Me and My Soap Dispenser

I'm not great at interior design.

But when I see a cute soap dispenser, I feel a part of my brain click that doesn't usually. Are there movable parts in your brain? Whether there are or aren't, my brain makes a little sound I can hear on the inside of my head when I see a really cute soap dispenser.

I should buy it.

It's good for the environment because I won't be buying those one-use bottles and then tossing them in recycling when plastic doesn't really recycle anyway. This glass one will last forever and if it breaks, it's just glass... sand. It'll recycle like a dream.

This soap dispenser will make my bathroom look brand new. There is always some woman on YouTube who has fixed up her bathroom on a budget. She only had five hundred and she made it look like she spent thousands! This soap dispenser is exactly the kind of thing that a home renovation expert would buy to refresh the bathroom. And look, it is only fifteen dollars! It will make my bathroom look like I spent hundreds.

After a quick glance at the soap dispenser I still haven't picked up yet, I change my mind and refresh my quote.

It will look like I too spent THOUSANDS!

On the way to the checkout, I do not think of how many times this has happened before. I don't think of the fate of the other soap dispensers I have purchased or how or why they died. I don't think about them, but you can hear about them:

Subject No. 1 - The Ocean Glass Soap Dispenser

Didn't look so magical if it wasn't washed pretty much every time it dispensed soap. Making sure the soap didn't get all over the bottle was nearly impossible. It was like making sure your drunk friend threw up in the toilet instead of the tub every time you went to the bathroom.

Subject No. 2 - The One That Matched The Bathroom

Broke before the first round of soap was dispensed.

Subject No. 3 - The Beautiful One That Looked Like a Perfume Bottle

Didn't actually dispense soap. Nothing got up its tube. Nothing. But it looked amazing.

Subject No. 4 - The One That I Bought Out of Desperation (or at least that was what I told myself)

Broke after three or four rounds of soap.

Subject No. 5 - Replaced An Ugly One

I do so love pretty things and there are only so many sinks in the house. Pretty, pretty, pretty things.

*Don't bother looking for the astrix this bit is connected to. It's not connected to anything. At this point in the story, I'm looking over my writing to see if I wrote soup instead of soap. It's a very common typo for me. If I'm not diligent I'll end up writing an article about soup dispensers and how often I break them and how easily I fall in love with new ones and how it's a big thing. Someone will write to me asking, 'Is a soup dispenser a pot?' I'll be perplexed for a moment and finally conclude that they must have the same problem as me and write soap as soup.

There may have been more cute soap dispensers that died on my watch so I don't have an exact number, but I know exactly how I got out of the habit of buying new ones.

I had kids.

Now, it's important that you notice the s at the end of that word I wrote in the paragraph above. I did not have a singular baby that ruined my cute soap dispenser world. I had kidS. No one is crumbling with one baby at the bathroom sink crying, 'I'm so busy I don't even have time to buy a cute soap dispenser.' Sure, new mothers are not having as many showers as they used to and it's an unhappy reality that cuddling with babies makes you sweaty. Sure, the new moms aren't shaving their legs like they used to. Sure, they may not have their tops on straight and their shirt is wet in strange locations, BUT they have the soap dispenser of their choice.

It was just that after more babies than most women have, I ran out of time to refill the soap dispensers. I grabbed a single-use one at the grocery store, and it would have been a bit tricky just being there... just buying a regular soap dispenser, full of soap for $1.99. I would have had at least two kids with me. One of them would have been screaming (not because I wouldn't give them what they wanted at the store, but because they did not want to be at the store, in the cart, on the ground, or in my arms). The other one would have been actively running away.

It turned out that the single-use dispenser was immortal. It didn't throw up on itself. It didn't break. It was see-through so I could see when it needed to be replaced or refilled without having to unscrew the top. It operated appropriately with soap coming up the tube. It didn't break (I know I said that twice), but whatever happened to it in a full house, it remained exactly what it was.

That's why they're able to survive so long in landfills.

So, I bought another one. Then I started refilling those instead of getting cute ones.

But I never stopped seeing cute soup dispensers... soup dispensers... soap dispensers wherever I went and wanting them.

Now I'm not allowed down that aisle at Homesense.