I often forget that our house has two bathrooms.

When we first moved in about five years ago, the basement was a big, ugly room, and we slept on a mattress on the floor. The laundry room was separated from the sleeping area by a louvered door; if the washer or dryer were running at night, it felt like sleeping in a laundromat. One bright spot was the bathroom. In this house that had only one bedroom and was puzzled together with second-hand parts, there was a 3/4 bathroom in the basement. It seemed strange and yet wonderful.

For the first few months after we took possession of the house, I stayed there with my mom while Andy finished things up at the old place. The downstairs was my bedroom, and I used that bathroom everyday. Sure it was dark and cold and musty, all the fixtures were probably more like fifth hand than second, and the shower had flaking paint (paint over concrete!) and was so small I could barely turn around, but it was a bathroom! With a shower!

Then one day, my mom suggested I try using the shower in the main bathroom. She pointed out the main bathroom was warmer and (while still hideously ugly) a lot nicer than the one in the basement. I resisted for a while because I felt I owed that basement bathroom something. Eventually, though, I went up into the light.

I never went back.

Since then, we’ve added a real bedroom downstairs, installed a real door on the laundry, and made things look pretty nice down there. But over in the corner, like a dark secret, is the bathroom. A sad, dried, dusty bunch of lavender wrapped with a ribbon and attached with a large paper clip is jammed into a hole in the door, a relic of the previous owners.

Sometimes when my parents are visiting, one of them will brave the spiders and ants and dust bunnies to use the facilities in times of dire need. And we used it when we were fixing up the main bathroom. Other than that, we avoid it. It’s like that door in the first (or was it the second?) episode of Dr. Who with this new Doctor where the evil creature is living in a spare room and no one knows because they don’t really want to see that the room is even there. Sometimes I’ll be on my way to the laundry room and pause and think, “Oh yeah, there is a bathroom down here.”

This spring, time will start up again in the little, lost room. I have decided to try and use it get seedlings started for our garden. To that end, I forced myself to go in and really look around at the space to see if it would work. I felt like I was walking into a (messy) dead person’s bathroom.

A metal bath caddy is hanging on a nail pounded into one of the concrete walls of the shower, rust bubbling on the bottom, a bottle of conditioner and a scrubby occupying it. The medicine cabinet holds a prescription that expired in 2006, an empty glasses case, a tooth brush for cats, antibiotic cream. The vanity contains one and a half bottles of mouth wash, some purple hair gel, my traveling kit (that’s where it went!), another bottle of conditioner, and some razors. A pair of hair scissors lies on the counter next to a pile of hair clippings (that is really, truly weird), a half bottle of hand soap, and two bottles of lotion. Favorite earrings (I haven’t worn earrings since before Anya was born) are on the shelf over the toilet with a favorite shirt now two sizes too small, a tooth brush, dental floss, contact lens cleaner, the missing thermometer. On the commode itself rests dusty reading material: two Woodcraft magazines and a book on raising chickens. And, strangely, a pair of purple and blue bar stools from the old house are tucked into the corner.

Yesterday, I decided to spend 15 minutes cleaning out the room. I grabbed a grocery bag for trash, turned around and switched it for a kitchen garbage bag. I threw almost everything out. There are a few things left that I stacked onto the shelf and will deal with later (today?), but I brought that garbage bag back upstairs completely full. Today I plan to take another 15 minutes to work on the room. Eventually, we will get rid of that hidden monster lair lurking around the corner. (Wait, does that mean the Doctor won’t visit us now? I may need to rethink that.)