One Bathroom Woes

We only have one bathroom. In fact, thinking back we have only had one bathroom in each place we have lived since we got married. You would think I would be used to it by now.
In the beginning it wasn't so bad. Just me and D, sharing everything including our one bathroom. Then along came #1. He was four before he was potty trained, so it still wasn't too bad. By the time D and I had been married for seven years and a couple of months, we had five children. As they have each gotten potty trained, our little bathroom has seemed to get smaller and smaller.
Now we have seven bathroom using people at our house, and still only one toilet to go around. Oh how I dream of having a master bedroom suite with a bathroom of its own. Then it would be back to D and me, sharing one bathroom, and the boys could fight it out over the other one.
Some of the woes associated with sharing my bathroom with 6 males...
1. Drippage aka over spray: D either has pretty good aim, or knows how to clean up after himself. The other boys, however, have a tendency to overshoot, ricochet, or just drip and the end result is pee on the toilet seat (even though they put the seat up to pee). One nice note is that they always put the seat down. The only time I have to worry about the seat being left up is when males from the extended family visit.
A wet toilet seat is the bane of my bathroom activities. Sometimes...you just really have to go, and having to pause to make sure the seat is dry is always a hassle. Thank goodness for disinfecting wipes!
2. Toothpaste trauma: There is a tendency by the boys to either get too much toothpaste on their toothbrush, or to just be unable to resist the urge to squirt toothpaste on the counter. I am not sure which, but I am very tired of cleaning up the globs of toothpaste all over the sink, and the toothpaste spray on the mirror.
3. Hang it up already!: Unfortunately the boys are too short to reach the towel rack. We really need to get another one. Our shower curtain rod has a towel rod attached to it. It works fine for me and for D to hang our towels on, but there is not a towel rod for the boys. Their wet towels end up on the floor after they shower. I think we need to remedy this problem, but even so, there is not going to be room in our bathroom for five towels worth of rods.
4. A basketball team, we are not: We frequently get comments from people that with our five boys we have enough to make our own basketball team. While that is true, none of our boys has really mastered the art of making it into the basket. The laundry basket. There is a laundry basket right there in the bathroom, yet they still can't seem to get their dirty clothes into it. I regularly find their little underwear and other clothes strewn about the place. This is one that just takes the proper training...so I will work on them.
5. strangled soap: I like my shower, and I like it to look nice. D already knows to extract any chest hairs from the soap before exiting the shower. I like the soap to look nice even if I am the only one that will see it. Today I went to take my shower and the soap looked like it had been chewed up by a dog. I already knew that at least a couple of the big boys had taken showers that morning. They can't help but squeeze the soap, or poke holes in it...its funner than playdoh! If I had my own bathroom...I could have nice pristine soap in it. Such a nice dream to have.
6. Get in line: Of course there is the usual problem of seven people using one bathroom. People often hear nature calling at the same time. I could normally get over this quickly, but one of my boys is notorious for taking an extra long time because he wants to make sure his bum is extra clean. I suppose I shouldn't complain. Cleanliness is next to...oh...you know what I mean. Then there is #5 who has recently become pretty serious about his potty training. He gets nervous that he will have an accident though, so he will sit in the bathroom waiting to go for 45 minutes at a time...sometimes even longer. While I am thrilled that he hasn't had any accidents for a long time...45 minutes of waiting is putting a damper on my day.
7. Interruptions: This goes along with #6. The thing is, I can't even take a shower without someone needing to use the bathroom. The shower curtain is my friend, but there its not much fun to be taking a shower and find the sudden urge to get out early because the bouquet of the room has suddenly changed. Sometimes the hot water will also run out before the interrupter is done doing their business, and I end up shivering in the shower, with a towel wrapped around me, waiting for them to get out so I can come out of the shower.

All in all, even though I am complaining...I am very grateful for the bathroom I have. I can always take comfort in the memory of those weeks and months when we were remodeling the bathroom, and had to use a portable toilet off and on, and had to use a hose in the laundry room sink for bathing. My bathroom seems like heaven in comparison.