As most readers are aware, we don't just take a quick look at the features for most of the items reviewed on RainyDayMagazine and call it a day. We like to see how they actually perform in the real world over time. This is what makes us different from other "review" sites. Based on the emails we get, you all seem to agree :-) Since we are getting ready to add another SimpleHuman product to the shower in the company bathroom, we thought it would be a good opportunity to take a look at how the last item was faring.
It has been almost two years since we installed the SimpleHuman shower caddy and it has held up amazingly well. Its design is very stable even when heavily loaded. We love the horizontally and vertically adjustable racks. They can be adjusted to accommodate many bottle sizes. After almost two years of daily use, there is no rust on any of chrome parts. The only stain is this odd black streak running down from the shower head. We have been wanting to clean off this gunk for the past 6 months, but like many things we never got around to it...until now.
Since it ran from the shower head down, we thought it had to be because of the black rubber ring around the clamp. The stain does not come off when scraped with the fingernail. Whatever it was, it flowed down from the top, around the clamps and was diluted by the time it got to the mid-section. It must have been a bit thick as it left a clean stripe at the start as it moved downward.
It also did not respond to any of the cleansers we had in house. In fact, the only way we could get it off was to sand it. So, it seems that this stain was the result of a chemical reaction between something and the aluminum spine. We had two options at this point, sand it off or flip the channel. We chose the quicker solution.
The only downside to flipping the channel was that the two screw holes are now visible in the front of the caddy. This is something we are willing to tolerate as the sanding option would have meant that we would be removing the anodized surface and exposing the raw aluminum...which may not be the best thing for the metal.
Everything reassembled nicely as the spine is symmetrical. The flipping part of the project took less than 10 minutes and we were happy with the results. Now if we could figure out what actually reacted with the aluminum. Until then, the interns are forbidden to do chemistry experiments while washing their hair in the shower. [Permalink] - SimpleHuman Shower Caddy ITW
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