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Mica May Director of Stopcocks Women Plumbers; the world’s only national company of self-employed female plumbers examines our need for the luxurious and it’s embodiment in luxury bathrooms and wet-rooms and our love of gorgeous tiles.

Luxury Bathroom

Luxury Bathroom

Why do we all feel we need a luxury bathroom?

When I was a child many people had outside toilets and several people I knew still had a steel bath that got filled on a Saturday and the whole family took turns in the same water in front of the open fire.
A miner down our street did get to bath every day, but this too was in a tin bath in the kitchen and his wife scrubbed his back clean of coal dust in sight of their children.

We were considered quite posh to have an inside bathroom but still we all only bathed once a week. I went while Dr Who was on telly because it was so scary in those days.
When, as a teenager I wanted to bath more frequently my dad suspiciously asked what I was doing to be so dirty I needed to bath so often (twice or three times a week).
Showers were a rubber hose you stuck over the bath taps to rinse your hair and bathrooms were cold places where the water turned chilly quickly.
Although we were all familiar with drinkable water coming out every time we turned on a tap and had them in our homes, that water being constantly hot and using it to clean ourselves daily were ideas beyond our aspirations. Deodorant was not something everyone used so I guess we were a dirty and smelly lot. I do remember us sniggering at a girl at school who’s neck was clearly grey over her uniform collar.

This is all quite recent and yet, how times have changed!
Outside toilets are now a rarity, most people shower or bathe daily and pretty well everyone uses some kind of unguent to make their underarms smell sweet. The bathroom is in fact the room we’re most likely to splash out on (pun intended).

This came home to me powerfully in a conversation with a client last week.
For the last two years she’s been living on a boat she’s converting – without running water on board. Stopcocks are now providing that, along with heating, hot water two shower rooms and two toilets.
She ‘confessed’ to having spent far more than she feels sensible on fixtures, fittings and beautiful tiles for the main shower room.

She is not the only one. In our own small space, we chose the daily luxury of a drench shower rather than a more utilitarian shower for ‘every day’ and a bath for more occasional luxury.
(I also consider avocados a necessity, but that’s another story).

So do bathrooms represent the place we can indulge our need for luxury or is luxury becoming normalised?

My personal feeling is that in our busy lives we very much need time and space to ‘stop the world’ even if that is for one minute under hot running water. Making the room that happens in a haven can help us cut ourselves off from our daily stress and let it go even if only for a short time.
Added to that is the fact that for the vast majority of us our bathrooms are still small. This means that extravagances are more affordable than in larger rooms.
Plus, we can lock the door and demand ‘me time’.
And in today’s culture, we really do all need to be clean.

When you use a Stopcocks Woman Plumber you can let go of guilt for even more reasons.
By supporting the country’s most visible firm of female plumbers you are changing the way women and what we can do and achieve are seen. Something still necessary in 21st Century.
Even more, you’re enabling us to support women and children with far less access to water. Currently we’re fundraising to create a rainwater harvesting system for an orphanage and women’s support house in Meru, Kenya.
Clean drinking water is a necessity, not a luxury but too many women and girls still spend a considerable part of every day collecting water that from our perspective certainly isn’t fit to drink.
Easy access to clean drinking water can make real and sustainable changes in the lives of girls and women and in Kenya even more than here, in the way women and girls are perceived.

At Stopcocks Women Plumbers we understand bathrooms and we also understand you need your new bathroom installing with a minimum of fuss and disruption. That’s what The Stopcocks Solution is all about.
So come to us to discuss your options and we’ll help you find your daily dose of luxury and supply it without turning your hair grey and without guilt.