The Pros and Cons of Showering in the Great Outdoors

Our  bathroom is like any other bathroom. It has a toilet, a basin and a bath. What it doesn't have is a shower. Where we live, if you want to have a shower, you need to walk outside, go around the house, and step behind a screen that Francois and his brother built to create some privacy for us... We have an outdoor shower, and we love it! So, for your amusement (and mine), I've decided to break down the good and bad aspects of outdoor showering in a nice list.

This is our shower!

Lovely Thing #1:

Space! You don't get many showers bigger than ours... And yet, somehow, we still manage to bump elbows if we're showering at the same time.

Horrible Thing #1:

Wind Exposure... On a particularly breezy day, the screen does a rather limited job of stopping the cold air from giving you goosebumps.

Lovely Thing #2:

Nature! While showering, we have a view of the forest. We wash our hair and clean our feet while watching birds frolicking in the trees, and examining pretty spiders making their webs.

The pretty, pretty view from our shower.

Horrible Thing #2:

Nature. Our shower is under a fig tree. On the one hand, the huge leaves protect us from rain when the weather is a little moist, but on the other hand, the tree tends to drop leaves and unripe figs into our shower. The leaves make an awkwardly soft shower floor as they rot, and the figs attract fruit flies, which take flight as soon as you turn the tap on, and hover around you while you're soaping up. This leads me to my next horrible thing...

Dead leaves and rotten figs
and tiny icky FRUIT FLIES.

Horrible Thing #3:

Maintenance. Regular sweeping and de-fruiting of the shower is required... Though we don't adhere to that requirement very often. Proooobably should.

Lovely Thing #3:

Maintenance again. We never have to worry about a blocked pipe, a leaky shower, or digging hair out of the drain.

Lovely Thing #4:

A lack of steam. Most people like having hot, steamy showers. I like hot showers, but in summer, too much steam makes me feel really funny, and enclosed showers have a way of trapping that steam and suffocating you with it. Outside, the steam dissipates so quickly that it never becomes a hazard to your breathing...

Horrible Thing #4:

Dirty feet. This is easily solved by wearing slops while showering. The ground under the shower is concreted, with pretty pebbles and what not, but the trek from the shower back to the house is a rather muddy one. Francois doesn't really care about this as much as I do.

Lovely Thing #5:

Feeling fresh after a shower. That lacking steam mentioned in the last lovely point really contributes to this one. No matter how hot and humid the weather is, a shower leaves me feeling clean and fresh. In the past, using indoor showers in the heat of summer, the bathroom would get so steamy that I'd start feeling sweaty and icky very soon after getting clean.

Horrible Thing #5:

Unexpected visitors. This one is really irritating. Garden services are supposed to come every second Friday to cut the lawn... Sometimes they come on a different day without any warning. Once, I was showering when they arrived... This was before the screen was built, by the way. Aaaah!! Luckily, Francois noticed them arriving and chased them away before they saw anything saucy. I hope.


So that's five points to each side, ten in total... Honestly, the good outweighs the bad for me. The outdoor shower is one of my favourite things about this little cottage, and I'm really going to miss it one day when we move back to a place with a boring, conventional, shower... Though I won't complain about the increased level of privacy. Hehe.