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Scheduling a shower

By Laura Snyder 4 min read

The trouble with having a large family is getting everyone clean. I’ve long ago given up on keeping them clean, but a daily bath is definitely in order for the youngest ones in my family. I try to give my younger children a bath at night. But unless I stretch bath time out for three or four hours, considering how long it takes for the hot water heater to recover, they all can’t take one on the same night.

When they were babies, I could get away with putting them all in the tub together. Even if they would tolerate that now, which they most emphatically would not, my bathroom would quickly deteriorate under those circumstances. They’re much more…active…now.

I’ve tried using the same bath water for all of them. My daughter loves very hot baths and she is usually the cleanest of them, so she would go first. After that, however, I had trouble convincing my germophobic son that the water was cleaner than he was. If I couldn’t get him in the tub after my daughter, there was no way I’d get him in there after my six-year old. That one attracts dirt like a Swiffer. Honestly, I’ve never seen him roll around in a pile of loose dirt, but he always looks as though he has.

Dirt imbeds itself under his fingernails, behind his ears and on any part of his body that has been exposed to whatever he spilled on himself that day. There are many times that I have considered hosing him down before he came in the house.

So, anyway, the bath water is definitely unrecyclable after he’s been in it and there is no hot water left for a shower.

We’ve finally decided on a staggered bath/shower schedule for the older two and an on-demand schedule for the youngest.

Getting a hot shower for myself from day to day is a crap-shoot. It’s not because of a shortage of showers – we have three of them in our house – it’s the shortage of hot water. What good is having three showers if we can’t use them all at once?

The adults in my family include my nineteen-year old son when he is home from college. We all need to take a shower in the morning. If we take one at night, it results in moderate to severe bed-head which no amount of gel, mousse, or other industrial-strength hair care product can make right.

Since I am the only woman fighting for the shower in the morning, I figured the easiest way to solve the issue was for the men to shave themselves bald and shower at night. However, they were not inclined to be reasonable.

As a result of this need for a hot shower in the morning, we are all motivated to rise and shine much earlier than any sane person. However, regardless of my diligence where rising and shining is concerned, sometimes I am still the last person to take a shower.

Thinking that I’ve waited long enough for the hot water to recover, I’ll get in the shower, lather up, and only then discover that…I was wrong.

No matter how much I adjust the cold water to allow more warm water, I know that I’m eventually going to be freezing my butt off under a stream of frigid, arctic water. At that moment, my mindset changes very quickly from “How long can I stay in this shower?” to “How fast can I get out?”

Some people say that taking a cold shower is “exhilarating”. Those are the same people that jog 20 miles every morning, climb Mt. Everest for fun, and jump out of airplanes with nothing but a backpack with a large handkerchief inside.

You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more columns and info about her books.

You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com

for more columns and info about her books.

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