To Bidet or Not to Bidet

...that was the question in 1995, when we restored a two hundred year old farmhouse in Tuscany.

We are serial renovators with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, so the issue loomed large in our discussions for a time. The house had never had indoor plumbing.  British friends, who were pioneers in restoring old houses in the area, had installed them but advised us against it: "It's just one more potential plumbing problem you don't need, and it takes up valuable space."  That made sense to us.

We set off to find the perfect toilets, wall-mounted (easy to clean under), in just the right shape. We found a good selection available in local shops. We noticed that every toilet was sold with a matching bidet. When we told the shopkeeper we only wanted the toilets, she looked at us strangely. She conferred with a colleague. They both looked at us as if there was something rotten not only in Denmark (I had to keep the Hamlet thing going here), but right there in their negozio (store), and it was us.

We babbled that we showered every day, so we didn't think bidets were necessary for our home. They agreed to sell us the toilets without bidets, but I don't think they understood or approved.

My husband moved on to other concerns, like the right color of grout between the stones on the patio, but I was still pondering the bidet question. 

Some surmise that the bidet never became popular in the United States or Britain because they were considered unseemly, even gross. Allied soldiers during World Wars I and II encountered them with foreign prostitutes, who used them to freshen up between clients. Thus the nickname "whore's bath." 

I asked people who had them if they found them useful. One friend said she used hers for soaking her feet. Another said it was a good place to store magazines in the bathroom. One said her cat loved to curl up in the cool porcelain. 

Still others insisted they could not live without one, that "of course" they used it daily.  An Italian friend confided, "People will say they use it every day, but I think they do not!" Another friend found them "sexist and insulting to women," though they aren't restricted to one gender.  I was eventually persuaded they were a good thing to have around, just in case.

By the time we renovated an apartment in London in 2001, I was totally in the bidet camp. We had to have one. In our twelve years of living there, I found it came in handy for soaking delicate pieces of laundry and foot baths.

Fast forward to the present, and we are once again renovating a house, this time in Washington. Bidets do indeed take up space, but now they seem necessary to me (my husband would not agree with this).  Since I have discreetly indicated that I rarely used it for its intended purpose, you may ask why I insisted we have one in the new house. My answer: you never know.

Pressed by the space problem, and arguing over whether it was really necessary to have one, we discovered something that took no space at all: the Toto washlet.

Invented by the fastidious Japanese, it attaches to your toilet seat and is operated by remote control (you can choose whether to activate it or not). When activated, it lights up when you walk into the bathroom, as if to say, "Well, hello there!" It allows you to choose a warm or cool seat. You have a choice of water temperatures and directional sprays. Finally, there is a blow dryer, also heat regulated. They are standard in Japanese homes and hotels. Friends who traveled in Japan raved about them.

Compared to the traditional bidet, it is convenient and easy to use. You stay in one place rather than shuffling from one spot to another with your pants down around your ankles.  It is the bidet you actually use!  The downside:  you can't store your magazines in it.

Note:  This trend may be catching on. COSTCO was selling washlets recently, at a great price. There were only two left on the shelf.