I’ve made no secret that I am, in most cases, in favour of weeing in the shower.
This is the kind of admission that would probably embarrass the heck out of normal people but for some reason I have been blessed (or cursed) with bullet-proof embarrassment armour. I suspect that all that terrifically cringeworthy behaviour whilst drunk in my twenties has desensitised me to lesser forms of shame so that now I can confess to the internet that I regularly wizz in the shower without so much as a “what if a nun/my mother out-law/a future employer/Henry Cavill reads this? What will they THINK?” pang of regret. Frankly, if you’re the sort of person who gets judgey about what other people do in the shower, I feel a bit sorry for you.
But anyway, back to the mid-cleansing micturation.
For me, weeing in the shower has always been a matter of convenience, perhaps with the merest tinkle of “peeing standing up” novelty. I’m there, my bladder’s getting a bit restless, there’s a drain. It just makes sense.
But a group of students in the UK are now actively campaigning to encourage their fellow classmates at the University of East Anglia to save water by peeing while in the shower. According to their number-crunching, over a year, the reduced water consumption (due to saved toilet flushing) could equal the volume of 26 Olympic size swimming pools.
So not only is shower-weeing easy and convenient it’s also good for the environment. In my case this is rather preaching to the converted, but for others this may be just the push needed to let loose the bladder in a shower stall or, as the damn near perfect slogan for the shower peeing campaign suggests, “Go with the flow”.
Now, I don’t expect I’ll convert everybody to the liberating and conservation-minded way of life that is shower weeing. Some folks just don’t feel comfortable with this notion. They object to the smell (it dissipates almost immediately) or just feel “yucky” about coming into contact with their own sterile urine. Even when it’s in amongst a lot of other water and you have all the tools to clean yourself off right there. Sensibilities are hard to change. But I believe that shower weeing is the way of the future. We just need to break the social taboo.
So do it people. Don’t be afraid to stand up and say “I am a shower weer”. For now instead of just being too lazy to wait until after your shower, you can proudly claim that your wee is ecowarrior wee. You’re welcome, world. You’re welcome.
Will you or do you wee in the shower to save water? If not, why not?
Originally published on Stuff, 14/10/2014
(Public domain icon via Pixabay)