I want to tell you about a toilet brush. I know that's not a glamorous opening, but stay with me — because this is actually a story about how one small, considered purchase changed the way I think about my home.
I've lived in my flat for four years. It's a rented two-bedroom in South London, and like most rented flats, the bathroom came with a collection of fixtures that were functional and entirely charmless. White everything. Plastic everything. The kind of bathroom that you clean but never really enjoy being in.
The toilet brush situation was particularly grim. It was one of those translucent plastic holders that goes grey over time and collects water at the bottom in a way that I'd rather not think about too hard. I'd been meaning to replace it for about two years. I kept not doing it because it felt like a trivial thing to spend money on.
What Finally Made Me Do Something About It
A friend came to stay for a weekend and, in the way that guests sometimes do, made me see my own flat with fresh eyes. She didn't say anything about the bathroom. She didn't need to. I just noticed, while she was there, how tired everything looked. The bathroom especially.
I'd been going through a bit of a phase of trying to make my rented flat feel more like mine — adding plants, swapping out cushion covers, that sort of thing. The bathroom had been left out of all of that because it felt too fixed, too functional. But after my friend left I found myself looking at it properly for the first time in months and thinking: this is the one room I use every single day, multiple times a day. Why have I been ignoring it?
The toilet brush was the obvious starting point. It's one of the few things in a bathroom you can actually swap out without a landlord's permission, and it's one of the first things you see when you walk in.
Why I Chose the MSV INAGUA in Terracotta Orange
I spent longer than I'd like to admit looking at toilet brushes online. Most of them were either the same tired white plastic I was trying to escape, or they were very expensive designer versions that felt excessive for what is, at the end of the day, a toilet brush.
The MSV INAGUA Toilet Brush with Holder in Terracotta Orange caught my eye immediately. The terracotta colour was the thing — it's warm, it's earthy, it's exactly the kind of tone that works with the neutral tiles in my bathroom and the small collection of terracotta plant pots I'd been building up on the windowsill. It felt intentional rather than just functional.
The dimensions — 9x39cm — were also practical. My bathroom isn't large and I needed something that would sit neatly beside the toilet without taking up floor space or looking oversized. The INAGUA looked proportionate in the product images and that turned out to be accurate.
MSV is a brand I'd seen in bathroom accessory roundups before. They make products that sit in that useful middle ground between cheap and cheerful and unnecessarily expensive. Solid quality, considered design, sensible price. That's exactly what I was after.
When It Arrived
The first thing I noticed when I unpacked it was the weight. It's substantial without being heavy — the holder has enough mass to sit stably on the floor without tipping, which was a genuine concern given how lightweight some of the cheaper options I'd looked at seemed. The terracotta colour in person is even nicer than in the photos: a warm, muted orange-brown that photographs well but looks even better in natural light.
The brush itself fits snugly into the holder and the whole unit looks clean and considered. No visible screws, no cheap-looking joins, no parts that feel like they'll snap off after a month. It looks like something that belongs in a bathroom rather than something that's just there because it has to be.
The Difference It Made
I'm aware that saying a toilet brush changed my life is a stretch. But here's what actually happened: replacing it made me look at the rest of the bathroom differently. Within a fortnight I'd also swapped out the soap dispenser, added a small ceramic dish for my rings, and put up a new mirror. The toilet brush was the catalyst — the thing that made me realise the bathroom could be a room I actually liked rather than just tolerated.
More practically: it's easy to clean, the holder doesn't collect water in the same grim way the old one did, and the brush itself does its job without drama. Four months in and it still looks as good as the day it arrived. The colour hasn't faded, nothing has cracked or discoloured, and it still sits solidly on the floor without shifting around.
It sounds like a small thing. It is a small thing. But small things, done well, add up. My bathroom is now a room I'm genuinely pleased with, and it started with a terracotta toilet brush.
Where to Find It
The MSV INAGUA Toilet Brush with Holder in Terracotta Orange is available in the Toilet Brushes & Holders collection. If you're doing a broader bathroom refresh, the Bathroom Accessories collection is well worth a browse — and for everything home-related, the Home & Garden range has plenty to explore.
If you've been putting off a small upgrade because it feels trivial — don't. Sometimes the trivial things are exactly the ones worth doing.
— Simone Adeyemi, reluctant home decorator and now a committed bathroom enthusiast
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