If you know me, you’ll know that I love drawing, cooking, cleaning and good ol storage solutions. I bloody well love a good kitchen gadget and adore all of the tupperware, stain removers, and other crap in those catalogs that your Mum and your Nan get through the post. Just ask my boyfriend, as I’m usually dragging him around House of Oslo and spending all the money we have. Its his fault for letting us live 2 streets away from that mall of delicious house wares.  Hmm, maybe I’m not coming across as a particulary interesting person here, but who cares. Cleanliness is king in my gaff mate.

In particular I hate bathroom untidyness. Im not going to go there with toilet cleanliness, and I think everyone has their issues with the orange shit you get in between your tiles in the shower. One thing I hate most is dirty washbasins with toothpaste spit encrusted on them, toenail clippings collected in plug holes and stray bit of hair from shaving (I’m looking at you, Dad). I hate when people keep all of their toothbrushes in a little pot with their ends collecting in some out of sight, out of mind, old colgate squash thats fermented over time at the bottom. Or when they don’t even bother with that and just keep the dental hygeine products laying about on the side, with their bristles laying in dirt. Don’t even get me started on soap juice, There is nothing more gross than the residue left behind by dirty soap, tainted brown after being used to wash makeup off hands. It basically looks like unhealthy poo.

Ok, ok, maybe I’m a little too much of a clean freak. *Takes a few deep breaths* But surely I’m not alone, there must be thousands of others just like me feverishly cleaning up crusty suds and not so minty fresh spills. Surely those clever big wigs and buyers for home shops must realise theres a market for proper bathroom storage solutions that look good and cater to the hygiene crazy.

I found a shop in Oslo called Lucky Duck that sells these toothbrush holders, keeping your bristles dry and the end of your toothbrush gunk free.

So yep I got one of those and no longer get anxious about bacteria on my toothbrushes. The same week I saw a thread on reddit about the most ingenious invention ever.

A soap flake grater and dispenser! 

A truly brilliant young lady designed this soap grater for her degree show from Design Academy Eindhoven. Her name is Nathalie Stämpfli and here is what she has to say about her invention:

“Today, most of the soap we use is liquid soap, which contains a lot of water. Block soap instead is more concentrated and therefore has some ecological benefits: You don’t transport unnecessary water around. In place of plastic bottles you can simply use paper for packaging. The solid blocks can easily be piled and allow a greater space efficiency in a truck.”

This  is one of the reasons I prefer to use block soap to liquid soap, plus you can get it in so many more varieties, especially if you are a fan of Lush and other soap specialists. It can also be really fun to make your own soap from oats and raw shea butter or coconut oil. The internet is full of recipes for soap making.

The other reason I just love this is the fact that you don’t get soap juice mess!  No more dirty soap dishes or rings of soap on your basin. No more squeezing the slippy soap too hard so that it shoots out of your hand and donks you square in the eye.

… Ok that last one might have just happened to me. Anyway, my point is that this is a great little product. The problem is that its not being mass produced, or as far as I can tell, produced at all! Apart from the prototype of course. I spent about an hour scouring far and wide on the internet for this, or at least something similar. There is no soap flake dispensers for me out there. This makes me a little sad.

So I guess this blog post is just to say that this is an amazing invention and will someone please let me know when it is for sale? Come on Nathalie Stämpfli, make it happen love!

The other soap flake dispenser she designed. This one is a bit too 'Mars Attacks' for me.