Allow Me to Teach You How to Turn Your Shitty Bathroom Into a Spa for $20

All my city dwellers know the feeling of walking into a prospective apartment, seeing that, okay, there are no closets and, sure, there’s only one window and it looks out on an air shaft so it doesn’t get any light and, we get it, the shower is a bucket of water with a straw taped to it for a faucet, and that instead of water, it dispenses flat diet soda, and the bedroom is a pile of wet leaves, and the kitchen just a lighter that you have to keep flick lighting until you’ve flick cooked an egg and you’re like, Wow, only $4,800 a month? Please, papa landlord, allow me to sign a decade-long binding lease that only legally requires me to regularly pay rent but doesn’t require that the apartment continue to exist. Only in New York, right?

I’ve done this over six times now, since I keep moving into a new place, hammering the last tiny nail into my stucco walls, hanging my smallest portrait of Dame Judy Dench, collapsing into my sitting chair and taking a big sip of coffee and saying aloud, Ah, time to really get comfortable, before a crane picks me up by the tag of my nightgown, drops me onto the sidewalk, and demolishes the building.

Replace your shower head with a bigger, nicer one.

And in those six-plus moves, I have come to dread the inaugural shower—that first time you decide to nude up, step barefoot into the chipped bathtub, and twist on the knob, mouth open to whatever liquid, at whatever temperature comes out at whatever speed. It’s a universal (for the not-rich) experience of mystery, utter vulnerability, and total faith that what comes out won’t be a steady stream of thousands of tiny spiders, and I’ve been treated to my share of bone-cold dribbles.

But when I moved two weeks ago, I was prepared thanks to a recent discovery made by me (actually by my partner, a man, who isn’t a blogger and can’t—read: doesn’t know how to—write this). It is: replace your shower head with a bigger, nicer one.

To do this, you need a new shower head. I’d recommend one that offers a rainfall-esque experience, like this one, which is similar to what I found and bought for $18 in a hardware store.

Or, if you’re Deputy Editor Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, this slightly more advanced version will make you scream, What the fuck is going on?!!!!!!

Then, using an adjustable wrench, twist off the old shower head until you can manually unscrew it. Put a lil teflon tape around the pipe, then screw on the new head. Congratulations—you now live in a spa, and are rich. If you’re worried about water waste-age, you have several options: 1) take shorter showers; 2) get a low-flow head (you get a low-flow head); 3) do both. Thank me later, or now!