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Six forty seven am a house stirring to life, thirteen souls,
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one mission, one bathroom. What you're about to hear isn't
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a survival story from some remote wilderness. There are no bears,
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no avalanches, no treacherous mountain passes. This is something far
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more dangerous. This is parenthood multiplied by thirteen, divided by
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one tiny room with a lock that stopped working in
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twenty nineteen. And somehow we wouldn't trade it for anything. Okay,
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maybe we'd trade it for a second bathroom, but that's it. Hey, friends,
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welcome to We are the Hansens. I'm Maya Hanson, and
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if you're new here, let me paint you a picture.
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My husband Jeremy, and I have thirteen children, yes, thirteen,
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born entire family through love, intention, and apparently an excellent
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sense of humor from the universe. Most of our kids
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did public school, but now we do online. We run
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multiple businesses. We create together, we dream together, we build together,
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and we share one bathroom. Today's episode is about that bathroom,
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but really it's about what happens when a family chooses
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to lean into the chaos instead of fighting it. When
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you realize that the hard parts those become stories you
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tell forever. So grab your coffee, buckle up, and let
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me tell you what it's really like when thirteen kids
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share one bathroom. Every morning in the Hanson House begins
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the same way with a race, not a fun race,
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not a friendly race. This is the Hunger Games bathroom Edition.
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The goal is simple, be first to the bathroom, because
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first means hot water. First means privacy. First means you
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might actually get to brush your teeth without someone's elbow
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in your ribs. Second place. Second place means waiting and
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negotiating and listening to whoever is in their humming show
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tunes like they're auditioning for Broadway. I've watched my kids
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develop strategies that would impress the military. One of my
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daughters wakes up fifteen minutes before everyone else. She's mastered
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the art of the silent wake up, no alarm, internal
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clock only she slides out of bed like a ninja
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and makes her move while the house still sleeps. My
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teenage boys they formed an alliance, a bathroom pack. They
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take turns being first, rotating days like they're running a
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fortune five hundred company. But the little ones, the early
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elementary kids, they have no strategy, only chaos. You were unfiltered,
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desperate chaos. Last Tuesday, I watched my youngest sprint down
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the hallway wearing just her shorts, and they were backwards,
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screaming bathroom emergency, like she was announcing the apocalypse. Her
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older brother beat her by half a second, split through
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the door, and lock. My eight year old stood there
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staring at that closed door like it had personally betrayed her.
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Then she looked at me, eyes welling up, bottom, lip trembling. Mom,
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I don't think I'm gonna make it. Here's what nobody
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tells you about big families. You develop this incredible sense
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of humor about bodily functions because you have to when
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you have thirteen kids in one bathroom. Dignity is the
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first casualty. Privacy died years ago, Shane. We don't know her.
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We've had full family meetings about bathroom etiquette with PowerPoint presentations.
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Not joking. My husband Jeremy made slides Slide one. If
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you sprinkle when you tinkle, be the sweetie and wipe
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the seed. Slide two. The toilet paper roll has a
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magic refael button. Just kidding, replace it yourself. Slide three
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a photo of our plunger with the ca option know
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where this lives. But here's the beautiful part. Somewhere between
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the chaos and the competition and the absolute absurdity of
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it all, my kids are learning something valuable. They're learning patience.
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They're learning to think about others. They're learning that sometimes
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you don't get what you want when you want it,
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and that's okay, well mostly okay. We've definitely had some incidents.
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If you want to understand power dynamics in the Hansen household,
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you need to understand our shower schedule. We don't call
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it a schedule. We call it the rotation, and the
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rotation is sacred. Every child gets exactly twelve minutes, not thirteen,
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not fifteen twelve. We have a waterproof timer that we
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con suction cup to the shower wall, and when that
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timer beeps, your time is up, no exceptions, no negotiations, No.
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But I still have conditioner in my hair. Rents faster.
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Now you might think this sounds strict, and you'd be right,
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But when you have thirteen people who need to get
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clean and a hot water heater that's already working overtime
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just to keep up structure, isn't about control, It's about survival.
