By Clyde Noel

A Side of Clyde

There’s a room in our house that I seldom use - by request. We have bedrooms upstairs that are used only when the grandkids or company come to visit, but the room I’m referring to is the powder room off the kitchen.

It’s a women’s room. And when a group of women come to the house, the line forms in front of the door. Why? Because it’s so much more convenient than running upstairs.

The powder room is definitely not a men’s room. If you get close to the door, you’re told, “Can’t you use the bathroom upstairs?” Even after you’ve mowed the lawn, as convenient as the powder room is, it’s off-limits and not to be used.

On the rare occasions that you’re permitted to use the room, what’re definitely not to be used are the soap and linen hand towels. The hand towels are museum pieces not to be touched by human hands; and God forbid, should you get any water on the soap, you can ruin the intricate detail. It’s usually a fancy mail-order soap with a delicate aroma.

I talk to many real estate agents, and I ask them what men and women look for when they buy a home. Most of them say women are interested in the neighborhood, proximity to schools and a house layout that allows them to keep an eye on the kids while holding an hour-long conversation with a girlfriend. … And, of course, that all-important powder room.

Men like a home office, or a library, until they realize that once they’re over 45, they can no longer read the fine print of The Wall Street Journal’s stock market tables.

When a man’s single, he has different ideas for the rooms in his house. He finds the most important areas are the garage, the back yard and the basement. The only real room is the powder room, where he can spend hours with his magazines and newspapers.

When a man lives with a woman, he keeps six items in the master bathroom: a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream, a razor, a bar of soap and a towel. The average number of items in a typical woman’s bathroom is 187. A man cannot identify more than 10 of them.

When it comes to color, a man likes white. He fears color, because it may mean the old furniture won’t work and he’ll have to buy new stuff. Men don’t buy furniture. They inherit it from their grandparents and pass along the velvet Victorian living-room couch with antimacassars to their kids.

Women buy furniture. They go through books of swatches; and after several months of looking, they buy new sofas and chairs. Men hate this because it means they have no place to sit again. Every room with new furniture means more time spent in the garage or back yard.

Men hate change. Women, on the other hand, are comfortable with it. They like changing the furniture, the drapes and the wallpaper. They like changing the rugs.

The only things women can’t see changing are the soap and towels in the powder room.

Noel writes home and garden stories for the Town Crier.