We believe great design impacts your life for the better because it is useful as well as beautiful. This certainly is true of this luxurious Kohler Universal Design Bathroom. (No telling what it cost. But we can dream, can’t we?)

This bath was created by Cynthia Leibrock and Mary Beth Rampolla, who believe a sense of well-being, vitality and independence are important and attainable for people of all ages and abilities.

Leibrock is the author of Beautiful Barrier-Free: A Visual Guide to Accessibility. She also wrote Design Details for Health, and Beautiful Universal Design: A Visual Guide. Rampolla is an architect with Eva Maddox Associated, Inc. of Chicago.

Click here to see of a video of their bathroom.

Eds. Note: This bathroom is on display at the Kohler Design Center in Kohler, Wisconsin, which features an enormous variety of beautiful and sleek bathroom features - including more fine examples of Universal Design.

Grab bars should be standard issue in every new home and existing homes should have them in at least every bathroom.

Grab bars are not a “Gimpy thing.” They are a “safety thing” needed by everyone. Unfortunately, most people don’t install grab bars until after they fall and hurt themselves.

Install grab bars now and you may never have that fall.

If not for you, do it for your children and for guests, who will feel safer if they have something to hold onto - other than the shower curtain or curtain rod which - if it is like Cait’s - is spring-loaded and crashes down by merely looking at it.

Soap and shampoo residue clings to showers, tubs and bathroom floors and bubbles from bubble baths cling to the tub long after the fun is over - ensuring a need for the safety of grab bars.

Grabs bars do not suggest you are feeble and doddering. Grab bars suggest you are a forward-thinking practical person who knows how to care for yourself and others.

Like the post we wrote about using the electric carts at the grocery store, we want you to give yourself permission to make your life safe, fun, and easier before life forces you to make even more drastic changes.

Cait and Marty are “Jarheads” - the name given to Carmex devotees.

Carmex has been made by the Woelbing family in Franklin, Wisconsin, since 1937. A skosh of menthol and a smidge of camphor mixed with lanolin, cocoa butter, phenol and salicylic acid in a wax base gives a cool, soothing sensation to dry lips.

Cait discovered Carmex about 20 years ago on a field trip to Minneapolis while she was in art school. Marty discovered it about the same time in a Boston drug store. (Once when Cait was crossing back into her home country of Canada, the only thing she declared at Customs was five pots of Carmex.)

Carmex stays put after it is applied, is not overly shiny and doesn’t make you look like you are wearing gobs of lip gloss from junior high.

Carmex - a Gimpy Girls staple in winter - even has a cult following and its own urban myths. (Google it on the Internet sometime).

The comedian Paula Poundstone once joked, “I chaperoned a school field trip, and I kid you not, that Carmex went around the bus like it was the water of life. I did them a favor by confiscating it and dropping it off a ravine. There’s probably a squirrel out there right now who just can’t get enough of that tub of carmex.”

Learn more about Carmex from Oprah.

Buy a tub

Eds. Note: If you can buy this locally, do it. You’ll get a much better price than going through the Internet where the shipping costs often are much more than the price of a tub or a tube of Carmex.

This adjustable shower caddy by SimpleHuman makes room for tall bottles and accommodates plumbing with its movable shelves.

Simply flip the tabs and slide shelves up and down or side to side. Bottles can be stored upside down for easier dispensing and the caddy’s multiple compartments include a soap dish, toothbrush/razor holder, and two hooks.

A rubberized clamp and pivoting suction cup ensure secure installation to the wall at the bottom of the caddy.

The shelves are rust-proof stainless steel while the frame is lightweight anodized aluminum and rubber. Fits shower heads with necks of 3/4″ to 1″ in diameter

Click here to learn more

Marty is fussy about her showers and spent too many years and too much money on too many shower heads before she bought the Fire Hydrant Deluxe Hand-Held Shower Head.

One of the shower heads made by Water Management Boston, the Fire Hydrant comes with an optional push-button control that lets you adjust the volume at the handle. So you can go full-force or down to a trickle as you hold the head — very useful if you need to sit to take a shower and don’t want the hose spraying everywhere.

While many hand-held showers have flimsy short hoses, the Fire Hydrant has a reinforced metal hose that stretches to 104 inches — a great range, especially when you are bathing the dog or trying to clean the corners of tub or shower.

Water Management Boston engineers their shower heads for low water pressure so you get a more powerful shower than you can imagine if you have been used to wimpy low-pressure showers that just don’t do the job. Learn more