A few weeks back, I noticed that my shower drain was starting to slow down.

When I took a long, hot shower, a simple activity that I take great pleasure in, I heard slurping, bubbling sounds for several minutes after stepping out of my shower-tub to towel dry and make faces in the mirror (another staple in my daily routine).

They were not unlike sounds coming from a digestive tract in distress.

The other week, it got so bad, the depth of the water in the tub reached up to my ankle WHILE I was still performing my washcloth and exfoliator routine.

Time for action!

The first thing I did, of course, was to start showering in my other bathroom.

I couldn’t bear the thought of hiring a plumber or performing internet research NOW. So, I carted my shampoo, my loofah-like strap, and a favorite towel from my master bathroom to the bathroom off my hallway.

In this other bathroom, the water pressure was weaker, and I found myself slipping around on the surface (as I did not transfer my plastic bathmat), but I was not ready to spend money on a solution, and I was not about to become a do-it-yourselfer.

I never got a kick out of fixing mechanical things. In some ways, though, clearing my drain seemed like psychotherapy to me.  That played into my propensity to procrastinate.

Even though I wanted to shower in my own tub, I was afraid of what needed to be dug out of the pipes first.

Could there be a dead animal down there, or a handful of Q-Tips that jumped off my vanity and gummed up my flow? What was below the chrome and rubber gasketed stopper?

I told a friend about the slowness of my drain.  A woman of my age who’s also been single most of her life, she actually enjoys finding remedies to such problems (and loves saving money by doing things herself, too).

She gave me a mini-lecture on the dangers of hair then told me about plastic snakes for drains and the pluses of using a mesh drain cap going forward.  She also warned me to have paper towels nearby for disposing of the crud I would invariably find.

I went to Menard’s.  Not a regular shopper, I asked for help from one of their floor clerks.  He understood the problem and took me to the right shelf pretty quickly.

There were a few options.  He offered the opinion that I probably wouldn’t need a snake that attaches to a crank (for extra leverage).

I saw a selection of flat yellow plastic pieces, probably about 18 inches to two feet long.  One end terminated in a ring.

Starting at the other end, going about eight inches up, was a series of quarter inch stems, like the teeth of a comb, sticking out from the flat rod. I guess they were for tangling up hair.  The apparatus cost about three bucks.

I tried the yellow plastic drain snake the same day I bought it.  At first, I had problems slipping the end through the pipe past whatever things were in the way, but, like a fisherman who knows when he’s got a nibble, I could tell when I snagged onto something and kept my hand in motion until I could pull the rod out.

I pulled up a clumped ball of dark brown hair and placed it on the paper towel I had ready.

Eeuuww!

And again. I repeated this snaking, then hooking, then tugging process a few times, placing my collected gunk on my paper towels.  Eventually, I decided my tub drain and nearby pipes were clean enough.

I ran water, smiling at the way the swirling flow of water poured out the bottom of the tub.  No wading pool here.

Aaahhhhh!

Having the right tool for the situation is no small thing.