There I Go Making Assumptions Again

I was in the shower yesterday, chasing my random thoughts around. I took a look at the shower curtain and was trying to figure out whether it needed to be cleaned again or not. The curtain is one of those flimsy cloth ones -- the first one I've ever had that isn't plastic, or vinyl, or whatever that thick bendable/foldable clear stuff is.

To be honest, at first I couldn't figure out how to clean the thing. I just watched it grow mold for awhile and figured that if it got too bad, I could always throw it away. Then I decided I was being silly, and we would clean it. I tried a few spray-in-place methods, and they all were just useless. We took it out to the driveway and scrubbed it down -- big improvement, but still not good enough. Finally, DH got the briliant idea of reading the label. (You know, that small "care instructions" thing that is often hidden by the big "DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW" thing. I know they changed the words so if you parse through it carefully, you can conclude that consumers are allowed to remove the tags, but it is dreadful grammar, and we spent our whole lives not removing them, so why start now, right?) Anyway, the care label said we could machine wash the thing. Machine wash it? There is so little fiber in this curtain that my washing machine is bound to tear it apart. But, it's the washer or throw it out, so what have I got to lose?

As it turns out, the washer did a great job at cleaning, and the curtain only looked a little bit more ragged. I was thinking I'd finally found the solution. But then, while taking a shower the other day, I got a good look at that care label, and I saw another part to it. It said, "It is recommended that a vinyl curtain be used when using this product."

Huh? So I buy a shower curtain, and the instructions tell me to buy another shower curtain to make this work? Why on earth would I want to do that? True, it keeps the mold away, but huh? Now don't get me wrong. I've seen all the dual shower curtains in the hotels and all that. I just figured they did it because stupid hotel guests left the shower curtain outside the tub and the hotel people were trying to cut down on water on the floor. Either that or they were just being fancy. I didn't know that you were supposed to use a vinyl curtain with a cloth curtain. So basically, what this tells me, is that cloth shower curtains serve no useful purpose -- they are merely decorations.

Well, what do you know. See, there are a million really nice vinyl curtains that come already decorated. Here I thought vinyl and cloth were competing products but that one was "higher class" than the other. I figured cloth was snazzier because it was a better light blocker -- you know, so that no one can watch you shower and you have the pleasure of showering in the dark (unless you have a light actually in your shower). I didn't know cloth was more elite because it was functionally useless.

Since I'm not renting my place out, and there are no condo rules to tell me what kind of shower curtain to use, and since I know enough to keep the curtain inside the tub, I think I'll just stick with this cloth one until it wears out. Then, I'll replace it with vinyl.