I’m not taking the p**s, it’s an Illumibowl!

Collaboration!

In previous posts I have touched upon the nightmare of night times with our 6 year old. She wouldn’t settle at bedtime, she would shout, scream and cry and we would be running up and downstairs for ages. She would finally settle but then during the night again she would wake and start with the shouting and screaming for hours again. This meant we were up all night and pretty exhausted. If it wasn’t for Seth we would have just let her shout it out but it wasn’t an option while he was there to be woken. (I really should do a proper post about this because looking back it was a pretty bloody difficult time, remind me please).  It went on for months but finally in February we cracked it. Some things changed, she got a new room et voila! All was good, well almost.

Part of the ‘deal’ struck was that if Aoife needed us in the night she would come to our room instead of shouting. This meant that every night we would awake to Aoife, looming over our bed saying in a loud whisper
“I need you to take me for a wee”

Now, I know we’d agreed that she would wake us if she NEEDED us but she’d made her way along the hall and into our room in the dark alone, the bathroom is right next door to our room.
It actually would have been less distance to the light switch in there!

Infuriating.

You can only imagine my delight when I saw that Illumibowl were looking for someone to review their product!
It’s genius – a nightlight for your toilet.

No more looming 6 year old looking like a blonde version of the creepy ghost in Ringu.
Aoife would able to trot off to the toilet in the dead of night by herself knowing that her final destination would be illuminated!

We are also at the point of trying to potty train Seth, unfortunately after a pre Christmas family bout of sickness bug Seth now thinks the potty’s main function is to sparkle into.
He mostly sticks his head in it and makes wretching noises.
If the toilet is a more exciting and colourful place then maybe he will want to use it for its intended purpose!
I see no reason for this not to be the most amazing product ever.

Illumibowl is based in the US so I had to wait 10-12 days for the product to arrive.
I’ll confess, I was SUPER excited.
When it finally arrived I tore open the package, popped in three triple As (those of us with children will no doubt have some all singing all dancing God awful toy that we can liberate the batteries from) and watched as…..nothing happened.

Then I read the instructions and realised it only works in the dark to save battery life.
These guys have thought of everything!

The Illumibowl isn’t massive so it’s discreet (unless you’re still sporting an avocado bathroom suite).

The white battery pack with sensor sits on the outside of the bowl while the bulb sits on the inside.
The flexi arm bit can be bent to fit any size toilet rim and the bulb doesn’t sit below the rim so it can’t get caught in the water on a flush.

If you place the sensor toward the door of your bathroom the light will activate when you walk into the room, otherwise you’ll be striding around the room in the dark trying to set it off.

Illumibowl has 8 colours which can rotate or you can choose your favourite and have it set to that. You can also choose how bright you want the lights to be. We have rotating colours as I’m a sucker for pretty lights.
Once activiated the light stay on for two minutes from the last movement so there’s no chance it will turn off leaving your child abandoned in the dark on the toilet screaming for help.

I can see only two downsides to the product:
1) Although it’s wipe clean and in a place where it shouldn’t get too icky there are always some men/kids who can’t aim. At some point someone is going to pee on it.
2) I have to clean my toilet even more than before. Don’t get me wrong, it was always clean but now I have children loitering around the toilet watching the lights, I need to impress with that gleam.

I LOVE the Illumibowl, it’s my kind of thing.
It’s quirky, it’s colourful, it leaves no excuses for missing the bowl and it makes my children think I’m amazing for bringing it into their lives.

In all seriousness it has stopped our eldest waking us to take her to the toilet and has made our youngest more interested in the toilet unfortunately not quite in the way we had hoped!

It’s also brought us closer as a family, at bedtime we go upstairs to the bathroom and gather in the darkened bathroom watching the toilet glow for a few minutes, this isn’t even a joke.

You can find out more about Illumibowl here 
Or follow them on Twitter https://twitter.com/illumibowl

Disclaimer. I was given an Illumibowl for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own – as always.