You get what you pay for.  This is virtually true in every aspect of life.  I know sometimes we aren’t able to pay for the better option.  But sometimes getting the cheaper version ends up not being worth it in the end.

For instance-last year we had a major bathroom problem and no money to do the repair.  I wrote here about the sweet college student who came to do all the (hard and disgusting) work for free.  The boy was a saint.   But we still had to buy the toilet.  So naturally, given that it wasn’t in the budget to do a bathroom overhaul, we bought the cheapest one.  Not giving any thought to the fact that many small children use our bathroom all day long.  That toilet had to be ready to work hard.

When my husband called home at dinner time to say he’d be later than expected, I believe my words were something like “Our toilet is not sufficient.  It is not up to the task at hand.  It cannot manage our children and what they give it.  I have to go now.”

After surviving the week with the flu, the kids missing out on all their fun activites, driving the kids in the car all morning waiting for a prescription to be filled, having someone clean the house, realizing that I would miss my best friends baby shower/a special dinner with friends/our last family dinner before my parents go on a month long trip all due to said ‘flu’….you can imagine my dismay and temptation to scream at the top of my lungs when

someone yelled  “FLOOD!”

I ran to the bathroom.

The inept, incompetent, insufficient toilet had plugged up for the hundredth time.

But this time was special.  It had flooded almost out to the carpet in the hall.  It was standing raw sewage nicely sealed in by my recent top-notch caulking job along the flooring.  The smell overwhelmed me.

The fact that hours before we’d actually paid someone to clean that bathroom and it had sparkled, forced me to count to 10 and take a deep, nose-plugged breath as my four little people watched from the doorway.

I grabbed towels.  Most of the towels we own.  The older kids kept Audrey out of the way as I mopped and filled towel after towel of absolute nastiness trying not to gag every step of the way.

I don’t clean with bleach based products, we try to be green with our cleaning.  But in the moments after I got all the *stuff* cleaned up I was more than tempted to pour a bottle of bleach on the floor.  I rummaged around till I found some Pine-Sol.  I scrubbed and scrubbed for 20 minutes.

There was poop water on my jeans, my arms and my bare feet.

This had to be one of my least glamorous moments ever.

I took a quick shower.  I sprayed (a lot) of my new favorite perfume.  I could smell again.  I smelled dinner and realized it was still waiting for us on the stove, thank goodness it hadn’t burned.  I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have survived that.

We ate chicken soup and pumpkin bread and all was well in the world again (as well as life with four kids and the flu is!)

Next time we buy a toilet, it will be a good one.