A huge selling point for any breeding house-hunter is the idea of the kids getting their own bathroom. Not having to share your own sanctuary with small, incredibly messy people feels like a dream come true! After picking out super cute accessories, tub toy organizers, and towels, you step back and relish in how clever you were to find a place that’s just for them. You even get excited about the day when your kids can use that bright and happy bathroom independently—that is, until you realize how much DNA they leave in their wake once they do. Here are all the things you learned are true about your kids having their own bathroom (and what it takes to keep it clean):
1. Inside-out underwear rolls by like tumbleweeds each time you enter it.
2. It takes a brave woman to clean up the urine moat surrounding the base of the toilet.
3. You have to take a photo of the smeary, barely-there drawings your kids made on the steamy mirrors after their last shower before you clean them or else they will never forgive you.
Related: 21 Things Every Mom Thinks While She’s Cleaning
4. You have also photographed the foam letters your kid stuck to the tub wall, removed them, then replaced them exactly as they were in the photo because she made you pinky promise not to move them.
5. There’s usually nothing in the hamper except a Barbie head.
6. But don’t worry: The hamper is kept nice and warm by the heaps of dirty clothing surrounding it on all sides.
7. If a kid does deliberately put something in the hamper, chances are you wouldn’t want to touch that filth with a 10-foot pole.
8. It is possible to grow a coral reef of spit-out toothpaste on the faucet so thick you need a jackhammer to remove it.
9. Your kids get so much water on the floor during showers and baths that you call it “mop time” instead of “bath time”.
10. You absolutely do not want to know what, exactly, that grey ring around the inside of the tub is made of.
11. The cross-stitched quote you have hanging in there says, “Look Before You Sit.”
12. A barfing kid might make it to the bathroom, but never to the toilet….adding yet another coat of ick to clean that day.
13. There will be a thin coating of hand soap covering the entire sink and counter, always.
14. The more adorable a squirty tub toy is, the more likely it has that terrifyingly putrid devil slime in it.
15. You have a fish net by your tub specifically for catching floating poo.
Related: 21 Things Every Mom Knows About Toddler Messes
16. You can ask a kid 4,000,000 times to put the hand towel back on the right side of the sink after she uses it but she’ll still insist she forgot you ever mentioned that.
17. You wouldn’t dry your face on that hand towel for all the money in the world.
18. Not all used tissues end up in the trash can.
19. Not all used toilet paper ends up in the toilet.
20. It’s not unreasonable to assume there might be toothpaste to clean off the ceiling.
21. You never thought you’d whisper “please be mold” to dark splotches of debris in places your kids spend lots of time in, yet here you are.
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