It's Like a Toilet, Only Better

The remote control. The microwave’s “Popcorn” button. The clapper.

With the click of the remote, the touch of a button, and the clap of the hands, we can set much into motion with very little effort.

Yet with all the advances in modern technology, one household item remained stagnant in the race for better, faster, easier. For years inventors focused on countless ways to improve how we put food into our bodies – cereal in a bar, fruit in a rope, meat on a stick – and very little on how we tend to what comes out. It seemed this final frontier, or rather, derrière, was so tremendously improved simply by bringing it indoors a century ago, that it was pretty much neglected after that.

That is, until now.

Please allow me to introduce to you…

… (drumroll)…

The Washlet.

What’s a Washlet, you ask?

Well, to use their own words, “the Washlet is like a toilet, only better.”

I know what you’re thinking. How could a toilet get any better? It’s indoors, it flushes, and, according to an email my mom sent me, I can clean it with a can of Coke? What more could it do? Wipe my ---

---? Yes. It can.

The Washlet is a special system that can be attached to your current, laborious, manual-ass-wiping toilet, freeing you from all work previously involved with relieving yourself.

The hands-free experience begins with an automatic lid. No longer do you have to waste precious pee time lifting the lid yourself. The Washlet senses your presence when you enter the restroom and automatically opens the lid. As if it knows exactly what you need.

And when you sit, your buns can rest in a ring of immediate comfort, as the Washlet seat is heated.

Just like a regular toilet, the Washlet will listen quietly while you read, sing, or grunt while making your deposit. When you are finished, though, there is no need to go through the exhausting routine of counting out squares of toilet paper, reaching all the way around to wipe your behind, and dropping it into the bowl below (or look high and low for the toilet paper, calling out to anyone within earshot for someone to bring you a new roll because whoever popped a squat before you used the last of it and failed to replace it) (yes, kids, you’ve made it into another one of my blogs).

No, not for one seated upon the Washlet.

In fact, other than pausing to push the button on the Washlet’s remote control, you can go right on reading your magazine without interruption.

And let the Washlet do the dirty work.

When you are finished, a small pipe slides out from under the back of the rim, shooting a stream of clean, temperature-controlled water onto your backside, washing off all residue, and, most impressively, leaving no cling-ons behind.

Turn the page of your magazine, hit another button on the remote, and the small pipe then shoots warm air onto your rump, drying off the entire area, leaving you clean, fresh, dry, and free to pull up your pants and leave without second-guessing yourself, Did I get it all?

And the lid closes behind you without so much as a snicker, because Washlet does not judge.

Not since the addition of the built-in-soda-fountain-and-catheter-system in RV’s of the late 1990’s has any such convenience met such luxury.

No, I do not have one. And I doubt I ever will, as Caroline refuses to pee in an automatic toilet no matter how badly she has to go (FYI, every toilet in the Detroit airport flushes automatically). The Washlet would put her over the edge.

But my dear friend, Deanna (not her real name), and her husband, Peter (that is his real name, I could not resist using it for obvious reasons), are making a few updates in their home and hope to have one installed soon. Deanna showed me the Washlet website over a glass of wine while visiting them last month.

(I beg you all to check out their website. It is like a Saturday Night Live sketch, only real.)

“Did you find a plumber to hook it up for you?” I asked once I resumed breathing after laughing at the online tutorial.

“Yes, he said he had installed one for a man with MS,” she cringed, “I had to tell him we were just L-A-Z-Y. It should be in by Memorial Day.”

I cannot wait to visit them again.