Tiny Toilets

Today, Agent HoJo has helped us to discover Apartment Therapy's list of the Best Small Toilets of 2010. Complete with sexy-haired women in stiletto heels, this listing showcases some of the newest, bestest toilet technologies that will let you get a loo into a tiny space and/or utilize a tiny amount of water for the flush. And really, who can't go for that, on this eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day?

Some of these designs are quite lovely as well (even without the model!). Personally, I like the two Caroma models at the bottom of the list. That second one is especially cool-looking. The first one, too, though I think what I really like about it is the shiny purple tiling on the back wall, with matching toilet roll cover.


Images via Apartment Therapy

This Toilet is Crap

Virginia's Toilet / Virginia Gardiner / The Bathroom Reinvented / Dwell from gary nadeau on Vimeo.

Literally. It's a toilet made of poo. We think that's the ultimate in self-reference. But that's just the introduction. This student is out to create waterless toilets, to save the world from excess flushing and transform poo into something useful.

Who knows if it will ever catch on in the Western world, but we think she's onto something. If nothing else, we feel a kinship, because she, like us, realizes how useful toilets are. but you probably haven't heard this much about poo since you were three.

We discovered this video on the World Toilet Day Facebook page. Follow the link for more information.

Green in the USA

So while we're on the subject of San Francisco museums, let's take a trip across the street to the new California Academy of Sciences building. My friend, Agent JeM (because of her initials) took a trip there recently and discovered that their green practices are not limited to the living roof. But while their website mentions their use of hand dryers in place of paper towels and avoiding anti-bacterial soap (They didn't say, but I'm assuming they have some other kind of soap in its place), they don't say anything about dual-flush toilets.

But that is exactly what Agent JeM found. Upon entering the bathroom stall, she was intrigued by this flush handle she saw, which is, quite literally, green. While most of the world (including Europe, Asia, and Israel) uses dual flush toilets - that is, a toilet that gives you the option to use a larger or smaller amount of water, thereby saving water when there's not much to flush - these toilets are not so common in the United States. Though I have seen them, this is the first one I've seen that incorporates the mechanism into a standard industrial-style flush toilet.

What I love most about it is the instructions posted on the wall. The drawing is pretty self-explanatory, but in case you have trouble reading it, it says, above the diagram: "UP for #1 (liquid waste)" and below the picture: "DOWN for #2 (solid waste)." Everybody got it? Now, to save the planet!

Kind of Blue

Last week, I stopped by the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park to check out the Tutankhamen exhibit. The King Tut exhibit is located on the ground floor (i.e. the basement), down a long stretch of shallow stairs. Before getting in line, I decided to use the ladies' room around the corner. Now, the DeYoung museum is a pretty spare building. The exterior is a boxy shape, made of indented copper. The interior, being an art gallery, consists primarily of flat white walls and large, undecorated windows. The women's bathroom on the ground level, by contrast, is this shocking blue-green turquoise, offset by pink and yellow flower arrangements.


In this shot above, you can see how many stalls there are, which is both brilliant and reassuring. There is nothing worse than going into a public restroom in a well-trafficked place and finding only two stalls to accommodate all five thousand of the women who need to use them at the same time. In this case, there was almost no one there. So I took these shots. Then I took this one of my water bottle, since it was nearly the same color as the tiling:


Unfortunately, in my excitement to see the artifacts from King Tut, I managed to leave my water bottle right there on the counter where I left it. So far, it's not been returned to the museum's lost and found.

So if you see anyone carrying this water bottle around San Francisco, will you kindly ask them to give it to you so you can return it to me? Thanks.

Nappy Time!

The author of this Wired Mag blog post is right: cloth diapering has come a long way since the early days. Just look at that photo! That rainbow of scrunchy, fuzzy-lined nappies just about makes me want to go out and have a baby just so he or she can sport some of these stylish duds. Or these, even more stylish.

Of course, I remember when my brother was born, back in the 80's, because I was six years old at the time. And my mom, being the green, crunchy mommy that she was, subscribed to a cloth diapering laundry service. I think it was called "Didey-Dee" or something like that. Anyway, we had the special covered plastic stinky bin for all the used diapies, and every week, the truck would come by to pick up the soiled naps and deliver stacks of cleaned, folded diapers.

I am even sure that I changed some of these diapers, helpful six-year-old that I was. My mom showed me the special way to fold them, and then pin them in the front (I think she did the pins). We had those big safety pins with the plastic, colored heads. Some of them even had bunnies and chicks on them. And then she'd put the big, plastic outer shield on. In all, it was a pretty bulky affair, but that's what we did.

I also remember the day my brother peed on the wall. But that's another story...