Before I started a family, the bathroom was kind of similar to the post office for me, I’d occasionally stop in, drop off my mail and abandon ship a few minutes later.
In recent years, since Ava, Charlie and Mason were born, I’d locate the little half-bathroom in our house and barricade myself inside with a book, magazine, the world of Facebook and Instagram on my cell phone – and even considered installing a TV next to the bowl, as the kids slid DVD’s and notes under the door while banging incessantly to the point of me having to file a homeowner’s claim.
These days, the throne rooms in our house should just have turnstiles installed with little embedded number counters that keep track of their immense traffic.
With 4½ bathrooms in our new house (an upgrade from 3½), we were initially excited about everyone having their own space, we thought it would make both bedtime and morning routines easier. However, after 2 months and school having started in September – the outlook has significantly changed. More is not better.
That first week of school, after dropping Ava at elementary school and the boys at Pre-K, I came home to find every bathroom looking like something out of a hygienic horror film.
I had hardened toothpaste glommed onto the outer edges of six sinks, loose hairbrushes, unflushed toilets and uncontained bowl brushes running wild in the upstairs hallway. Numerous 5-pound pee-soaked pull-ups strewn across the floor, sneeze-spray on the mirrors and dribbles of mouthwash on the counter.
And if this weren’t enough, add into the mix our nine-year-old incontinent (perhaps not incontinent, just lazy) Boston Terrier, Cooper… He’s potentially the worst child we have. Any trashcan that’s filled, he turns over. Any Pull-Up that’s left unattended, he rips to shreds. Any piece of bare tile bathroom floor, he pees on it. Thankfully, somehow he’s decided that the downstairs bathroom, in addition to being the kids go-to destruction zone, is his non-stop piss haven. The families prior to us had dogs and Cooper is settling in nicely, marking his territory in an attempt to alpha one over on them. This is where Clorox bleach comes in handy.
My wife and I have made a concerted effort to attempt just about everything we can do to make our lives simpler – but the individual bathroom thing seems to be way ahead of its time. What began as a preemptive solution to a potential problem is a whirling dervish of a catastrophe.
After thinking long and hard about a revised approach, I took a page from my childhood. While growing up in rural Pennsylvania, we had limited space in our house before my dad put on an addition. Me and my two brothers all shared one room and we equally shared a small bathroom. While this might not have been ideal for us as little kids – it was a blessing for my parents, who managed to keep the destruction contained to 40 square feet.
So.
We now use one bathroom at night to bathe all the kids and one bathroom in the mornings downstairs to do hair, teeth, wash faces, apply sunscreen, paint nails – all that fun stuff. Much simpler.
And guess who got his little half-bathroom-corner-office back? THIS guy.
Thanks to my friends at Clorox, you can polish up those crusty jack-n-jill bathrooms in your house and maybe even give YOUR fortress of solitude a little facelift. Enter the raffle below to have them send you $150 Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card, 2 brand-spanking new white bath towels, a combination of 3 acrylic canisters and style station pro from The Container Store and Clorox bleach and a Clorox bleach pen, to spot-treat those clothes that were included in the bathroom casualty!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a sponsored post on behalf of the Clorox #ReachforBleach campaign, however all thoughts and opinions are my own. Give them a follow on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram!
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