The shower with the window open
On a small change I made to the bathroom routine — leaving the small window cracked open during the morning shower — and on what cool air during a hot shower does that closed windows do not.
Most of the year, the small window in our bathroom is cracked open about five centimetres during the morning shower. The opening lets cool air into the bathroom while the hot water is running. The combination — hot water on the skin, cool air on the small areas not under the spray — produces a small temperature contrast that, more than anything else, is what wakes me up properly in the morning.
I had, for years, taken showers with the window closed. The bathroom would, in the course of a shower, become hot and steamy and slightly oppressive. I would step out of the shower into a humid bathroom and the small cooling that I had hoped the shower would provide would be undone by the warm humid air. The hot showers, in retrospect, had been less refreshing than I had assumed.
What changed when I started leaving the window open
The bathroom stayed cooler. The skin, briefly cool whenever I moved out from under the direct spray, registered the temperature contrast more sharply. The body, given small inputs of both hot and cool throughout the shower, woke up more thoroughly than the all-hot version had produced. The cardiovascular system, working slightly harder to thermoregulate in the variable environment, got a small additional input that the all-hot shower had not provided.
The mirror, also, does not fog up. The bathroom dries faster after the shower. The small humidity that, over years, can cause small mould problems in a bathroom is much reduced. The whole bathroom is, structurally, in better shape with the small window opening allowed.
If you live somewhere with reasonable air quality and a small window in the bathroom, try cracking it open during your next shower. The change is small. The benefit, accumulated across many showers, is real. The body wakes up better. The bathroom stays in better condition. The small daily ritual of the morning shower becomes, in itself, a slightly more effective version of what the shower was supposed to be doing.