<p>Yes - I’d recommend a pair of cheap flip flops for the shower. It is way too easy to get athletes foot, etc otherwise.</p>
<p>I would never feel I had to wait for my kids to ask for help before volunteering to help them. Its just in my nature to offer to help (kids or anyone I am with) rather than to stand around doing nothing or barking orders or something.</p>
<p>** ETA: We recently helped younger s move to his new housing after graduation. DH, older s, older s’s gf and I all helped. We carried stuff, packed stuff, carried a bed and frame down the street, etc. Its just what family does. No questions asked. What difference does it make what the method is of helping someone you care about? If it is your nature to help others you will do so. If not, or if you feel you have to wait to be asked, well that sends a different message altogether.</p>
<p>Parenting is so complicated! There’s always some new litmus test for competent, independent kids. Now it’s bathroom cleaning at move in. Who knew? I cleaned. Golly, we’re always so behind the curve.</p>
<p>In answer to the title of this thread, I’m not convinced that all shared bathrooms are “nasty.” We toured D’s soon-to-be dorm on a day in February. The common areas and women’s community bathroom appeared tidy and clean. I doubt the university had ordered up a special cleaning detail because we were coming. :)</p>
<p>As much as we try to teach our kids to clean, there are some that just resist (are boys worse? maybe?) </p>
<p>My younger son is very good about keeping his bathroom clean (at home and at his school apt). Older son has always been pretty bad. It’s not that he thinks someone else should do it, he just doesn’t care. He knows how…he’s been made to do it a gazillion times at home, but never on his own. Ugh!!! He also waits until he doesn’t have one clean thing left to do laundry. Grrr!</p>
<p>There are perhaps 30 or 40 different tasks that need to be completed on move-in day. Some are best done by the student, some by the parent, and some by both or either. Room or bathroom cleaning falls in the last category. If the place is already clean, great. One less task. If not, just do what makes most sense under the circumstances. If the kid is swamped with details to take care of, it would be kind of the parent to pitch in and help by cleaning the place up. If the coast is pretty clear and the kid can handle it, that’s a good plan too.</p>
<p>Whatever the circumstance, I think we are attaching way too much cosmic significance to the choice, and expressing way too much disapproval of others who make a choice different from our own.</p>
<p>The shared bathroom in my D’s suite last year was pretty bad. The partitions separating the stalls were rusty and pitted, and the ill-fitting shower curtain caused water to puddle on the floor outside of the shower. That puddle never dried up because of a dip in the floor and six girls showering daily. I could not have brought myself to clean that bathroom, and D did not ask me. I did purchase a good quality shower curtain and liner, along with a teak math that they could step onto when getting out of the shower, which helped considerably. The girls all shared weekly cleaning duty - in teams of two, so each one only had to clean every three weeks. There was only so much they could do to make that bathroom look decent, but D never complained about it. She did ask me to help clean her room when she moved in, and we cleaned together, along with help from H. It was pretty clear from the thick layer of dust and grime on the tops of the light fixtures and shelving that the room never had a thorough cleaning - ever. It’s Brown, we’re full pay. Yes, it ticks me off that she doesn’t at least get a clean room to start with for the money.</p>
<p>It’s one thing to help your kid settle in to a dorm, quite another to spend two hours (!) scrubbing down a communal bathroom that will surely revert to its “natural” state within a few days anyway. When visiting dorms I try to use the bathroom in the lobby and avoid the communal ones altogether–out of sight, out of mind. Most kids (not all, and certainly not oldfort’s paragon) live pretty piggily at college. Think of it as an unpleasant rite of passage, then try not to think of it at all.</p>
<p>I just think of it as preparation for the Peace Corps:)
Younger D spent almost a month in Africa during high school, some of it in a village without potable water, the kids had to use a whole can of bug spray before they could even enter the “bathroom”.
After that I expect her basement bathroom in an 90 yr old house is pretty luxurious.</p>
<p>annasdad – I would find it amusing too, but for different reasons. In my family it would be the males who’d start cleaning the bathroom, while the females would think, “I’ll just wear flip-flops”. :)</p>
<p>Well I would admit that there isn’t much you can do to make a pit toilet nicer, whereas if you have runnng water, a flush toilet can be cleaned up.</p>
<p>We had coed hall bathrooms in my freshman dorm at Berkeley. A rather “elegant” solution was devised to the seat up or down debate. The guys took the door off one of the stalls which became the designated urinal. With their clear thinking - they happened to choose the first stall (handiest I guess) which meant that one had to go on by it when in use. :eek: It worked out well though all things considered. The others were less dangerous that way and rather than Peace Corps prep I would think of it as more prep for life with a spouse and teen age boy. The stall at the far end was the official puking stall which fortunately didn’t get used in that capacity too often. The offender was just shamed into cleaning the following morning.</p>
<p>I don’t remember even worrying about the showers. They were not all equal in terms of water pressure and nozzle style, so everyone had their favorite. Again, we all got clean and nobody caught any diseases that I’m aware of. ;)</p>
<p>Alas, I think seeing the guys in their natural habitat did keep floor romances to a minimum.</p>
<p>saintfan-- variation on the puking stall. There was a guy that decided to shower while intoxicated, passed out and his bottom covered the drain. It wasn’t noticed until the water started running out of the bathroom.</p>
<p>Friend tells a story that he swears is true. This would be about 30 years ago. A guy in his dorm went hunting and killed a deer. He brought the carcass back to the dorm’s group shower stalls, where he gutted it and somehow hung it up to bleed out. Left it there for as long as that process took, and longer.</p>
<p>Eyemamom - my son wears a robe and flip flops to the shower. His robe is short, terrycloth and has big pockets for his shampoo, etc. He hated the idea of a carrier of any kind.</p>
<p>Awkward moment - While helping our freshman move in last fall, DH headed to use the bathroom. Inside were several young women (older students) just out of shower and in their underwear. He thought he had entered a women’s room by mistake; they assured him coed and dads welcome! After that we parents used separately designated bathrooms in the main buildings!</p>
<p>I didn’t clean the bathroom when my oldest moved into his dorm (apartment style room) freshman year but I did at the end. Two boys had left it disgusting and I didn’t want to pay fines. I’ve never met a bathroom I thought was disgusting on arrival - though some in older dorms may look a little tired. I went to college with coed shared bathrooms and never thought they were a problem - stalls and showers were all behind doors or at least curtains. We wore bathrobes and yes I recommend flip-flops.</p>
<p>I wasn’t obsessed, just amazed, because if I had rented an apartment, they couldn’t have handed it to me like that. It was filthy. @annasdad - how can you compare apples to oranges with such specifics? I know my child would not have used it, she would have taken strip washes at the sink. The air filter in the room had not been changed either, a note went up a couple of days after a request was put in, that all filters were going to be changed. The air return was clogged with dust and the air vent was black with dirt. </p>
<p>Oh, I forgot the mold in the refrigerator - was I supposed to close the door and pretend I didn’t see that too! </p>
<p>Parenting philosophies are for individual households, I’m glad yours works for you! </p>
<p>Tell me something, if the residential high school was this dirty, would you have said suck it up honey and get it cleaned?</p>
<p>I would have let her clean it. She’s the one who has to use it.</p>
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<p>I would deal with a situation involving a child (15yo high school student) differently than I would with an adult (18yo college student). Although in the instant case, I’m confident that both she and her roommate would have started right in with cleaning.</p>