Why I Use a Shower Caddy in My Backyard (It’s Seriously Cute and Clever!)
With gardening season typically comes a persistent line of dirt beneath my fingernails. Even when I wear gloves, the grime manages to sneak its way under there and collect, so I have to stay on top of it. Fortunately I discovered a hack on Instagram last summer that’s helped me immensely — so much so that I’m looking forward to digging in this year just to use it again.
The little trick is super convenient, cute, and clever — one of those you wish you would have thought up yourself. But I must credit Erin Berkyto (@theknottygarden). Last April she shared a video showing how she solved her constant dirt tracking conundrum: She made an outdoor washing station using a shower caddy, scrub brushes, a hose splitter, and outdoor floor tiles.
She simply hung the caddy over her house’s spigot, which holds a bar of biodegradable soap and a couple of scrub brushes. Beneath the spigot, she added four tiles — two propped vertically against the house and two on the ground, creating an “L” shape — to give her feet a clean place to land. The hose splitter allows her to keep her watering hoses attached to the spigot while freeing a channel for hand hygiene.
“I only have one outdoor hose bib, so I need to get creative,” she captioned the post. “I came up with this idea because I was tired of tracking dirt inside the house. I can wash my hands, feet, and shoes at my new washing station. I can also wash my tools and fill my watering cans! Now that I’ve added it, I don’t know how I ever lived without it!”
And I can say the same. I’m not as avid of a gardener as Berkyto is, so I didn’t feel the need to commit to her entire setup. But I knew that I would greatly benefit from the hand washing opportunity following my afternoon weeding sessions. And so, I rushed to Amazon and picked out this $10 shower caddy, a set of nail brushes, and a bar of Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap. My backyard vignette isn’t nearly as aesthetically pleasing as Berkyto’s, but, in the wise words of Chappell Roan, “it gets the job done.”
A year later (when the above pictures were taken), the caddy remains functional and rust-free. I even have the same bar of soap stored on it, which has not melted or tarnished up against summer heat and a particularly brutal Midwest winter. In retrospect, I probably would have preferred a hearty wooden natural scrubber over the plastic-bristled ones I got, because one has completely deteriorated already. But I thankfully had back-ups.
Even when I’m not doing yard work the station comes in handy for washing my hands after taking out the trash to avoid grubbing up my back doorknob. My husband and I have also used it to wash tools or pots — anything that sits outside or in our garage and inevitably acquires a layer of elemental gunk.
Where I live it’s just now remaining warm enough to work outside, and I already have a list of projects in which my washing station will take center-stage — including but not limited to setting up a porch potted salsa garden, shining my outdoor IKEA tray tables, and re-potting and refreshing my houseplants. There are few things that give me joy like functionality and efficiency do, and this DIY checks both of those boxes and puts a smile on my face every time I use it.