The bliss of a perfectly warm towel
A small letter on a small modification to the bathroom — a heated towel rail kept on year-round — and on the case for small luxuries that you encounter every day.
Dear reader,
There is a small heated towel rail in our bathroom that, after the most recent renovation of the apartment, is now on year-round. The rail is small — perhaps eighty centimetres tall, with five horizontal bars — and it holds the small face cloths and one full-sized bath towel. The towel that hangs on it is, when I step out of the morning shower, perfectly warm.
I am writing about this small thing today because it has, in the eight months since the renovation, become one of the small daily pleasures I most reliably encounter. The warm towel against the wet body, first thing in the morning, is the kind of small luxury that I had previously associated with expensive hotels and that I am now slightly amazed I lived without for forty years.
On the case for daily small luxuries
Most luxuries, in modern life, are infrequent. The expensive meal once a quarter. The good bottle of wine on a special evening. The hotel stay during a holiday. These are pleasant when they happen, but they are not, in any meaningful structural way, part of the daily texture of life.
The small daily luxury is different. The warm towel happens every morning. The cost, calculated against the eight months since the renovation, is a few cents per morning of warm-towel pleasure. The cumulative pleasure, across years, will be the kind of small reliable enhancement of daily life that no occasional luxury can match.
I have, since this realisation, paid more attention to which small things in our daily life could be small daily luxuries. The good towels I have written about elsewhere. The good kettle. The good coffee in the morning. The good bedding. None of these costs much when amortised across years of use. All of them propagate into the daily experience of being alive in a way that occasional purchases cannot.
What I would recommend
If you have been spending money on occasional luxuries — the special holiday, the expensive dinner — consider whether the same money would be better spent on small daily upgrades. A heated towel rail. Better towels. A small bathroom redesign that includes a window that opens. Better bedding. A specific cup for the evening tea. The small daily improvements, accumulated across years of use, will provide more pleasure per pound spent than any occasional purchase will, and the cumulative effect is the small structural improvement in the texture of every ordinary day.
Until next time,
M.