Toilet shopping that gives back and a way to leave a mark at Pike Place market in Seattle on a Monday

Happy Shopping Monday friends! I hope you all had a wonderful candy-filled weekend.  I almost kept the kids at home today to prevent myself from being left ALL ALONE WITH ALL THE CANDY, but there is work to be done and I guess this is a great test for me to see if I can actually survive.  (We were a whale-watching tour, if you’re curious about our costumes and I’m glad someone in the neighborhood was taking pictures on Halloween so we could get a picture as a family too!)

We’ve been shopping all things cabin lately and our latest task in the project has been to figure out what toilets we are going to need. I didn’t realize there are millions of toilets out there and when we’ve been to showrooms people have actually asked us to test them out to see how they feel.  This is done fully clothed on non-working toilet models in the middle of the store and is probably the most awkward type of shopping I’ve ever done.

Needless to say I’m finding toilet shopping from the comfort of my own home a lot less embarrassing.

And surprisingly enough Amazon has been one of the cheapest and easiest ways to find a lot of things we need.  I love that I can also shop using Amazon Smile and a portion of what I buy goes back to a charity of my choice so I like to send my donation to Friends of the Seattle Public Library.

I even found this book about toilets called “Toilet, how it works” for my kids to help them understand this part of the building process.  It’s simple enough that I now understand how toilets work too, and we also learned about sewage and our body’s digestive system.  Needless to say this book is a current favorite in our house.

We are leaning towards this Toto toilet because it’s neat looking and it gets good ratings. These wall-mounted toilets are cool and also very popular but I’m not sure if the additional cost for plumbing would be worth it.  But, it could save some space in a really small bathroom.  This one by Kohler also looks easy to clean.

And if you are looking to install a child-size toilet somewhere, this is one you can buy for your home.  But my guys have almost outgrown this stage, so thankfully I don’t need to think about this one too much anymore but it might have been cool to think about back when they were 2-5 years old.

Instead my guys are counting down to Christmas and I need to buy our advent calendars soon and while the guys still want a Lego one, I found this one from Starbucks for myself and I see great potential for reusing it over the years.

But the best thing I am buying today is something that is not really tangible and something that can help the Pike Place Market, a place my family totally loves.  In the next few years the market is expanding, and I am buying a market charm that will be a permanent part of the market for many years. I imagine this is going to look a lot like the love locks in Paris that I thought I’d go and put a lock on with my kids one day.  Unfortunately this isn’t really something we can do anymore, but in the Pike Place Market I like that this gift for my family will be something we can go and look at when we visit the market and remember times we’ve been there over the years.  (What a cool idea this would be if it was happening in a place we were traveling too.  Instead of buying souvenirs to bring home, we could leave a souvenir behind for a return trip.  Just a thought if you’re thinking of visiting Seattle in the next little while too!)

So happy Monday and hope you have better candy will power than I do and if you have a toilet you’ve tested and love please send that info my way too.

(PS. Reese’s Peanut butter cups are especially hard for me to resist.  What is your candy weakness?)

Terumi

Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys.  She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live.  She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)