From the Atlantic:

quote:

American exceptionalism takes on many forms, both flattering (our immigrant-founded start-ups) and unfortunate (our health-care prices). But perhaps no part of life in the United States is more unambiguously exceptional than this: We have so many damn bathrooms.

In the past half century, the number of bathrooms per American has doubled.

Further evidence that our standard of living is still going up.

The average number of square feet of living space per person has almost doubled over the past fifty years.

I keep reminding people (often people who claim -- without any evidence beyond an exaggerated anecdote -- that college dorms are like "spas") that per capital real income in the US has more than tripled since 1960. A disproportionate slice of this gain has gone to people in the top third of the distribution, and almost none of it has gone to the bottom quintile. That's a problem. But an awful lot of people are doing a heck of a lot better than their grandparents.

Mr. Nina and I are in early discussions about downsizing. One of the things we acknowledge is the fact that we actually use perhaps half of our house. We rarely hang out in our "living room," we have both an office and a guest room, which could easily be combined. We coexist in our Canada apartment without major difficulty, even though it's 1/3 the square footage.

It does, however, have 2 bathrooms.

Here is the rundown on a friend's 6 bedroom house (2 occupant):
1) master bedroom
2) guest bedroom
3) his office (works part-time)
4) her office (hasn't worked in 8 years)
5) crafts room
6) grandkids playroom

Each one of these things needs its own dedicated room? I honestly don't get it.

OMG best thread title!! This is so true. I'm on my way so will read the article later, but as someone for whom browsing Zillow has become a favorite lunch time activity, I can attest. The more expensive the house, the more the number of bathrooms goes up, usually disproportionate to the total number of rooms.

Also, bathrooms are often ridiculously large!

Maybe I'm just old, but I like having a large master bathroom. In our "new" (really, 26 year old) house in Santa Fe, the master bath has two separate sink areas (his/hers), a jacuzzi by the window, a walk-in shower, the actual toilet room, and two large walk-in closets. The rest of the bathrooms in the house are quite normal (i.e. small).

When we sought to rent our large 2nd floor apartment we were told that for its size (I guess 2=bedroom, or 1 bedroom and a living room) we really should have 2 bathrooms instead of one. It's an old Victorian house, and we're not gonna carve out another bathroom with its new requisite plumbing.

Richard Pryor once remarked that cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you have way too much money.

Perhaps bathrooms are the same.

quote:

Originally posted by Piano*Dad:
Maybe I'm just old, but I like having a large master bathroom. In our "new" (really, 26 year old) house in Santa Fe, the master bath has two separate sink areas (his/hers), a jacuzzi by the window, a walk-in shower, the actual toilet room, and two large walk-in closets. The rest of the bathrooms in the house are quite normal (i.e. small).

That sounds great actually. We would love to have double sinks and more bathroom space in general. And Mr. SK would love a jacuzzi type bath.

Also, larger spaces are generally more easy to keep clean.

On the subject of size per person, we are a two person household and here’s what we have:

Piano room (living room)
Family room
Kitchen
Dining room
Guest room
My office
Full bath in hallway
Master bedroom (with small bath/shower)
Mr SK’s studio in basement
Basement room big enough for laundry and exercise equipment with lots of storage space
ETA I completely forgot about the basement bathroom, which has a shower. It needs work but is fully functioning.

This doesn’t include the closets, deck etc.

I recognize that that’s a lot of space for two people. Certainly way more than we could have if we still lived in Japan!

But we don’t have a problem with clutter, it’s very easy to keep things looking nice and neat. And we used all the rooms with the of the guest room.

quote:

Originally posted by Mikhailoh:
Further evidence that our standard of living is still going up.

For some, yes

i have always been frustrated with too many bathrooms. In our current small house, there is a master, another full bath and they put this stupid half bath powder room that is completely unnecessary. I would rather have more space for storage or more space in the office than that stupid thing, there is a full bath right down the short hallway. It must be that some people want a separate place for guests that nobody in the family uses. I am irritated that there is one more toilet to clean.

In a ranch house, that is true. In our house the two full baths are upstairs, while the half bath is downstairs. It is the most used of the three.

quote:

Originally posted by jodi:
i have always been frustrated with too many bathrooms. In our current small house, there is a master, another full bath and they put this stupid half bath powder room that is completely unnecessary. I would rather have more space for storage or more space in the office than that stupid thing, there is a full bath right down the short hallway. It must be that some people want a separate place for guests that nobody in the family uses. I am irritated that there is one more toilet to clean.

You can just ignore the fixtures and put in a wardrobe! Or shelves for storage...and put a lock on the door!

quote:

It must be that some people want a separate place for guests that nobody in the family uses.

I get that. If it's not used daily by family, it should be cleaner for guests, especially sudden ones.

Our "master bathroom" is actually the smallest bathroom in the house (unfortunately!) so our main bathroom is also the bathroom that guests use. Fortunately, there is a closet inside that bathroom so it's easy to keep stuff off the counters and it doesn't look bad so I'm ok with that.

If we had space for a halfbath (which we should all just call the toiletroom, really) that would be great but we don't have that kind of space.

quote:

Originally posted by LL:

quote:

Originally posted by jodi:
i have always been frustrated with too many bathrooms. In our current small house, there is a master, another full bath and they put this stupid half bath powder room that is completely unnecessary. I would rather have more space for storage or more space in the office than that stupid thing, there is a full bath right down the short hallway. It must be that some people want a separate place for guests that nobody in the family uses. I am irritated that there is one more toilet to clean.

You can just ignore the fixtures and put in a wardrobe! Or shelves for storage...and put a lock on the door!

No, it really is closet sized. It’s the room with the light on to the left of that painting. And it’s a weird shape because of angled walls. That door next to the front door is the office, it has a huge closet that backs up against the bathroom, and it’s unfortunate they didn’t just add the space to that.