Is it too late for family toilet training?

It must be great to have someone else clean the toilet. Saturday is scrubbing day. Bits will get a once over during the week but Saturday is most often the in depth cleaning day. It’s satisfying and on occasion therapeutic to stick on some tunes and put order on the house. The other inmates are out or asleep so as I work I ponder, hum along tunelessly and occasionally incorporate a little dance. A vision.

Satisfying though it be, Scrubber Saturday is neither such a delight nor such an OCD necessity that I can’t forgo it if a better offer comes up. “Would you like to come to a party?” “No, I have to wipe down the kitchen units,” is not something that is going to happen but, at some point the in depth thing has to be done for there are parts of the house that only I clean. And one of these is the bathrooms.

For some reason no-one else in the house ever cleans the toilets. Or the sinks or showers. That, somehow, even though I don’t set foot in one of the bathrooms except to clean it, and despite years of alternated entreaties, threats and moaning, is my job. In a way it feels like destiny. As a teenager in the family home it was my job. When I lived alone it was my job. And for the last 20 years it’s been my job. I love my children very much, I feel like I’ve been a good parent in many respects but they are not exactly helpful around the house. In that I have failed. Badly. Their father isn’t bad, but he is sporadic and whilst he will iron away merrily he will never, ever clean toilets.

I could just leave it. But I can’t. And after a few decades it is just easier to do it yourself, it becomes part of the Scrubber Saturday routine. But sometimes I do think it must be great to have someone else clean the toilet.