{3} Benefits of One Bathroom

I've often mentioned our one bathroom situation.  As in, we have one bathroom.  There are a lot of downsides to this but the longer we've lived with it (13+ years!) the more benefits to it I see as well.  One of the requirements for our next house is DEFINITELY more than one bathroom.  That's pretty high on the list.  But after all these years, there are certainly benefits to just the one and it's downstairs location. 

1) Only ONE bathroom to clean
Really, the biggest benefit.  We only have one bathroom to clean.  That we is being generous because for the first 13 years we lived here I did 99% of the bathroom cleaning (now Luke's been assigned parts of it).  It's really easy where there is only one (small) bathroom to clean!

2) All the bathroom stuff is in one bathroom
There are definitely downsides to this as well.  All our regularly used toiletries and personal care items have to live in the same bathroom that all of our guests use (I say this as if we have people over on a very regular basis.).  Our bath towels are all on the back of the door that guests have to close (unless you are under the age of 5, then door closing seems to be optional.  To be fair, we don't always close the door either, especially the many hours of the day it's just Sam and I at home.)  Our toothbrushes are on the counter right next to where guests wash hands.  It's all there.

BUT the HUGE benefit to this is that all my toiletries are in the same bathroom where the boys take baths.  Pretty much every night I'm on bath duty I'm brushing my teeth and washing my face while supervising baths.  It makes good use of the time and it's all right there!  Many mornings Luke and I brush teeth together before school. 

3) Bathroom right in the middle of the living space
Our bathroom is right off our kitchen, so close that if Sam is sitting in his high chair eating, I can see his reflection through the mirror where I do my make-up.  Sure, there are cons, namely between the hours of 10pm and 7am, especially the 10ish weeks I spent on the crutches.  I never hated our bathroom location more than going up and down stairs in the middle of the night while on crutches.  Or all the times we were up changing diapers and giving bottles in the middle of the night and going downstairs was necessary for hand washing purposes. 

But now, when we are out of the house (and back) before 8am, 5 days a week, it's SUPER handy having the bathroom right off the kitchen.  We aim to have one of us eating breakfast with the boys 4 weekdays a week (the 5th day usually being when I'm going into work right after drop-off and therefore need to be all around and preferably have Sam all around too, those morning are tight on time.).  On school mornings there are a lot of ins and outs from the bathroom for all of us not in diapers.  After eating breakfast with the boys I can do a lot of supervising of the rest of the morning while also doing my hair or putting on make-up.   And since we only have the one bathroom, all my stuff is in the bathroom right in the middle of where we do most of our living.  I don't know how the mornings would go if all my stuff was upstairs in a master bathroom (which usually sounds dreamy) while boys were finishing up breakfast and getting ready for school downstairs.  I'd probably have to get up even earlier (the HORROR!). 

Having only one bathroom has never been ideal.  We knew that when we bought the house.  But it also hasn't been nearly as bad as we thought it could be.  There are even benefits to it that I didn't realize until recently!  More bathrooms is a very high requirement for our next house, whenever that happens; we won't be buying a single bathroom house again.   BUT, it's really been fine.  It's helped build contentment with what we have, made certain things easier, and really make us feel spoiled when we've rented vacation condos with two!   

Have you found any unexpected benefits to things you initially saw as just having drawbacks?  Think positive!