A Tale of Two Bathrooms

One challenging thing about having Scotty work from home for the last year is that he works in our bedroom, so I'm always sneaking around in the background of his virtual meetings trying to retrieve clothes and shoes or put away laundry. Scotty also works in very close proximity to the bathroom, so anytime I take a shower or flush the toilet, I have to be mindful of the presence of his co-workers, lest some Church employee in Brazil hear my restroom sounds. 

Blow drying my hair needs to be planned around Scotty's conference calls... which he has ALL DAY LONG. Today I took my blow dryer to the downstairs bathroom so I wouldn't disturb Scotty. I don't like going to the downstairs bathroom because A) my supplies aren’t down there, and B) that bathroom stinks and always has (I think it's in the floor under the toilet, and someday we need to rip everything out and renovate. Until then... pew). 

Even though I don't like using the downstairs bathroom, I’m grateful we have it. 

When I was growing up and dividing time between my mom's house and my dad's house, each of them only had one bathroom. My mom lived in a really small house - small enough that our fridge blocked some of the cupboards, and we had to turn sideways to squeeze between the fridge and the oven to get to the hallway. The single bathroom had to accommodate five people. 

At my dad's house, we had anywhere between 8-11 people living at a time and sharing one bathroom. Whenever we took road trips, we would spend the last half hour of the trip negotiating who got to use the bathroom in which order when we got home. I developed a habit of going outside to pee behind the garage when I was little, and one time, my step-sister and I thought it would be a genius idea to start using the toilet in the camping trailer. Our parents weren't very happy when they unexpectedly found the septic tank hosting our weeks' worth of urine. We had other non-conventional ways of relieving ourselves that I can't exactly write about on the internet. Suffice it to say, in a house of seven kids with one bathroom, desperation results in creativity. 

Eventually my dad installed an extra toilet in the laundry room. It wasn't ever a "bathroom," though. It was just an unfinished basement (used as a bedroom) with a toilet, washer, and dryer in it. No sink. No bathtub. No walls. No door. Eventually my dad built a wall on one side, and I think we might have hung a sheet on the other, but pretty much anytime you used the downstairs toilet, you ran the risk of anyone in the family walking in on you. And heaven help you if you ever had to do a number two. My dad was always lecturing us about the size of poops that the basement toilet could handle. It was never worth the risk. 

When I was 12, my dad moved to a house with three bathrooms... just in time for everyone to start moving out. My mom moved to a house with two bathrooms when I was 15. A few years later, Scotty and I got married and moved into a one-bathroom house for a while. Then we lived with his mom for three months, who also had one bathroom.

Now we've lived happily for 17 years (our house-iversary was February 1st) in our humble, two-bathroom home, and even though one of those bathrooms smells like an outhouse, we know we are experiencing the greatest of luxuries... multiple restrooms! With walls! And doors!