Who cares about a bath mat? I mean really. Who cares?

Those were my first thoughts when my editor asked me to write Wirecutter’s guide to them. It’s not that I don’t love this job or my team or this work. I do. But I mean, bath mats? Come on.

Nonetheless, by necessity of employment, I started to think about bath mats. I thought about them while standing barefoot at my sink, brushing my teeth. I thought about them while stepping out of my shower, dripping wet. And, of course, I thought about them at work, polling my colleagues on their preferences, scouring online reviews, and deeply considering what made a bath mat functional, durable, and attractive.

During this time, I remembered a scene from Lady Bird, in which Saoirse Ronan’s titular protagonist speaks with a school nun about Sacramento. “Sure, I guess I pay attention,” Lady Bird reluctantly admits about her hometown. The nun asks, “Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?”

I thought back to this scene because here I was, spending hours of my life devoting attention to something I cared absolutely nothing for. The truth is, I didn’t love all 20 bath mats that I tested for Wirecutter’s guide, though they did receive my attention. But one mat received more of my attention than the rest, and much to my surprise, I did come to love it.