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EEWW comes to mind, but I have been buying toilet seats for 40 years or so and have noticed a distinct lack of quality in comparison to the earlier seats. Mind you, for the first twenty years or so, there was not much of a choice - just wood, plastic, and what color. Being young, it didn't matter how comfortable it was, just if it was pretty and matched the bathroom. Later on I would look at the mail catalogs and they would have party toilet seats that made noise or furry seats (how disgusting would that be to clean?) I decided I would be further ahead not to waste money on those, although the older kids would enjoy the noisy ones, I could see the younger ones wanting to make the furry ones their "blanky" and would want to drag it everywhere with them.

For awhile I opted for the matching lid and seat covers - that was kind of classy until the boys took some weird form of joy peeing on everything that resembled a carpet. The little ones were always flushing some toy so they could watch it circle before the last bubble and the gigantic overflow on to the carpet. I think that the boys egged the little ones on just so they could see which toy flooded the bathroom the most. Of course there was the grand finale when Dad came home and had to pull the toilet up to unplug, or replace it with a new one as it was permanently plugged. They learned many new words from dad during that time. Back to linoleum and wood seats, you just cannot have nice things when you have children.

We are getting older now and the padded seats are pretty nice. They cost a few dollars more, but definitely worth it. The lids had nice pictures embroidered in the top so you could really accent the commode and buy soap dishes and carpets to match. The kids grew up so we can have nice things again. Well, no, they moved back and still don't clean up after themselves. What is this dark mess in the seam of the padded toilet seat? I have been replacing padded toilet seats every three months or so because plastic stains and doesn't clean up as nice as they say it does on TV.

One day I needed to replace the seat again, "Oh look, one is "the March of the Penguins" theme and it is marked down to $4. Could it be no one wants it? Never mind that my bathroom is green and the toilet seat is blue - I think contrast is good. We had that seat for six whole months. It just sat there in its glaring blue color irritating me because it didn't match anything. I went to the store (this time K-Mart which has been bought out by Sears - or vise versa), It was a plain-Jane white one, but not nearly as irritating as penguins marching along the blue ice.

The padding was a bit thinner, but it will do because it cost $12 so it must be halfway decent in quality. Well, the plastic tore after a few days and I had to get yet another one. This time I am going to try Wal-Mart (just because I happened to be there buying dog food). I bought one for $14.95 and since it is higher than K-mart was, it should be a better quality. A few days later, hubby mentioned that the seat was broken. I went in and tightened the screws, "No, it seems fine." He informed me that the wood part of the seat was not really wood and it was broken in half. I informed him that it still had padding and I was not going to replace it until the wood came through and started to pinch him. Of course I use the kid's bathroom - it has a better seat.

Learn more about this author, Margaret Radisich Sleasman.
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