Arrrg! is intended to serve as an occasional outlet for your communal frustration and ranting. Today’s futile kvetching is about the state of toilet seats, particularly in our shared communal space, the Common House.

Unlike the doors on most public restrooms, ours lack a Vacant / Occupied indicator and are not equipped with automatic door closers. So, the state of the door is either ajar or often wide open, and usually with the toilet hatch in salute for inspection position.

The science of whether tis better to leave the hatch up or down is hardly definitive as the academic article Lifting the lid on toilet plume aerosol and the Brit Lab short below demonstrate.

In Feng Shui, wet spaces like bathrooms and laundry rooms are inherently problematic. Think mold, fungus, bacteria, and the like. As for toilet seats, Feng Shui practitioners generally recommend putting the hatch down, something about being a prosperity sink, where leaving it open is akin to flushing your wealth down the drain. I’m skeptical of this claim and think a simple poll or study of millionaires would likely show that they are no more or less inclined than the hoi polloi to leave the hatch down.

As for leaving the toilet seat up after enjoying the masculine privilege of peeing while standing, cohabitation with the fairer sex has firmly ingrained in me the moral rightness of always putting the seat down when I’m done. The lid, however, is another matter. When one considers the excess energy expended lifting the lid up and putting it back down over the course of a lifetime, for what seems little more than a matter of opinion or “energetic sensitivity”, a reasonable argument can be made to spare the next person from lifting what may be an unhygienic lid.

Despite the obvious convenience of leaving the hatch up at all times, I’ve become a firm believer in closing the lid when I’m finished with my business. To my eye it’s less unsightly and just “feels right”. When I see the lid up a voice in me says: “There be barbarians in these parts.”

This is not an upper case ARRRG! it’s more a hopeless sigh of an arrrg. Just one of those little things like our mismatched silverware and coffee cups. It rankles and ruffles like a slight disturbance of the force.