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My teenagers push back on this the most. They want
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their long showers where you just stand under the water
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and think deep thoughts about life and the universe. I
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get it, I really do. But this is not a spa,
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This is not a meditation retreat. This is a bathroom
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in a house with thirteen kids. You can contemplate the
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universe on your own time. Last month, my fourteen year
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old daughter decided to test the system. She stayed in
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there for twenty three minutes. When she finally emerged, wrapped
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in a towel and radiating defiance, she found seven of
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her siblings standing in the hallway, arms crossed, glaring. No
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one said a word. She hasn't gone over twelve minutes
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since pure pressure is a powerful thing. But here's what
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I've noticed. Within all these rules and timers and rotations,
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my kids have gotten creative. My nine year old daughter
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discovered that if she showers at night instead of mourning,
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she gets sixteen minutes because fewer people are competing for
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the bathroom time. She came to me so proud of herself,
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like she'd cracked a Da Vinci code. Mom, Mom, I
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figured out a life hack, and I just smiled, because
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that's exactly what we want them to learn. How to
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problem solve, how to think outside the box, how to
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thrive within constraints instead of just complaining about them. Then
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there's the hot water situation. Our hot water heater is
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a workhorse, a champion. It deserves a metal for bravery
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and dedication. But it's not magic. By the time we
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get to kid number eight or nine in the morning rotation,
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the water temperature is let's call it character building. My
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younger kids have learned to shower fast, not because of
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the timer, but because lukewarm water is a powerful motivator.
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Get in, get clean, get out before the Arctic blast arrives.
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One night last year, I was up late folding laundry.
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It was past midnight. The house was finally quiet, and
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I heard the shower turn on. I walked down the
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hallway and found my oldest daughter standing under the water
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with her eyes closed. She wasn't washing her hair, she
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wasn't rushing, she was just standing there. I didn't interrupt.
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I just watched for a moment from the doorway because
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I understood, sometimes the shower isn't about getting clean It's
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about having thirty seconds where nobody needs you, where nobody's
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asking questions, where you can just exist. That's what one
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bathroom teaches you. To find the small moments of peace
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wherever you can, even if it's standing under lukewarm water
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at midnight, because that's the only time you get to
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be alone. We need to talk about toothbrushes. In a
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house with thirteen kids, toothbrushes become complicated. Everyone has their
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own color coded toothbrush. This is non negotiable. We learned
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this the hard way after or the great toothbrush mix
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up in twenty eighteen. We don't talk about twenty eighteen. Now.
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Each child has a specific color purple for Torren, blue
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for Anlin, green for Tristan, and so on. The system works,
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usually until someone loses their toothbrush and decides in their
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own wisdom to just borrow someone else's. The discovery of
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toothbrush theft in this house is treated with the same
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seriousness as a federal investigation. Who used my toothbrush? Not me?
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I didn't touch it. Maybe it grew legs and walked away.
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I've become a toothbrush detective. Sherlock Holmes of the bathroom sink.
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I can tell by the bristle pattern who used what.
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I can identify toothpaste brand preferences by smell. This is
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my life now. Then there's the toothpaste situation. We've tried everything,
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family sized tubes, individual mini tubes, pump dispensers. Nothing survives.
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The toothpaste tube in our house goes through stages like
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grief and misery. Stage one, brand new, full perfect. Everyone
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squeezes from the bottom like civilized humans. Stage two, someone
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gets lazy, the middle gets squeezed, the tube develops a
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weird bulge. Stage three chaos. The cap goes missing, toothpaste
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is everywhere except inside the tube. Stage four. The tube
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is now flat, completely empty, but somehow one child insists
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there's still toothpaste in there and will extract the last molecule.
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Stage five, the tube is found on the floor, stepped on,
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de clared, deceased. Funeral services are not held. We simply
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open a new tube and start the cycle again. But
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you know what's funny. In all the toothbrush wars and
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toothpaste tragedies, there are these moments that make me stop
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and smile, Like when my eight year old helps her
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sister here, let me help you, okay, now spit. Or
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when my teenagers voluntarily buy new toothpaste with their own
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money because they know we're running low. They don't announce it,
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they don't ask for credit, they just replace it. Those
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small acts of service, those matter more than they ever know,
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because we're not just teaching them to brush their teeth.
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We're teaching them to think about others, to notice when
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something's needed, to contribute to the family without being asked.
