get it hooked back up to keep the door open.

Sometime today when she was finished in the bathroom, she didn't get the door hooked open. It escaped my notice until I needed to use the bathroom myself. I opened the door and was greeted by a blast of cool air. In my head I was thinking, Oh no! This is not going to be good!

Let's just say that I was wishing for my own heated toilet seat this afternoon!