The first apartment bathroom checklist

Whatever else the apartment came with, the liner is the item you want to replace before you shower in it. Zenna’s Softy PEVA liner is published as “Mildew-Resistant” — the one liner Zenna labels that way in its listing — in “Stall or Regular Sizes”.

Measure before you order. A stall shower and a standard tub take different widths, and a liner that is too short wicks water onto the floor at the bottom corner, which is how a deposit disappears. The full liner ranking, including gauges, is here.

Zenna publishes the mildew claim and not much else: no gauge for this model, no antimicrobial agent or test, no warranty. At this price that is the trade, and we would still replace the one that came with the apartment. Whether you need a liner at all is here.

Rental bathrooms are short of hanging space and long on surfaces you are not allowed to drill. The Arnold publishes “heavy-duty stainless steel” with “100% waterproof silicone”, a capacity of “up to 4lbs”, and that it is “completely removable and reusable”.

Nothing cures, which is the difference from an adhesive hook: it can be moved as often as you like and it does not have to be peeled off a painted wall when you leave. Why that matters at move-out is here.

Read Tooletries’ published surface list before buying: it wants “flat, smooth, shiny, non-porous surfaces” and names “mosaic, subway, and kit-kat tiles” as unsuitable. A lot of rental bathrooms are subway tile, and that is worth knowing before the parcel arrives.

Landlords buy the cheapest head available, and the cheapest head available is usually 2.5 gpm. The Moen 6300EP publishes “1.75 Gpm (6.65 L/Min) Max.”, “One-Function Full Spray”, a “2-1/2″ Diameter Spray Head” and that it “meets EPA WaterSense® criteria”, with a “limited lifetime warranty”.

The EPA publishes the saving for an average family moving to WaterSense: “2,700 gallons per year” and “more than 330 kilowatt hours of electricity annually” — about $61 of electricity at the EIA’s published average rate, which is several times what the head costs.

Keep the landlord’s head in a labeled bag in the cupboard. It goes back on in two minutes on move-out day. Everything under $50 is ranked here.

Rental lighting is a lottery and it is the cheapest thing in the room to fix. GE’s Relax HD globe publishes “500lm” from 5.5 watts at 2700K, with a CRI of 90 and a five-year warranty.

CRI is the number almost nobody shops on and the one that decides whether the mirror is telling the truth. At 90, colors render close to daylight; at the 80 a builder-grade bulb typically manages, they do not. Soft white against daylight at the same CRI is compared here.

Keep the old bulbs. Everything here is designed to be put back.

Everything above improves what is already there. This adds something that was not. Brondell’s SimpleSpa Thinline publishes a “Universal, adjustable toilet fit” that “installs under your existing seat”, with “no plumbers or plumbing knowledge required”.

For a rental, the fittings are the specification to care about: “braided metal hose and all-metal T-Valve”. A plastic valve that weeps onto a landlord’s floor is a deposit problem, not just a plumbing one. What to look for in a first bidet is here.

It is “Powered by water pressure alone”, so there is no outlet to find beside the toilet — which is just as well, because most apartments do not have one.