SHOW OFF

At the V&A, my favourite museum, they recently opened a terrifyingly beautiful ceramics wing, in which the concept of ‘visible storage’ allowed the entire collection of pots and baked goods to be shown all at once, like in a giant glass dishwasher. Sometimes, especially if you don’t own the V&A collection, and especially in the bathroom, things are simply not meant to be seen. I could tire the moon with my litany of forbidden bathroom items; floss, toothpaste, bandages, plasters, nail scissors, topical creams, paracetamol, cotton buds, razors, throat sprays, bleach, plungers*. Then there is the issue of the one item every bathroom needs and will never not, unless something very untoward happens: loo roll. Many homes feel perfectly relaxed about leaving the plastic coated package as is, ripped at the top and sat on the floor or even cistern awaiting the removal of the next roll. Poor plastic, poor loo roll, but more importantly, poor bathroom. Loo roll in itself, if white, is not an ugly thing. It can be, with a little space carved out for it, displayed rather pleasingly in a suitable vessel; and by suitable I mean something to balance the softness – tin, copper, even terracotta. We can’t all live in the V&A – in fact, I wager that noone does; but we can all live with visible storage when it works. And where better to start than with a part of the home where everyone has to – you know – go.

*I could go on, but I just had a memo from the moon informing me that she was a bit tired.