It’s Friday night and I’m exhausted. Not from an exciting date night but from cleaning the three bathrooms in our home. When we were building our home in 1993 we were remodeling a portion of the old cabin and adding on new space. When we moved the existing stairway in the cabin we were left with more space upstairs that could be used for a storage closet.
We started thinking ahead to the future when our four children would all be teenagers. We opted for a second bathroom upstairs instead of a storage closet and one bathroom on the first floor. What was I thinking? I hate cleaning bathrooms.
I’m ready to lock the bathroom doors and declare them closed for business. I want to build an outhouse in the backyard.
Just think no more hairspray to clean off of just about every surface in the bathroom. No more toothpaste on the counters, multiple bottles of care products from one end of the counter to the other and mirrors to clean.
The best part of all would be no toilets or shower stalls to scrub. If we returned to the use of outhouses, the time spent in the bathroom would be cut in half especially in the cold Minnesota winters.
To complement my new outhouse I would install one of those old-fashioned claw foot tubs for Saturday Night baths. It would cut in half or more the number of towels that would need to be washed and there would be only one of them to clean instead of three shower and tub combinations.
One of the disadvantages of our bath/shower stalls is that the bathtub is not deep enough. There is always one part or more of the body that is out of the water . I’d like to soak up to my neck in the tub. I think that our electric bill and propane use would go down significantly if we changed to Saturday night only baths and the quality of baths would improve.
Flying Gma's Blog 
Patricia
December 18, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Will you have a secret bathroom for yourself? I mean winter in Minnesota…
flyinggma
December 18, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Perhaps I can find a somewhere to place a secret bathroom in our home behind a moving bookcase like Batman had in his home.
Patricia
December 18, 2010 at 8:32 pm
I would definitely work on that.
36x37
December 18, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Ha! I like your sensibility. I could agree to the outhouse if there were a heated hallway leading to it.
I’ll let you in on a secret: If you repeatedly “forget” to clean the bathrooms, someone will do it for you eventually. I stumbled upon this idea early in my marriage. And now when I bust out the vacuum cleaner, it acts like the bell Pavlov used to train his dogs, because my husband jumps up, grabs the toilet bowl cleaner and gets to work. It’s a beautiful thing.
Happy weekend!
flyinggma
December 18, 2010 at 8:32 pm
I wish someone would clean at least one of the bathrooms for me. Last evening my husband watched as I made many trips up and down the stairs past him to clean the bathrooms. He did help clean the kitchen before I started cleaning the bathrooms. The bathrooms can get pretty disgusting and the kids don’t seem to notice or care. Happy weekend to you too!
writerwoman61
December 18, 2010 at 8:58 pm
I feel your pain, Jeanne! We have two full baths and two half baths. Hope used to volunteer to clean them, but soon lost interest. The other kids don’t care at all…
My paternal Grandma in Ohio had an outhouse and only cold running water until 1973. There was no toilet paper to wipe with: just newspaper or catalogue pages. When we stayed at her house, she heated water on the stove for baths, and we took them in a big metal tub set on the kitchen floor. We were really glad when she moved to an apartment with indoor plumbing!
Thanks for bringing back memories for me!
Wendy
flyinggma
December 18, 2010 at 9:11 pm
My Dad’s parents didn’t have a hot water heater in their home until my Dad came home from the service in 1958. They heated their water on a wood cooking stove in the kitchen.
I still remember helping my Mom’s mom with laundry using the old ringer washing machine. I thought it was great fun.
sunshineinlondon
December 19, 2010 at 5:44 am
I’m with Maura on the heated hallway to the outhouse! Cleaning bathrooms, like any kind of cleaning, is never done … it looks good for about a minute!
But I do miss my boys and the kind of mess you describe – I’d rather have them here than have a tidy house! ahhhh
Sunshine xx
flyinggma
December 19, 2010 at 8:52 am
I would miss the mess and noise of a full house if they were all out on their own too. My Dad always teased my Mom about wanting to cord off a room like a museum show piece after she cleaned it. You are correct the cleaning only stays that way for about a minute. There is nothing more inviting than a clean kitchen for someone who loves to cook.