DOOEEESSSS ANYONE NEED THE BATHHHHROOM?!

[MBeat]

Family disagreement about the bathroom., light hearted and one for larger families in one toilet houses. I know many of you will not be able to fathom this, but it’s common enough and not an easy fix to many old terraces for a number of reasons, that there’s one loo to share.

DH is one end of the spectrum. Every bathroom visit he’s SHOUTING does anyone need the toilet???!!! He’ll yell until he’s heard a no from everyone, one child may have headphones on, another is watching a film with a door closed and another maybe in the garden. It can go on for ages shouting up and down. It’s frankly annoying if you are dozing on the sofa and have to get up to yell back, you often have to get up and yell because he can’t hear you over the running water.

The house isn’t big, you hear the pipes and water as easily as a yell imo. However, even if I get up and say ‘I’m off to have a bath’ this isn’t registered. I have to say ‘do you need the toilet’, or half the time 2 mins after getting in someone will knock so desperate their bladder will explode. Half the time DH. I think people need to take some responsibility and use common sense, and cut the yelling a bit. The kids are being trained imo to wait to use the loo until the point of wetting themselves. They aren’t young kids. They go on hour long bus journeys or go to the cinema and cope, I don’t get why in the house there needs to be so often a culture of immediate toilet needs within 30 seconds. The teen is now also doing the yelling everytime he’s in the bathroom. If everyone joins in it’s a ton of yelling about that makes my head want to explode sometimes. DH works a job too within limited toilet access. So I’m confident it’s not medical issues for anyone.

It drives me mad the yelling, the knocking on each other. You can sit on the loo and find you’ve been followed upstairs! It’s like a prompt to others, if you don’t ask every person individually they feel they don’t need to reply or think, but if you walk upstairs you are followed!

I have said can’t people just go if they need it, or if they hear the bath, or is someone mentions a bath. Or wait ten minutes sometimes?

Aibu???

Please don’t response ‘you need another loo’, obviously this is ideal and I’m not daft. But we can’t for various reasons, financial, size and drainage positions

How many people sharing the loo? If it's a lot, it does increase the odds someone will need it during say, a 30 min bath

I hear ya!
We're a family of 4 adults, 5 when ds's girlfriend is here and one bathroom.

Ds loves a 45 minute shower, grooming, god knows what session and never does the 'shout out'
Dd on the other hand always runs around wildly asking who needs the loo and invariably everyone jumps up and instantly seem desperate to go and make her late when she finally gets in there.

I've learnt to call whenever I leave the local supermarket and if one of the men has just gone in, I have a quick wee in Sainsbury's 😂

We also stand zero chance of adding an extra loo but believe me I have contemplated putting a camping loo in the shed many times!!

Drives me bammy in my house.
Every time I need the loo, someone is in. It's so bad that I've got to the point that I now text the family group chat (after my boys football training when I've sat in the car for 2 hours and am fit to burst) "if anyone is in that loo when I get home, I'm coming in and I wont be responsible for your therapy bills" 😂

My teenage daughter enjoys 45 minute long showers but wouldn't dream of checking with anyone that they may need in quickly before she begins the saga.
My son can't enter the bathroom without leaving some form of clothing behind him.
Mornings are especially bad when four people are trying to get organised and out the door.
No-one else in the whole house seems to be aware that the bath mat doesn't dry if you don't pick it up. Also, empty loo roll tubes aren't transported to the bin by the fairies, actually.

When I win the lottery (because that's what it would take for me to realise the dream) I'm going to have a 4 bed, 3 bath house and one of the bathrooms will be MINE and mine alone.

Edited for spelling error*

YANBU. This sounds maddening.

I have a little sympathy with your husband because the sound of running water helps things along rather. Would a vague rota or schedule for showers and baths help?

My kids are younger (5 and 7) but we have 1 bathroom for 4 of us. It is driving me mad. The kids seem capable of going from “I don’t need the loo no definitely don’t” to door banging “I AM DEEEESPERAAAAATE!!” in about 30 seconds. DH likes to do his reading on the toilet. I’m chronically constipated and need 5 min of peace to do my business. I hate everything to do with that bathroom.

