There hasn’t been much innovation in the toilet seat space in my lifetime: the methods for affixing the seat to the toilet have either been cheap plastic bolts that eventually give way, or solid metal bolts that, once exposed to the rigours of the toileting environment, rust, never to be loosened again.

Today I had a rare celestial event: a need to replace both of the toilet seats at 100 Prince Street, upstairs and down, and this led me to discover the “Easy Clean & Change Hinge” on Bemis-brand seats at Home Depot.

It’s an ingenious scheme that has you affix solid-seeming plastic bolts to the toilet and then simply dropping the seat into place and locking it. This upbeat video will walk you through it all.

While delays from prying off the rusted bolts of the old upstairs seat, with the attendant frustrations and swearing, caused Oliver to almost burst for lack of toilet, the new seat went on in about a minute, and the crisis was averted.

Bravo, Bemis, bravo.