AquaRug Sucks

I hope everyone out there is set to have a Merry Christmas. Winter showed up here in Chicago right about Halloween this year, so any festival rooted in the idea of making the darkness go away is good with me. This year finds me grateful for more items than I was last year and I hope the same is true with you. As I write this I have just finished my gift shopping, which was done man-style—a four hour search and destroy mission, with little wavering of purpose.

Normally I am long done with Christmas shopping by now. Time and finances sort of pushed my deadline back and I wound up venturing out with the great unwashed on the last weekend before the big event. Having done my marketing in the morning, I was able to dodge running through the teeth of the last minute idiot drove. As it should happen we are about to be blasted with more freezing rain which is bound to turn into something more substantial, so it’s best I went when I did. I intend to spend the rest of this weekend on more noble matters—plunking away on my new novel while experiencing via television the magic that is professional football.

I may not be a thoughtful gift giver, but I am a deliberate one. I knew exactly what I was going to get for whom before I started by venturing. There was a little wiggle room here and there, but I basically stuck to the program. With the exception of one item purchased at ALDI (an appliance, of all things), I did not buy things for myself and I did not impulse shop.

Impulse shopping is the thing of the rube, the nabob,  the allergic to money nitwit. It is the glut of our landfills, the reason for all 401K shortages. It is why Johnny must finance his used car. Should a fad against such purchases sweep this great land of ours, family fiscal solvency would become commonplace. Money is a real store of social value and should be husbanded with patriotic fervor, used to improve one’s material lot, provide for demonstrable needs and cushion the fall of unkind fate. Having just emerged from a spate of unkind fate myself, may I state that the companionship of close intimates and the love of my creator were the wind in my sails. That said, it also helped to have a giant bucket of money handy. And I had that money due to a long standing habit of not spending it on stupid crap.

Wait. I’ve previously confessed to buying an InstaHang. And a Wax Vac. Two more obviously useless items it would be hard to imagine. As previously covered, the InstaHang is a somewhat medium tech replacement for the hammer and nail; and the Wax Vac is non functional ear crud remover. Since I’m up here on my paragon of frugal virtue white horse, I might as well confess to Aqua Rug.

Mind you, it was not my intention to rat Aqua Rug out. I gave Aqua Rug a fighting chance. In fact, I have now owned FOUR Aqua Rugs. I bought two before learning the DISMAL TRUTH about Aqua Rug and then spent an additional $13.00 plus time replacing my original two Aqua Rugs after they had become utterly contaminated due to entirely normal use. And I sort of knew better, but I was just hoping the becoming a filthy discolored mat of mildew and mold was an isolated product defect and not a design flaw.

Let me take you back to step one. I wanted a nice shower rug. The problem here is that there aren’t any. Shower mats are by nature disgusting. They all become stained, warped and nasty over time and with conventional use. To think that there is some other phylum of object that will withstand the shedding of your dead skin, hair and other HUMAN FILTH day after day without becoming reflective of the environment to which it has been subjected is to believe in fairy stories—or Aqua Rug’s utterly fraudulent product pitch.

Aqua Rug goes its bath mat brethren one worse by becoming irretrievably human waste horrific in a far shorter time than normal. Of course, your normal bath mat is nothing more than a partially embossed swath of rubber with one side covered in sucker things. Over time, slime build up, spills, and normal use abrasion will render this fairly simple object unsuitable for being in your abode. The actual life span of your average shower mat is more dependent upon the consumer’s level of environmental perception and toleration for cohabitation with not nice things than any other factors. Your new significant other will replace your shower mat. A new shower mat will be on the list of things that you need when you move. The moment any shower mat’s condition is noticed, its days as a functioning object in your home become numbered. It was forever thus.  

Aqua Rug is something new, something different, but weirdly in no way improved. It’s actual product claims are a little hard to parse. If there is an advantage promoted, it is in the Aqua Rug’s ability to keep hair from clogging your drain. Provided that the Aqua Rug is fully positioned over the drain, it acts as a filter for such leavings. Oddly, it is this sole advantage, this selling distinction, which leads to Aqua Rug’s downfall.

The Aqua Rug is sold as being some sort of space age breakthrough. And it might be, if you count the now defunct Astrodome and its subsidiary innovation Astroturf as being particularly cutting edge. The actual product promotion touts whatever grade of plastic like substance used in Aqua Rug as previously deployed as carpeting on the decks of yachts. (Has anyone ever seen a carpeted yacht deck?) By presentation, Aqua Rug should be a swatch of plastic carpeting (Astroturf) affixed to a rubber backing. It is shown as entirely covering a shower stall and being cleaned effortlessly with a common hose. On TV it looks like white Astroturf.

As odd-ball of a product allusion as that might be, Aqua Rug is not actually Astroturf nor anything like it. Nor is it carpeting at all. Intead it is several layers of intermeshed rubber wire set in a rubber frame. Supposedly it looks like a flat natural sponge. To my eyes it appears to be a drunk hyperactive spider’s concoction. There are layers and layers of squiggly plastic strings.

Basically, it’s a shower mat—and not a very big one. Unlike your average shower mat, it does not have an array of suckers on its surface facing side. Instead, each of your Aqua Rugs has one typical plastic sucker riveted to its edges. The action of these suckers is all that keeps Aqua Rug in place. Cheapo touches though they may be, the suckers work. End of faint praise.

It should also be mentioned that Aqua Rug stunk. The out of the box stink eventually faded (it smelled as if it had been in a fire), but I can think of few things other than my new rat pelt leather jacket which have radiated quite as much stench out of the box.

Aqua Rug is originally a sort of beige. The two I had were at first the same color. Their replacements have also started out this color. None of my four Aqua Rugs stayed this color for long. All of them soon sported spotty coats of body hair brown, bath gel blue, shampoo green and red.

You see, Aqua Rug performs its miraculous defending your drain function by eating everything that passes through it. This diet of skin, body hair, filth and soap coloring becomes entwined in its little meshes, where it helps form colonies of sticky gunk wads. Soon black splotches will be showing from between its bristles, set against a patchwork of whatever goop and body hair hues prevail in your home. It’s like having your own swamp.

None of this hoses off. It does not wash off if placed in a washing machine. Frankly, it would be impossible to clean without cutting the damn thing open.

After my first two Aqua Rugs became discolored, I attempted cleaning them in every way the manufacturer recommended. They never came clean. They never even remotely looked clean. Nor did my originally identical shower mats—which were in the same tub—ever come to resemble each other in hue again. So I contacted customer service.

Aqua Rug comes with a 50 year guarantee. (As they should, since they cost 25 bucks a copy.) I was intstructed to send the mats back, at my own expense, after which a new set would be promptly sent to me. The lady on the phone seemed to be well aware of the mildew issue. True to their word, they sent me two new Aqua Rugs, which did arrive promptly.

These mats did not smell. Moreover, a note that came with them stated that they had been treated to thwart any occurrence of mildew and mold. Reassured thus, I placed the replacements into their new home.

Three weeks later, they look like the old ones. Or should I say they have the same affliction as the old ones. If nothing else, they are rather unique in the ways they stain up. As opposed to spending yet another $13.00s for them to meet their makers as their brothers did, I will be introducing them to the landfill cycle.

All in all, $63.00 up in smoke.

**

And a Happy New Year to you all if we don’t speak again before then.