Out With The Old …

We are about to embark on a long, perilous journey, and ahead of us lie speed bumps and detours, ugly scenes and beautiful images, frustration and delight.

I’m talking, of course, about remodeling our bathroom.

Not much has been done to enhance our bathrooms since we bought our house a … um, few years ago. A new toilet here, some cosmetic improvements there, but nothing much in the way of major upgrades. We’ve talked about it for years, but always decided the money would be better spent on traveling – usually to places which, as a bonus, had much nicer bathrooms than ours.

Our so-called master bathroom is a tiny cubicle with a plastic shower. Think about a bathroom in an RV, except not as big. Our other bathroom is bigger and marginally nicer, and nearly as close to our bedroom, so once the kids departed the house years ago, F has used that one.

We’re gutting the master bathroom and I have to admit there are things I will miss. I mean, not many people have an avocado green toilet. Or wallpaper on the walls. Or the classic, massive medicine cabinet.

What I won’t miss is all that stuff under the sink. Much of it hasn’t been disturbed since the last century. And much of it is a bit weird; who knew we were collectors of miniature motel shampoo bottles, the contents long since congealed into something unimaginable but perhaps capable of spawning some new kind of life form.

But even more traumatic than cleaning out and saying goodbye to my bathroom – where, it must be said, I have spent so many hours of my life – is the fact that we are taking over my closet as part of the remodeling. So we get a bigger bathroom, but lose half our closet space.

You know what that means: we have to clean out our closets and get rid of lots and lots of our clothes.

The process goes like this: gosh, I haven’t worn this in years, so I should get rid of it. But I always liked it and I don’t know why I haven’t worn it. Maybe because it just got shoved to the side of the closet rack to make way for something newer and spiffier. That’s not its fault, and that’s not really fair. I think I’ll hold onto it for now because I might wear it again now that I know it’s in here. Maybe. Eventually.

Or there are all those clothes that no longer fit, probably because they spontaneously shrank just hanging in the closet. I love this shirt, I think to myself. All I have to do is lose a few pounds and I’m sure it will fit. I’ll put it over here in the pile of clothes I’m not throwing out because one day I might wear them again.

And so it goes. 

While I shudder to think of the inconvenience of having major construction going on pretty much in our bedroom – and we’re not going to talk about what innovative construction techniques and creative plumbing they might find behind the walls of the bathroom – and as much as we’re looking forward to having a nice, new bathroom, we’ve yet to come to grips with what this all might mean.

After all, we’re going to now share what had been my bathroom. And as much as F and I have in common, we could not be more different in our bathroom accessories and products. Part of this is a natural gender preference for products, so we will make room for his and hers shampoos and soaps and shaving accoutrements. But what will we do about the toilet paper divide? We each are partial to our own brand, so do we alternate rolls? Do we have two rollers, hers on the left side of the commode and mine on the right? Do we – by which I mean I – compromise and go with one brand?

Decisions, decisions. I see a certain amount of friction ahead, and I don’t mean from using her toilet paper. But we’ve been together a long time, and I don’t think sharing a bathroom again and combining our closets will cause too many issues.

Unlike, say, her next project, which is to paint the entire upstairs.