Ah…. the luxury of having a hot shower is mighty delightful on a cold day or after a nice workout. In fact, it would be grand if your shower head didn’t break. Due to this unfortunate event, my shower head was replaced. All appeared to be well until the next shower….when I was assaulted by my shower curtain flying into me and apparently intent on sticking to me so much that it even blocked the water from the shower head… Fail. Apparently, a new problem had presented itself… I can see it now. Harry Potter and his colleagues have been beset with the siege of shower curtains. Apparently, Voldemort foobarred a spell and came up with a nice accidental surprise, and now the world is dealing with shower curtains that just won’t stay down and allow people to shower….
~HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSE OF THE SHOWER CURTAIN!~
So, what do you do if your shower curtain wants to hugs you?
There are two ways to address this.
1) Modify your shower curtain, or
2) Modify your shower head by getting one with less pressure.
In my case, my old shower head didn’t spray as much water with as much force, and so I never encountered a flying curtain situation before. This new shower head was much more powerful and even after trying to adjust it to have less pressure, the curtain still flew up. I opted to modify the curtain. Here are the curtain solutions.
1) Get a heavier shower curtain/liner. Some have magnets on the bottom and suction cups on the side. This may work for some, but apparently, my shower pressure was still too strong. I bought the heaviest shower liner I could find. It didn’t work. The magnets didn’t stick at all, and the two tiny suction cups on each side of the curtain certainly couldn’t keep the bottom of the curtain from hugging me still from the bottom.
2) Reinforce your curtain with heavy objects. You can staple, glue, cut holes at the bottle of the curtain, clip heavy objects to the curtain. Heavy clips work though if the clips are metal you may have to worry about them rusting. The other downside if that there may be clanging noises. Others have tried heavy washers. Don’t try to put your shampoo bottles on the bathtub floor to keep the curtain from flying. The bathtub inside is wet, so the shampoo bottle will just fall. Besides, the weight of the shampoo bottle varies as you keep using the shampoo from the bottle! I didn’t want to modify my curtain and cut holes in it because the curtain is my mother’s….and she wouldn’t be happy if I did something to it.
3) Fold the bottom of your curtain over and sew in a line, then stick a tension coil in so you can prop the ends of the tension rod against the sides of the bathtub. Or… find a heavy pipe that won’t break your curtain and put it through the slot you made. The benefit of the tension coil is that it is extendable so you can adjust it. The downside is that it may not be heavy enough. The benefit of the heavy pipe or rod is that it is heavy, but you cannot adjust it, so you may not be able to just push the curtain aside depending on how long the rod/pipe is. However, now the pressure blowing the curtain will have to push the whole curtain together instead of parts of the curtain because the rod keeps the curtain stiffer than without the rod.
Tension Coil Rod
Many tension coil rods of different lengths
4) Best permanent solution: Get a shower door instead of a shower curtain. That shower door isn’t going to flap in your face.
5) Shorten you curtain and magnetize it. Downside is that you can’t just slide the curtain aside when you’re done with your shower. This way, the curtain will be held flat against the wall because there is no room for the curtain to billow while it is anchored by the magnets at the bottom. You can use stick on magnets you can stick on to the curtain or, if you don’t want to permanently have magnets on your curtain, use clip magnets.
Stick on Magnets
My Solution – Magnets/Sandwich Bags/Slightly Folded Curtain Bottom – Variation of #5
Clip Magnets
I didn’t want to permanently alter my shower curtain. So, I opted to find strong magnets. The two strongest ones I found are the clip magnets in the picture.
Problem 1: What size magnets should I use?
Solution 1: The larger blue ones were too big to stick properly to the bathtub on curves, so I went with the smaller ones.
Problem 2: Rusting – Since I was using metal clips, I was afraid that the water and dampness from the showers would eventually rust it.
Solution 2: Put the clips inside the sandwich bags. Make sure the opening of the sandwich bag is facing downward. You can seal the bag to make sure water doesn’t get in.
Problem 3: Clips too strong and might rip curtain?
Solution 3: I folded the bottom of the curtain up so that the clip was clipping two layers of curtain instead of one.
Magnets in Sandwich bags on Curtain- The Right Magnet is clipped on the side. The Left Magnet is clipped on the bottom.
Problem 4: Does it matter where to place the magnets?
Solution 4:
Yes. We already know to put them on the bottom of the curtain so that the bottom stays down. You also want them to attach tot he bathtub wall so that your curtain is as straight as possible. At the left bottom side of the curtain, instead of clipping the magnet at the bottom, I did it on the left side of the curtain. This way, it accounts for the bathtub curve. Do the same for the right side of the curtain (but this is not necessary since the important part is the front/left of the curtain). The rest you can space evenly out on the bottom.
I used 5 magnets total! You can do it too! Just get clip magnets and sandwich bags!
Feel free to share your own curtain solutions too! 🙂 Do any of these work for you? Do you have flying curtain problems?
Improv Artz 