The bathroom battle rages on
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- June 27, 2023
- 363
Bathrooms can often be difficult to keep clean and shiny. Most of them are small rooms crammed with fixtures, every one fitted with running water. This moist atmosphere encourages the growth of all sorts of nasty organisms: germs, mold and that bane of all bathrooms, mildew. Let that stuff get a grip on your grout and you’ll be sorry.
What a treat it would be if all our bathrooms looked like the ones featured in magazines! Those are all spotlessly clean and perfectly coordinated. The towels and washcloths are always perfectly matched sets, hanging neatly on their rods, never lying in damp heaps on the floor. The tile and chrome have bright, clear complexions unmarred by soap scrum. The usual flotsam and jetsam of shampoo bottles, hairspray cans are invisible. And in the magazine pictures, the toilet seat is always demurely down.
Our bathrooms might look like that if we could leave them alone! That’s the real problem, bathrooms are there to be used and not all users care how they leave that room. Particularly those users who never have to clean that room.
Obviously, our bathrooms need the protection of strong enforceable rules. No person over 7 years old should be allowed bathroom privileges without bathroom responsibilities. In other words, if you use it, you can help keep it neat and clean.
For instance, those who drop damp towels on the floor will automatically lose their towel
rights and be reduced to drying off with toilet paper for a week. Those who leave a ring in the tub must scrub that tub every day for a week. And, last but not least, should someone leave the toilet seat up, that person must clean and polish that potty everyday for at least
a year.
It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Good luck!