The power of a shower curtain

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned the following fact on my blog before, but I hate my upstairs bathroom.  Luckily, Dean and I bought a house with two bathrooms so I am not always forced to endure the awfulness that is our upstairs bathroom. 

I suppose I'm exaggerating just a little bit.  I've definitely seen worse bathrooms in my lifetime.  But I think that when you own your own house you just want everything to be exactly the way you like it....and I have to say I don't care to have a bathroom that serves as a tribute to the design styles of the 1970's.  

One of the most endearing features of our bathroom has got to be the shower doors.  They are really something, let me tell you.  One of the doors has a glass front, and the other one is frosted glass with a towel bar, covered in hard water stains.  In other words, the doors don't match and they are pretty hideous.  While the shower doors are just the tip of the ice burg in my bathroom nightmare (there's the yellow, green and blue floor that is starting to come up around the tub, the toilet that is barely hanging on, the yellow tile in the shower that is starting to show its age), they are the first thing I notice when I walk in the bathroom, and thus one of the things I have been anxious to get rid of. 

Low and behold, the moment of truth came this weekend via a simple suggestion from my mother.  Why don't we just take the doors off the track? she says.  Hey, great idea!  So five minutes later, the doors are off and my bathtub/shower is fully exposed, and looks much, much bigger.  Then my handyman of a father take a screwdriver and removes the top part of the shower enclosure, making it much easier to put up our expandable shower curtain rod. 

I was instantly rejuvenated and inspired.  The doors were gone and even though other problems in the bathroom were still evident, one of the biggest ones had been removed in the blink of an eye.  A quick trip to Bed Bath and Beyond later that afternoon and I now have a completely different bathroom.  The curtain hides the icky yellow tile (although I still see it when I shower), and it also hides the nasty old shower enclosure (which will come out when we finally remodel the rest of the bathroom).  I hung up the curtain and spent a good five minutes standing there staring.  It didn't even look like the same bathroom.  I was thrilled beyond words. 

This is the story of how a simple shower curtain changed my weekend, and surprisingly managed to alter my attitude toward my upstairs bathroom.  I no longer cringe when I walk down the hall and happen to glance in the bathroom, because it isn't two ugly old shower doors staring back at me.....it's a lovely spa-inspired shower curtain. 

I'm sure there's a metaphor here somewhere.  Something along the lines of taking things we dislike in our lives and making small changes to them so they appear new and exciting, or at least more to our liking.  Something about how the smallest changes can make the biggest impacts on our overall outlook of a situation.  Regardless of the implied metaphorical musings, I am just overall thrilled to be rid of the awful shower doors, and thankful for the wide range of shower curtain selections carried by Bed, Bath and Beyond.