Until my early teens, my family lived in a house with one bathroom just big enough to hold a toilet (behind the door), a sink, and a tub. Four people got up every morning, brushed teeth, combed hair, and managed to be on time for work and the school bus without any difficulty. We washed our hair in the kitchen sink and my sister did her makeup in the spare bedroom, but we managed just fine.
Today, hubby and I live in a house that has a bathroom twice that size with a 48-inch vanity. Our schedules differ enough that most days each of us has free run of the space. Every so often, though, we find ourselves in that 48 inches of space at the same time.
You’d think we were trying to cram the thirteenth person into a Volkswagen.
Hubby is one of those people who can wake up, brush his teeth, and be out the door looking tall, dark, and handsome in 10 minutes. Add a shave and shower and he’s ready in a half hour or less. I, on the other hand, have a variety of tools and a routine to compensate for my inability to step into a telephone booth and come out looking like Wonder Woman. The 48-inch vanity has one sink, exactly in the middle. Plenty of room for his toothbrush, shave gear, and my beauty implements, right?
Not quite…
The concept of “ours” ends with some invisible line down the middle of the sink. Hubby has always been good to share and he has never been a neat-nik. This is the man whose mother once told me that she never worried about kidnappers because they could never get across his room to the bed. But let one little tube of toothpaste or a comb cross that invisible line, and suddenly “my space” takes on a whole new meaning.
I understand now why friends and family with newer homes have incorporated an additional feature into their master bathrooms. I was too busy wondering why anyone in her right mind would want an extra sink to clean to realize the sheer genius of including an extra 48 to 60 inches of work space. A place for everything with nothing in its place. Oh the joy of unshared, unfettered, unregulated space! No muss, no fuss, no discuss, no continuing mission of deciding what should be where.
But then what would we talk about in the mornings?