A newly fitted bathroom is a real treat, isn’t it? Although of course the excitement will soon wane if the room isn’t kept clean and the sanitary ware and furniture are not looked after.

Although the ‘seat up / seat down’ argument is the one that generally first springs to mind when anyone’s asked about their bathroom bugbears, for me, it’s discovering urine on the seat or floor. For however expensive the bathroom may have been to buy and install, someone else’s urine carelessly dribbled will make the whole place appear cheap and grubby.

Help is, I gather, at hand, in the form of Aim-Straight - a new disposable paper cone that helps men and boys urinate into the bowl rather than around it. That’s good news in itself but Aim-Straight offers some extra benefits…

The material that makes up the cone incorporates several reagents which react to substances in the urine - such as blood, protein, glucose or certain bacteria, alerting the user to potential health problems such as prostate cancer or diabetes and the like, by changing colour as he urinates. Furthermore, the material’s hypo-allergenic antibacterial make-up is said to stop the spread of sexually transmitted infections by keeping everything so much cleaner – a brilliant touch when one considers how few people apparently wash their hands after using the loo!

Apparently each cone costs just a few pennies which is a small price to pay for a regular health check on a part of the body most men don’t want examined by their GP! There are dispensers for them too so who knows, perhaps it won’t be long before bathroom furniture manufacturers are designing the dispensers into their cupboards, cabinets and toilet tissue dispensers.

And while we’re on the subject of bathroom hygiene, I’d never been bothered about whether the toilet seat was left up by a previous user until a colleague showed me a video of what happens to the contents of the bowl when you flush. The centrifugal effect is just the start and the rest really doesn’t bear thinking about, so it’s always advisable to close the lid and keep the bathroom clean and hygienic for not only the next user, but also yourself next time you visit! 

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Yours,

Jan Hobbs