Keep Your Beer From Getting Showered While in the Shower Part 1: Make Yourself Smell Like Roses While Stopping to Smell Them.

If you're smart and impatient, you can figure this out from the picture. If you are neither of those, or just want to be edified or entertained, feel free to read on.

This is my instructable, there are many like it, but this one is mine.


This guide applies to three of the larger truths I have discovered along the course of my cognitive existence:

Water is seldom too hot...
Music is seldom too loud...
Beer is seldom too cold...

...Especially when you're in the shower.

There was a time long ago when Monks got so tired of drinking water that they invented beer. These monks most likely took showers. My guess is that if they ever drank beer while in the shower, they were probably annoyed by the fact that it usually got some water in it. We can be almost certain the shower beer holder was invented shortly after.

For the past eight months I have been touring Asia with a Broadway musical. This has introduced me to many things:
Korean BBQ,  how to sit cross-legged on a hardwood floor without getting uncomfortable, the proper way to sell electronics, and, most importantly:  the astonishing lack of beverage holders in hotel showers.
I noticed many other things in life that could use changing, but I'm starting small, with the beer, and the shower.

Step 1: Require a Shower.

This is not such an easy step to complete. To properly enjoy a beer in the shower, one needs to require showering. The easiest (and most fun) means for accomplishing this would be to take a page from five year olds everywhere and get well and truly dirty. Another method is to be stressed out and/or tired. This is by far the least desirable way to render yourself shower worthy. If you work in theatre, a load in will fulfill that first requirement nicely. Should you find yourself clean, unstressed, yet desiring a shower, I suggest finding a mud puddle and doing the mud puddle thing.

I could go into long and complicated mathematical proofs that help to illustrate the enjoyment coefficient of a cold beer in a hot shower with loud music, but I won't. The dirtier, the more tired, the more stressed, the more enjoyment to be had from simpler things like cold beer and hot shower. You needn't worry, this is shower, and this is beer. You'll know if you need one.

Step 2: Take a Long One, Luxuriously.

Don't feel guilty for taking a long shower. The water and energy (more water) required for a hot shower with beer is significantly less than the water needed to make a bottle of therapeutic medicine. When properly applied, a good, restful, cleansing shower can make you feel whole again. So, you might be able to take a deep breath and skip one of those "as needed" doses. Also, you'll be clean. Should you feel guilty about wasting water, just plug the tub beforehand and use it for something afterwards.

Step 3: Survey the Bathroom

Since I've been on the road, I have had the opportunity to experience many different shapes and sizes of washroom. Some have been grand, some minute. Some flashy, some plain. Most of them have had those nifty retractable clotheslines in them, and most of those have been in the shower, so that you can wash your clothes and let them drip dry into the tub without spoiling the terrazzo. Retractable clotheslines are great; you can use them to jump off a building, dry your clothes, and hold your beer. I highly suggest picking one up. If the local hardware store isn't your thing, ask around. Somebody you know probably has one and doesn't want it. If one isn't to be had, don't fret. I'll show you another way to keep a beer in the shower later on. If you absolutely have to, you could get one of those monstrous plastic things, but that's not really what this is about. Back to the clothesline.

Step 4: Low-impact Macrame.

In my travels I have come across three kinds of retractable clothesline. They are: locking, non-locking, and broken. There may be more, but I haven't encountered them. This works for all three of the varieties I've experienced.

There should be a plastic knob on the end of the line. This is normally used to hook into a little slot on the adjacent wall of the shower stall. It also makes a very good stop for a slipknot. This is serendipitous, since we will be using just that for the initial phase of our beer suspension. Tie a slipknot in the end of the clothesline, and loop the line through the tightening bight so that you have a slipknot held noose. This will hold tightly and come untied almost instantly, so that your clothesline can be restored to normal duty after showering.

Take your slipknot held noose and slip it around the bottom of your beer can or bottle. Make it tight. You don't need to dent the can (unless you want to), just nice and snug.

Step 5: Secure the Beer.

Now make an inverted loop in the line, and slip it over the top of the beer. All of the canned beers I've encountered have a little crimped ring around the top. This sticks out enough to hold the skinny clothesline (which resembles heavy-duty kite string).  

  By "Inverted Loop" I mean this:

make a loop and flip it over so that the line coming from the slipknot crosses over the top of the line going back to the spool, forming a half-hitch.  With this around the top of your beer, the line going to the spool pulls up on the line going down to the bottom of the can/bottle. This keeps things in equilibrium, as well as keeping the loop tight around the top of the can. Once you've got everything where you want it, slide the slip knot and half-hitch around to the opposite side from the can opening, I find this makes everything easier during the shower, but feel free to get creative.

Step 6: Get Clean and Relax

While showering you may begin to feel warm, parched, or hot.  

   What could be more refreshing than a nice cold drink? Grab the beer and let it fulfill its task. I find it easiest to grab the beer sort of near the top, letting the line come out between my index and middle fingers. This also helps to keep the top loop in place while you're moving the can about. Again, feel free to experiment, you could even come up with some spinning beer tricks.

Step 7: Variations on a Theme

If beer isn't your thing, don't fret; you can use this with almost anything that can be held with a bit of string. This works with 8 ounce coke cans (which I vastly prefer to the 12 ounce kind. First off, it's enough and not too much, and the straight-sided cans lend themselves better to a straight-sided uses, as well as being easier to flatten out.)

I lacked a glass beer bottle, but this works with the grape juice bottle I got at the start of the tour. It has a nice little ridge for the slipknot part as well, which makes it practically impossible for the loop to move up while tied on. These bottles are also indestructible. This bottle has survived 8 months of touring in China and South Korea, and is still going strong. It's plastic, so if it ever gets a hole I can fix it with a lighter. To think, they were giving it away free with the juice! I highly recommend stocking up on them before the apocalypse.

If you don't have a clothesline in your shower, don't worry, stay tuned for Part Two, where I'll show you how to make a holder out of wire, borrow tools, befriend a maintenance man, and learn that hotel staff are people too!