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My house has three full baths. We have two master bedrooms each with it's own private bath, and a third with the door to the hallway. My husband and I are in one, our college aged son is in the other. I wouldn't want my guests having to go through a bedroom to use the bathroom--especially in the middle of the night, so having the third bathroom is a must in this home.
Because it's not used that often, the guest bath is easy enough to keep clean. I clean the bowl every week and wipe down the sink and tub every couple of weeks, because nobody uses them. Of course after company leaves it gets a good scrubbing.
By the way, we have a TV in the bathroom. My husband likes to watch the news in the morning while he's showering and getting dressed.
We grew up 5 in the house with 1 bath for many years. When I was in middle school we moved into a town house that had 1.5 (1 full up and 1/2 down). Thinking back, I don't remember anyone ever really using that 1/2 bath unless it was a guest. Summers when we visited my Grandparents, they had only 1 bath in a rather large home, same with my Great grandmother - large colonial style home and 1 bath. My family is rather large so summers in the small town usually equaled several children/adults in and out of the house, especially Sunday's after church. I still don't remember it ever being a major issue, having the 1 bath with multiple grandchildren and adults. My grandmother just recently had another full bath added on to the house. Just recently we were all in town to celebrate her 80th birthday and let me see how many people stayed at the house, hmmm approx. 14 of us stayed there for 2 days and not counting the other grand children/great grands/nephews/nieces and their children who came through. So on Sunday morning 14 people getting ready for church with 2 baths available - believe it or not we we all had a hearty breakfast, were well groomed, and ON TIME
I currently have 2 full baths (1 master and 1 that the children share). It's convenient however, if I were to lose it all today/tomorrow, I have no problem with surviving
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Originally Posted by harry chickpea
About the lack of bathrooms in older homes... Apparently a lot of folks here have never heard of thunder jugs, or washbasins and pitchers. In some houses, every bedroom had a set. Sponge baths were a lot more common back then. It does get amusing sometimes when a young person will trot out a thunder jug and think it was used for something else.
You are so right, my great grandmother had a fancy washbasin and pitcher in all the rooms in her home when i was growing up. They are not in use now, but simply on display at my grandmothers' house.
Actually, there may be more than one spot where the outhouse sat. Back in the civil war days in the town where I grew up, there was an individual that made a living digging the holes for outhouses, and carefully filling the old hole so that it remained sanitary. The local doctor of the time opined that the one man had probably done more for the health of the town than he, the doctor, had.
Along these lines, you may find this interesting and humorous.
Yeah, when we first bought our house we tinkered with the idea of converting the "trunk closet" on the 2nd floor to a master bath, as it really isn't a good use of space today, and backs up to the existing bath so the conversion in theory would be easy. And I'm not certain that still isn't a viable option one day.
But we decided to wait on that project and just see how the house worked out for us without a major change to the configuration. After all it has been the way it is today for 80 years.
Regarding your "outhouse".... if you do find it, interestingly there are people that will pay you for permission to dig it out. It turns out that along with its primary purpose, most outhouse pits were also used as general trash/refuse dumps, plus sometimes things just got dropped in there and as you can imagine were left
So, many years later after all the nasty stuff has turned to nothing more than good dirt, these outhouse diggers like to dig them up and see what treasures and artifacts they find. Apparently they really find interesting things that tell a bit more about life during the time.
Some find this practice a bit "icky", but it really isn't as bad as it sounds. After 100 years, it is just dirt
You only really need one bathroom when it comes down to it. We hate to wait and really if we all got up out of bed early enough it wouldn't be so bad. I would take one bathroom over an outhouse and a slop jar any day of the week.
Growing up our house for two adults and three daughters had two bathrooms. However, at one point the main one broke. Our parents never had it fixed. So, we had two adults and three teenaged girls using the bathroom in the master bedroom. This bathroom was smaller than the hall one. It was never an issue. I never recall having to wait to use it or anything like that.
After my husband and I got very sick with the flu at the same time we were grateful to have 2 bathrooms, at least 2 toilets, 1.5 baths would have been good enough.
I grew up in a house with one bathroom and we never had a problem--however now that we are building a new home I look forward to one of those giant master baths so of course you have to have another for guests--also we are doing a finished basement with 2 bedrooms and a rec. room so we are doing a full bath down there (it doesn't cost much more to do a full vs a half so why not)--so it will be just my husband and I in a 5 bd 3 bath HA!
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