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And yeah, sometimes that lesson come with a side of
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toothpaste on the mirror and bristles in the sink, But
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I'll take it. Every family has their secret language. In
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the Hansen house, ours is the knock code. If you
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don't know the knock code, you're about to learn why
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it matters. See, when you have a bathroom and thirteen
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people who need to use it, communication becomes critical. But
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here's the thing about bathroom communication. Nobody wants to shout
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personal information through a locked door. Are you almost done?
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I really need to go. So we've developed a system.
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One knock, how much longer? Two knocks? I need to
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get in there soon. Three knocks. This is becoming urgent.
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Four knocks emergency, I repeat emergency. The person inside then
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responds with their own knock code. One knock back, give
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me five minutes. Two knocks back, Almost done, Three knocks back.
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I'm in the middle of something. You might want to
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find an alternative. We don't have an alternative, but the
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warning is appreciated. The knockcode has saved us from many
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countless awkward conversations. It's efficient, it's private, and it works mostly.
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Sometimes a child will create their own knock pattern, a
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freestyle interpretation of the code, random knocking, and the person
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inside will yell back, what does that mean? It means
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hurry up, communication, breakdown. We've all been there. But here's
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what the knockcode really taught us. Sometimes the best solutions
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are the simple one. We could have installed a complicated
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scheduling app. We could have brought one of those electronic
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signs that shows red or green for occupied or vacant.
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We could have done a lot of things, but we
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just learn to knock. And in learning to knock, we
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learn to wait, to respect boundaries, to understand that sometimes
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people need a minute, not just in the bathroom. In life.
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My kids know that when mama's bedroom door is closed
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and I don't answer right away. Maybe I need a
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minute too. They learn that from the bathroom boundaries aren't
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about keeping people out. They're about creating space where everyone
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can be themselves, even if that space is a five
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x seven bathroom with a door that doesn't lock properly
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and an exhaust fan that sounds like a helicopter, Which
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brings me to the next part of our story, the
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dark times. Every parent has a nightmare scenario, a worst
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case situation that lives in the back of their mind,
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lurking in the shadows. For parents of thirteen kids with
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one bathroom, that nightmare has a name, the clog. It
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happened on a Saturday morning, eight am. The house was
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just waking up. My husband was making coffee, I was
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starting breakfast. The kids were emerging from their rooms like
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adorable zombies, heading for the bathroom. Then I heard it.
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A squab our child was screaming, Mom, Dad, the toilet
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won't flush. Jeremy and I looked at each other. In
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that moment, we didn't need words. We both knew this
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was it, the nightmare. I got to the bathroom first,
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opened the door, and there it was. The water level
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in the toilet was higher than it should be, much higher.
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My son, at the time he was only four, just
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stood there, pale as a ghost, eyes wide open with fear,
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yelling I didn't do anything wrong, I promise. I just
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flushed it and it went like this up instead of down.
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It's okay, buddy. I told him, go find your dad,
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tell him to bring the plunger and pray. Here's what
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you need to understand. In a house with one bathroom,
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a clog isn't just an inconvenience. It's a full scale disaster.
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Where do thirteen people go when one toilet doesn't work?
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The gas stations down the street got real familiar with
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our family that day. Jeremy worked on that toilet for
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three hours, plunger snake YouTube tutorials, mumbling under his breath. Meanwhile,
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I became the bathroom traffic controller. Okay, bathroom still down.
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If you need to go, you're taking the van to
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the store. But Mom, no butts, literally get in the van.
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By noon, we made seven trips to the station. The
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attendant knew us by name. Back again Hansen's Yep, plumbing crisis,
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thoughts and prayers. At two pm, Jeremy finally emerged from
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the bathroom holding the toilet snake. I got it. The
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kids cheered, actually cheering, like their favorite sports team had
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just won the championship. And in that moment I realized something.
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We take our bathroom for granted. Running water, functioning plumbing,
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the ability to flush without crisis. These are luxuries. That night,
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after everyone was in bed, I sat on the edge
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of the bathroom tub and just looked around that tiny room.
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The chip tile, the grout was needing, recocking, the mirror
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with toothpaste spots. I could never quite get off the
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room that drives us crazy, that causes so much chaos,
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This room that we're so lucky to have. Not everyone
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has running water, Not everyone has a safe place bade
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their children. We have one bathroom, but we have one
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more than some people will ever have. Perspective is a