can we all just agree that unclogging one's shower drain without the use of nasty chemicals is a pretty satisfying accomplishment?

as you may remember from the other times i've written about cleaning my shower, between the large amounts of hair that i shed and the fact that the person with whom i share my shower goes through an astonishing amount of soap, our drain is frequently kind of slow.

i try to pretend it isn't happening, and then when i get tired of rinsing the soap suds off of my feet and ankles at the end of a shower/footbath, i remove the drain cover and dig around below the drain for large disgusting hair clumps. i hate doing this. it is gross, especially after i mentioned to audra that i thought it was strange to find so much lint in the shower drain and she told me that it was actually dead skin cells. yuck. (i am pretending that this isn't true, because it is gross.)

i know that there are several products for dealing with this sort of problem, but i don't want to use anything toxic unless it's absolutely necessary. and it's not! because i successfully unclogged a really slow drain!

i put some baking soda down the drain as far as i could (and since the big box of baking soda that we use for cleaning and keep under the sink had started to clump up from getting damp, there were big satisfying chunks to use! yes!) and then poured some vinegar down after it. after that, i poured a pot of boiling water down the drain...and it all drained right down. aw yeah. (also, the baking soda/vinegar combination is very fizzy, and the noise it makes is nice.)