Bathtime Distress

In our home we only have one water heater. This means that with five kids and two adults to bathe, I'd have to be this super organized mom and have everyones bath times all convienently marked out on a ginormous calendar.....er...family planner.

Um...that isn't happening.

I am the first to admit that I am far from organized. This doesn't mean that I don't TRY, it just means I always FAIL.

The current bath situation is as follows:

Brenden, Braden & Casey take a shower then Chloe & Caleb take a bath. Sometimes Casey gets a bath with his younger siblings, but overall...it's a shower with the twins.

The PROBLEM:

We always seem to be yelling at them to "hurry up and get out" or "turn off the water...TURN OFF THE WATER, NOW!!" Even this doesn't seem to help because, if they messed around and didn't actually clean themselves or they have soap all in thier hair then you have to give them the time to rinse it out or you'll be listening to screaming kids complaining about their itchy scalp. They seem to want to linger in the shower every time. Either that, or the older boys don't wash at all...they just stand and play in the water for 15+ minutes all the while wasting water for anyone else who needs to use it.

The SOLUTION:

So, tonight after having shot my last nerve and knowing I would not be able to bear even one more trying of my patience, I told the twins that they had EXACTLY 6 minutes to get in the shower, wash up and get out. If the timer on the microwave went off and they were still in the shower, I was then taking my huge 2 quart pitcher (which was filled with icy cold water) and dumping it on them. You should have seen the look on their faces. They both took off running as I turned to set the microwave timer.

The RESULT:

I even checked on them to make sure they were actually washing up.

They were out before the timer even went off. HEHE!! It worked!! Ahh....the joys of finding something that actually works!!

The consequence of them not washing up, but just 'pretending' to..which btw, boys do and it's ever so annoying, would be me washing thier hair in cold water. They would have lost thier privelage to hot water when they wasted it just hanging out.