All Things Potty

"Liza, did you ever think what it would be like if we only had to pee once a week?"

"That'd be cool," I replied.

"Think about it. It would be more of an event. And there wouldn't need to be as many public restrooms and the lines wouldn't be long."

This is literally a conversation that my sister and I had over 10 years ago. And since then, the thought has stuck with me. Today, as I was using the facilities at the mall, I was basically writing this post in my mind. Public bathrooms are crazy places and there is so much to say about the art of using a public restroom.

I judge the quality of a restroom on three factors:

Cleanliness is number one. I don't like to see toilets that look dingy or a floor that makes me want to burn my shoes after standing on it. I don't want trash laying on the ground or someones mess still in the toilet. And of course, there should always be soap. I won't even talk about the changing tables. I'd rather change my baby in the back end of my car than use some of those.

Air supply is also important to me. A restroom should not be warm and lacking in air flow. It should be air conditioned and have some kind of good smelling air freshener. Let's face it, bathrooms can smell.

Lastly, I want space. I hate the bathroom stalls where you have to straddle the toilet to close the door and I'm a pretty small person, so you know if I have to straddle the toilet to close the door, this is not good for anyone - especially moms with little ones. LBC has these tiny stalls that make me straddle the toilet. The new mall bathrooms by Gottchalks have plenty of space. I feel like I could do pirouettes in there!

I've started to mentally compile a list of public places that have, clean facilities to use. If we are on a trip, I'd rather use the restroom at a Lowes or a Linens and Things than a gas station, but the best pick is usually one of those travel centers. They always have clean bathrooms. Once when I was pregnant, I had to pee so badly while running errands that I stopped at Costco, whipped out my card and went in just to use their potty. Membership had its reward that day! I don't think boys understand this concept since all they do is stand to take care of their business. Josh has given me a grief over not wanting to use the bathroom at a shell station, but I just don't think he gets it.

I've also become painfully aware that I have to be especially careful about getting to close to the sink, because in a public restroom, people spill water on the counter and don't always wipe it up. If I'm not careful, I'll be all wet with gross counter water.

I think that all restrooms should have paper towels as an option. I think the trash can for the paper towels should always be by the door, so I can open the door, then dispose of my paper towel and then leave. Once, Jana and I waited for someone else to come into the bathroom so that we wouldn't have to touch the door handle to leave. We were at the movie theatre that is now the dollar theatre. They had two doors that you had to open, so it was quite a trick. I also believe she tried opening it with her foot - although it seems like something I would try. Neither of us wanted to touch the yucky door handle. I'm sure if I wanted to look up facts about what percentage of people wash their hands after using a public bathroom, I'd be thoroughly disgusted, but I'm not going to do that. I'm not trying to convince you that my nerousis is the right way - it's just my way. I'll never forget the day that I pretty much vowed to never touch another restroom door handle again. I was in the bathroom near the BC cafeteria and I watched this lady come out of the stall, not wash her hands, sneeze on her hand and then open the door. It was a real turning point for me.

Lastly, using the bathroom at work has made me really self conscious of my feet. I look at the feet of the person in the stall next to me and try to guess which coworker they are. I notice if they take care of their feet or not and often I have shoe envy. There was a lot more explanation in this paragraph, but I worried that you would all be paranoid that I was forever judging your feet, so I had to edit.

I'm not sure how to end a bathroom themed post, so I'll leave you with a completely unrelated issue that has presented itself.

The home I live in has an abundance of smoke detectors. Periodically the batteries get old and they beep every 3 minutes or so. It drives me crazy. We always keep batteries on hand so that it's not something we have to listen to indefinitely. Since the weather is cooling off, we've all had our windows open. My neighbor's fire alarm has been chirping since Friday night! On Sunday, I thought it would be really nice to offer them a battery since we had two extras and our neighbor was outside working on his lawn, so it wouldn't be like we were knocking on the door to offer a battery, we'd just have the conversation in passing. Josh thought it wasn't a good idea because it would seem more like we were doing it because it was bothering us, so it would be more of a selfish "your alarm is annoying us here have a battery type of thing." I wonder how long the chirping will continue.