Bathrooms are one of those places that everyone visits all the time and they get very dirty very easily. Especially with 5 boys in the house. I still don’t get how equipped with a tool that allows them to aim perfectly they have no sense of aim….whether they are 3 or 35….I just don’t get it, it is truly one of life’s greatest mysteries. And I have a thing about walking into a bathroom and it smelling like urine. I have enough nasty smells at work, I really just don’t want to walk in a bathroom and have my nose assaulted at home as well.
And so for the longest time I was scrubbing toilets and around the toilets on almost an every other day basis. There are two main toilets that the kids use (we only have 4 in the house as it is), the one in their bathroom upstairs by their rooms and then one right off the kitchen. And both always smelled awful.
On top of their bathroom smelling bad the sink somehow was always covered with toothpaste….Again something that it quite easy to aim somehow managed to be spread all over the counter top. And I demonstrated, begged, asked, and cleaned up and cleaned up and cleaned up toothpaste over and over and over again.
And so it was finally time to do something else because what I was doing wasn’t working. At all. And I realized at least the three older kids know how to use squirt bottles and know how to use rags. And so they were each assigned a bathroom fixture, Leighton got the toilet upstairs, Caedmon the toilet down stairs and Edric the sink/counter tp in the bathroom upstairs. They were each given a bottle of cleaner (total side note, I have become a big fan of Grove Collaborative and their collection, first off their stuff smells amazing, and works great, is environmentally friendly and I can get it delivered to my door instead of having to stop at Target which always means I spent at least 100$ more than I planned despite only needing 2 things-Grove Collaborative totally eliminates that!) and I demonstrated what I wanted done…..daily. For the toilets I expect them to spray and wipe down everything on the outside, the only part that doesn’t get a daily wipe down is the inner bowl which we do once a week….and somehow is always the least dirty. For the sinks I wanted all the random toothpaste mess gone every day.
Every morning this has become part of our daily routine. The kids know after breakfast and cleaning up the table that they need to make their beds, brush their teeth, take care of the cats and clean their bathroom thing. And it has worked amazingly well, we are 5 months into this new routine and I don’t walk into the bathrooms anymore smelling urine all the time. They are learning responsibility on top of it so its a win win for everyone (but especially me). And it makes Saturday morning cleaning times a whole lot easier.
Hiking Mommy 