Sim-Friendly Bathroom Solutions
Help your Sims "go" in the right place at the right time by building them a smarter bathroom.
This is the Frenleigh Family. They are finally going to get a bathroom. See how excited they look? Well, all except for Heidi on the far right whose smile looks more like a grimace because she can hardly hold it any longer.
Here is Oscar Frenleigh. He and his wife Sarah and their six children have been living on this blank lot in Legacy Hills for a very, very long time. He doesn't look too happy about it, does he?
Maybe he's not happy because for generations of Legacies, they have only had an end table and a phone. They were created to be friends with my Legacy kids in hopes that Marsha wouldn't call or visit as often. So far the Frenleigh kids have done their jobs and have been nice friends without being pests.
Today they are going to help me demonstrate some things I've learned about bathrooms. First of all, I'm going to use some wonderful $0 user created floortiles to level their lot.
I just drag the tiles from beside the sidewalk and up the hill...
And viola, free leveling! And then I just delete the floortiles.
Now this is a typical 3X4 bathroom. This type of bathroom works well -- for humans, or for one Sim who doesn't have many guests.
Now the Frenleighs are showing you what more than one Sim can do with a bathroom like this -- give you a headache. They have no concept of waiting or taking turns, and so they have a contest of wills over who gets to use it, and you will get to pause and click forever.
With a large family like this, you could try to solve the problem by building several bathrooms, but I have found that even with multiple bathrooms, the Sims will usually want to use the closest one no matter what. Autonomously, they often would rather have an accident than go to another bathroom, risking becoming the topic of neighborhood gossip until the day they die. Even if it did work to have multiple bathrooms, how many bathrooms do you really want?
You could try solving the problem with hacks, but not if you're doing a challenge that forbids the use of hacks. Or maybe you just don't want hacks in your game. So how do you make your Sims smart enough to share a bathroom without peeing on themselves?
You don't. You build a smarter bathroom for them.
I have a smarter bathroom idea for the Frenleighs. I think this large (6X6) bathroom should allow them all in the room at the same time without causing any major problems. This is a very large bathroom, but with a family this size (or possibly a community lot, LOL) it works out well.
There is no set size. Just figure out how many toilets, showers & tubs you think your Sims might need, and allow 2 to 4 tile squares for each one. I usually have huge families, and my building style for the houses I play with most is to err on the side of hugeness.
After play-testing, you may find you don't need as many toilets, etc. When I play with multiple-storied houses, I often have a main floor where my Sims spend more of their time, and then a floor for bedrooms, skill-building or whatever. I've found that at least a toilet and a shower on each floor is handy, with the most plumbing on the floor that your Sims spend the most time.
First I added toilet stalls. These look like they take up 2 floor tiles each, but it's actually 3. I don't like the stalls very much because they only come in green, are ugly, and they obstruct the view of other stuff, but they do save some space. They're not too bad if you build them toward the back of your house or in an area that you're not likely to miss anything interesting. Another good thing about them is that they give privacy and lock themselves.
Now I made these little 2X2 "rooms" with the short brick walls against the regular walls. They must be the walls that are short enough for a Sim to step over, so if you aren't sure, test it with a Sim.
And here is one more 2X2 section.
Now I added the best showers and tubs to the 2X2 "rooms", and in the space left, I added a double archway.
And on the left I added another single archway. That should be enough doorways to prevent traffic jams.
Notice there are no sinks. I only use sinks for decorative purposes in bathrooms. Sinks in bathrooms are a waste of space. They are a pain because you have to tell your Sims to use them, but most of all I hate them because Sims will often walk across an entire lot to wash a dish in the bathroom. Argh.
And now the moment we've been waiting for... the Frenleighs are going to test the bathroom.
3 of the Frenleighs are using the toilets at the same time, while 2 are taking showers, and 2 are taking baths. Sally doesn't have anything she can do at the moment...
Well okay, Sally wants to play in the tub. She can't because her brother Oscar Jr. is in there, but it doesn't disturb his bubble bath. And since there is no door, she isn't stuck in there. The bathroom is really unorthodox, but it works. There is no "shock" for seeing each other naked in this bathroom unless someone steps over the short brick wall. There's no trying to shoo everyone out of the whole room so one Sim can take a shower. The short brick walls are viewed as individual rooms, but because there are no doors to contend with, there are no stuck Sims.
Using the same ideas, this is how I remodeled the smaller bathroom, with a toilet and a shower/tub combo.
And here I tried using 2X1 "rooms" for the toilets. They also work, but I don't like to use the 2X1 sections quite as well.
Here is the larger bathroom again, only without the toilet stalls and 2X1 sections for everything except the tubs. It looks very weird, but it actually works.
And look at the increased visibility with the walls down without stalls and with the use of the Uni showers!
The 2X1 "rooms" do work for the toilets and showers, but your Sims are a little more confused. They don't get stuck exactly, but they sometimes stand there thinking about walls.
I do have a hack in my game that keeps them from waving their arms in the air, so my guess is that if you don't have that hack, your Sims will throw more tantrums with the 2X1 sections than the 2X2 sections. Mine just look confused.
Regardless of what you do with the short brick walls in your bathrooms, another advantage to using them is that if you have sloppy Sims or kids like George who love to splash in puddles, the puddles never spread beyond them. The walls also keep the puddles from bringing down the environment of the entire room.
Who knew bathrooms could be so fun?
And really, if you didn't want a house, you could have an outdoor bathroom using the short brick walls.
Or you can use the moveobjects on cheat to have no walls at all. Some type of floor tile (I used one that looks like gravel) is recommended though, because puddles = weeds.
Oscar, I hope this story and these bathrooms will bring a little joy to your otherwise bleak non-existence of waiting by the phone for the Legacy family to call.
