August 26, 2018, by Lucy
Quelling Your Fears Regarding Shared Bathrooms
At sixth form, I was pretty much one of the only people who was going to be living in shared accommodation at university. That is, the majority of my year had secured en-suite accommodation. Due to being an anomaly among my peers, it seemed to me that people went out of their way to tell me how much of a mistake I was making through my decision to share bathroom facilities. What if one of them had an infectious disease? What if they had no hygiene standards at all? What if the bathroom was permanently occupied 24/7? Did I not know what I was getting myself into? Well, having easily survived this experience with no disease or trauma, here I am to explain how and why shared bathrooms are not bad thing at all.
Convenience
Unless you are an exception, your course is unlikely to follow a 9-5 schedule. As a result, like snowflakes, everyone’s timetable is different. Throughout the course of the year people begin to develop their own schedules: academic, social and otherwise. In the process of acquiring such schedules, people make their own shower routines too. For instance, your sleep routines, meal times and social calendars are not going to be similar, meaning that you won’t be rushing to use the shower every single time. Yes, during peak times the bathroom may be in increased use (I’m talking in the morning and before a big night out), but generally you won’t be waiting more than 5 minutes to use the bathroom. And let’s be honest, unless it is an emergency, this five-minute wait isn’t going to be detrimental in the long run.
Cleanliness
2018 is undeniably a time in which people love to scare monger, spread fake news and blow things out of proportion. Indeed, even the subject of university bathrooms cannot escape this phenomenon. Although people’s family homes involve them sharing bathrooms with other people, the idea of sharing a bathroom at university seems to have the same connotations as if you were to say that your bedroom is suffering from a cockroach infestation. However, rest assured, shared bathrooms do not resemble the pit on the earth. Despite more people having the potential to contribute to the mess of the bathroom, the messiness of the area really depends on the kinds of people that you are in a flat with. Indeed, if you are a messy person, even an en-suite is likely to become dirty. Therefore, so long as everyone in your flat has at least some level of hygienic standards, your bathroom isn’t likely going to require a quarantine period. Anyway, there are cleaned on a weekly basis.
Size
Obviously the size of a shared bathroom depends on the accommodation provider, but as a rule of thumb, you would assume that a share bathroom is considerably bigger than that as an en-suite. In first year, I shared 2 bathrooms with 5 other people, with each bathroom being extremely spacious: as well as having the basic shower cubicle, toilet and sink set up, there was also enough space to complete your routine without feeling claustrophobic. The extra space was also handy when it came to storing all of our separate toiletries in addition to spare shared toiletries such as toilet roll and hand soap. As the bathrooms are away from the bedrooms, it means that the bedrooms are also bigger as no space is being used to accommodate for a wet room.
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