When I was a child, there were 6 of us in a house with one indoor loo. There was actually an outside one too, but since it was always Spider-Central it was hardly ever used.

I still remember my younger sister at maybe 3, wriggling painfully outside the locked loo door and wailing, ‘It’s comin’ it’s comin’ it’s comin’!’

At least we knew when my DF was going to monopolise it for a while - he’d take the paper and say e.g. ‘I am going to commune with my soul.’ 😂

You call home to see if anyone is in the loo?!?

There usually 5 of us, but occasionally 7 when all are staying.

Tbf no one is actually a bathroom hog. I’ve had a shower for example since posting the OP. Wees are minutes and no one dares take a phone to the loo luckily. I’m talking people knocking during a 90 second wee sometimes!

Baths aren’t a crazy length usually, and we don’t have the morning rush for the bathroom at the same time luckily so no one over laps in needing to leave for work.

I just feel the fucking shouting needs to cease 😂
I feel like I’m in a Groundhog Day loop over a bloody bathroom. No one has a bladder that can’t wait 15min. It’s rarely back to back occupied. I just think everyone needs to get over it a bit.

Remove the shouting and genuinely there generally aren’t big issues. It’s like however they are trained, only if you don’t shout, to make a point by knocking. It’s like everyone does it to make a point ‘they weren’t told’. If you do expressly ask everyone they say no, and no one enters the bathroom in the following hour 🙄

We only have one loo but when we redid the bathroom we separated it. At least the loo is always available, even when someones in the bath or shower. Would this be an option ?

At this age I remember shouting to go in the garden 😂
3 hour film-fine
1 hour on a bus-fine
4 hour activity of internet-fine
Me going to the loo-30 seconds until a bladder was at risk of explosion

No, the layout is impossible for that

Family WhatsApp group? If your kids are old enough for phones that is. People can announce in the group that they are having a bath so if you need a wee get it now!! Still annoying but less shouty….. I feel your pain having grown up in a busy one loo household!

God this would do my brain in! I have 2 bathrooms for Dd and I and she still wants to wee on the loo that I’m using.

Do you have an under stairs cupboard you could convert to a loo?

None of us are phones all the time people, they tend to get dumped upstairs . It would be loads of ‘I’d didn’t see the message’ when they l find it halfway through a bath and feel prompted to knock! Is probably have more knocking as they all eventually picked up texts

Sounds very sensible OP.

How about a trialling a house rule that no one asks before using it, but people try to wait 15 mins before knocking? Or whatever number of minutes everyone agrees is reasonable

Ooh or can you buy one of those office meeting room slider thingies and people can slide it to ‘occupied’ when they use it so you just have to walk past to see?

I feel sorry for your neighbours, all that shouting in a terrace house, they must all know your routines in far more detail than they'd like!

Or maybe they are a large family too and pretty normal decent people. Maybe they are also Victorian terraces… just maybe outside your imagined scenario

Maybe a slider of ‘open’ and ‘shuuuttt uuuup’ 😂

Chamber pots?

Use your indoor voice is my response to all the shouting

I get what you mean though ds is chronically constipated so he requires "time" in the bathroom to go he always asks then gets agitated when we all want a quick wee because he never knows when he has to "go" until last minute

I've never felt so lucky!!! Just 2 of us in a 3 bath/shower room house. 2 upstairs, 1 downstairs. It means we both have our own upstairs bathroom... mine is also used by overnight visitors as it is kept much nicer! And of course the downstairs loo for daytime visits/visitors. We put the downstairs shower/utility room in recently to future proof the house now we are both getting so decrepit!

God, in our house it drove us mad when we only had one loo before three, which was in the bathroom. The kids always managed to need the loo just as the other had got in the bath.

No solutions but it must be maddening!

My Dd used to end up going in the garden! 😂

At least they knock.

My 12yo will wait silently outside the door... as in an inch away. She makes me jump everytime when I open the door to find this face staring at me.