What is this object?

Yep, it’s one of those white fluffy things that you use to lather shower gel around your body.

The problem is that no one really knows what to call it. To the husband it is quite simply a ‘shower puff’. I’ve always called it a puff too. But I’m not sure what its official title is. I’ve heard it labelled a variety of things: shower scrunchie, body polisher, even a shower flower.

I once saw a besuited man in Boots attempting to explain to the shop assistant what he was looking for.

‘It’s a white fluffy shower… thing,’ he was saying, whilst doing a circular scrubbing motion with his hands.

‘A puff?’ I helpfully chipped in.

‘That’s it!’ he cried.

Anyone who doesn’t use a shower puff for everyday cleansing really is missing a trick. I mean how else do you get up the kind of lather that a puff can provide?

We have a variety of puffs in our house, including a large pink puff, which I acquired from Soap and Glory. It’s huge, and bills itself as the ‘best latherer in town’. I even bought my mother-in-law one for Christmas (turns out she loves puffs too!).

For day-to-day showering, we plump for a simple white Boots puff (one each, of course – I’m not sure on the etiquette of a shared puff). Boots provide the best puffs; those puffs purchased from Superdrug et al. have proved feeble, and begin to unravel when faced with a vigorous scour.

The husband went on a business trip to Latvia the other week (where he got trapped in the a toilet cubicle on his way to a business meeting and had to wait half an hour for the hotel maintenance team to remove the hinges off the door. During this lavatory-based debacle, the meek Saudi man, who the husband was supposed to be meeting, was waiting on the other side of the door to greet him, arms outstretched… But that’s another story).

Being the loving wife that I am, I often leave the husband a range of silly notes when he goes away – sometimes in a pocket; sometimes in a shoe. More often than not, he doesn’t even notice them. I once popped one in his packed lunch and he accidentally ate it.

For the Latvian trip, I popped a note in with his ‘travel puff’ (travel puff lives in a clear white plastic zip up bag; he’s a slightly smaller version of your standard puff).

The note simply said, ‘Puff Daddy’. (Yep, you can see how much fun we have in our house!)

Upon arrival, the husband – being the most unobservant man on this planet – removed trusty travel puff from his suitcase and was happily scrubbing away in the shower, whilst unbeknown to him my ‘Puff Daddy’ note had somehow ended up lying on the floor of the shower cubicle unnoticed.

This would have been fine, had the husband not been sharing a room with his work colleague.

Said work colleague then entered the bathroom – and staring back at him on the floor was a bright orange Post-It note that simply said ‘Puff’ (the ‘Daddy’ part being unfortunately folded underneath).

The husband isn’t sure whether or not he actually spotted the offending note.

But I like to imagine the work colleague spending his shower in complete and utter confusion, possibly muttering, ‘PUFF??’ to himself several times, as he lathered away.