When we bought our house, the main bathroom had an enormous garden tub with jets and big fancy knobs and drains and room for 2. We were sure that it would get a lot of use and be a great thing to have in our new old house. We quickly found, however, that our 50 gallon hot water tank would not fill our 80 gallon tub and, more importantly, our 80 year old floor joists would probably not support 50 gallons of luke warm water plus two hind-ends. So, here we are, stuck with an enormous garden tub in our bathroom that never sees any use. Yesterday, we found a perfect use for it – a place to let snow melt off of boots!
Now let me back up and tell you the events leading to this. We got some snow so the kids were off of school. I went in to work in the morning but was owed a half-day of time for working over the holidays. I came home for lunch and knew I had to stay as Emily and the kids were driving each other crazy. We decided to bake some cookies and invite the neighbor kids over to play. We started with a lively game of Dance-Dance Revolution. It’s a ton of fun and I can get a mean dance on when I need to out-do my kids!
After an hour or so, we decided to make use of the snow that had fallen so we headed to a cool hill nearby where we wore every last bit of snow off. By the end, we were sledding on pure mud and I ruined a pair of jeans! Anyhow, we had a great time playing but were so dirty when were were done, we didn’t know what to do. Normally we strip and make a mad dash through the house, but it was too cold for much of that. We made it to the bathroom and got into the bathtub and got rid of the snow and mud. It was a perfect use for the garden tub.
As I think of it, we may just leave it in the bathroom now after all. I had planned to make it a real garden tub and haul it out back and stock it with fish. I don’t know what we would do with snowy boots if I did that, though!


