The *Other* Bathroom

We have two bathrooms.  It is a huge blessing because one of them is my bathroom (and the husband's) and the other is the KIDs' bathroom.  He he.  This means I don't have to deal with little kid pee smell every time I use it.  I also don't have to look at globs of toothpaste in the sink when I brush my teeth.  I can, pretty much, completely avoid it unless I have to deal with it.

Before you get too worried, I do go in there from time to time to keep it from getting disgusting, but daily?  No way.  No how.  Until now.

You see, company uses that bathroom.  Which means that when it's time to have someone over I have to do a major overhaul.  I am trying to get to the point where my entire house is in acceptable condition at most times of the day (or at least once a day).  Or at least the public areas (yes, I just continuously scaled back until I hit the realistic limit).  That would include the other bathroom!

And, while I would have loved to push it to the back of the list of rooms to tackle, my choices now included the bathroom, the kitchen, the laundry room, or the office/school/catch all area.  The bathroom was the smallest.  It was also the easiest!

Before I started in the bathroom each day, I made sure to do my previous day's work first.  

1.  Start first load of laundry
2.  Make bed.
3.  Get dressed (shoes)
4.  Starting at bedside table and going around the room I picked up clothes, clutter, trash, and things that didn't belong in the room (taken to the rooms where they did).
5.  I picked up the master bathroom floor and counters.
6.  Changed the roll of toilet paper.
7.  Did one weekly task in the bathroom.
8.  Started a load of laundry (came back to put in drier/hang to dry and to fold one load).
9.  Wiped down table and benches.
10.  Swept the dining area floor.
11.  Emptied the trash.
12.  Switched over laundry, hung up wet clothes, folded prior day's load.  Put load away.
Next on the list would have been to pick up the living room, but I delegated ;).  That became one of the jobs for the kids.

The first day of the bathroom, I just picked it up.  Mostly it was just dirty clothes that my children had left behind, and trash that was in the random direction of the trash can.  My kids think that is good enough.  Sigh.  Oh, and I put the toilet paper on the roll  and threw away the 4 or 5 empty rolls that were next to it.  I think it was the first time the roll had been on the dispenser in quite awhile.

The rest of the recovery went WAAAAYYY better then I could of thought.  You see, I was already cleaning up one bathroom and doing one weekly chore per day.  So, as soon as I finished one sink, I just walked over to the other bathroom.  When I cleaned one toilet I just went and cleaned the other toilet.  

No need to get out extra cleaning supplies, they were already out.  No need to think about what I should be doing, I was already doing it.  Man that was easy.  Why didn't I think of that before?  Duh moment.

I realize that if the bathroom was on another floor of the house it would have been a little harder, but not much.  And, it was a mute point because they are RIGHT next to each other.  One is just IN my bedroom and the other right OUTSIDE my bedroom (old house, all water must run to the same place).

Of course, this being the first time I had worked on cleaning the 2nd bath in awhile, it took a little longer then the master, but not long.  10 minutes tops on any given task and I was done with both bathrooms.  

It's THIS kind of thinking that has derailed my cleaning in the past.  Somehow, I think things will take FOREVER, when they will only take a few minutes.  The best part, is that now my children are seeing what a maintained bathroom should look like, so sooner then later I can pass the job off to them ;).

5 weeks, 5 rooms and I can certainly tell you that the house was looking up!!

Thanks for stopping by!

God Bless,
Lisa