This is largely a matter of hygiene. No matter what kind of junk you’re packing, u-shaped seats give you a little breathing room to avoid touching the seat with your genitals, and provide one less place for urine to splash.
Open-front toilet seats are largely designed to make it easier for women to wipe, according to Lynne Simnick, the senior vice president of code development at the IAPMO. The opening is designed to “allow women to wipe the perineal area after using the toilet without contacting the seat,” she says. So basically, open toilet seats are designed for front-wipers.
Today was the last day to use a coupon for $10 worth of free merchandise from my local Kohl’s. It’s going to take more than that to make me go in there.
Absolutely correct. Even so, the store is likely responding to demand. Any of those that do not sell will not be reordered. If the seats were all perceived to be the same, the cheapest would be the only one to sell.
But the truth is, toilets come in different shapes and sizes. So you have to match that, then probably make some sort of color choice. Then there are the really cheap ones that would break if you stood on them, or have easily broken hinges.
Of course few of us want to shop for such things. It is tedious at best.
Have you ever been to a large shoe store? I feel the same way about those. I have all sorts of specialized boots, but they last decades . Almost all the time, I wear Five Ten Men’s Camp Four Hiking Shoes. When my current pair wears out, I order more. I have been doing this for many years. I don’t care what color they are, but I know that they will fit, and have a scary sticky sole.
Choice and spending habits are a cultural thing. We have too much choice here in the USA. When I do work for cheap landlords, I see every way people try to cheap out to maximize their profit. And people from certain cultures where there is less choice are the cheapest of all, obsessed over pennies! I won’t name names, but last month I think I reached the pinnacle (or bottom?) of cheapness in a landlord. I had to remove a toilet to re-do a vinyl floor, and the seat was cracked. The landlord asked me:“Can you glue that seat?” Can you believe it? Not can you buy another $9.50 seat from Home Depot (the wood ones really last a long time). Can you glue that? A cracked toilet seat is very dangerous - you don’t glue a broken toilet seat. You get a new $10 one and recycle the old one, or you get & clean a used one from the Habitat ReUse store.
In related toilet talk, there is a plumbers supply house in town that has a collection of tank lids that are unusual in color, age, shape, etc, which they store on a big set of shelves in the supply yard. Broken tank lid is a common malady, and why replace the entire toilet when all that’s needed is a pink porcelain tank lid from a 50’s American Standard… voila! My point is having lots of choices is not a late-stage capitalism thing, it’s gone hand in hand with it, forever.
If nothing else, you get used to the heated seat. That is the first shock for me in a regular western bathroom. Once you are accustomed to heat, regular seats feel COLD.
I think the reason that the threaded rod is off-centre is to allow you to adjust the spacing of the hinges to fit a variety of slightly different toilet bowls. Ideally the distance between the holes would be standardised, since it’s a critical dimension - but I’m pretty sure it won’t be!
