I’m not too adept at math(of most kinds)
Pretty decent at measurements and money counting(real dollars or air dollars).
I can understand counts on packaging.
As funny as it seems we are in need of a giant pallet of TP. Mid-dau sends me on a quest.
Her instructions: Get the most count and most rolls you can comfortably carry.
I haven’t shopped for much TP recently.
(We are sorely in need of a trip to Sam’s Club.)
I was stunned on the TP aisle.
What kind of fresh hell is this?
I found no number that made sense.
What the hell is a regular roll every one is compared to? She must’ve been real regular and died an early death. She dang sure ain’t on a shelf at Walmart.
Ivy got out her phone to do some calculations. She’s not much better at math than me. But she knows how to pull up the calculator screen on her phone.
In the end (heh) we got the biggest PKG that had a price I didn’t to take out a loan to purchase.
IMO, square footage on TP packaging is a red herring. Single ply is a non-starter for me, but if you bought a case of that stuff, it’d probably have way more square footage than any other TP. The width of a roll of TP is also not of great interest to me. I have yet to find a roll of TP that is too narrow for my intended use.
Once I find a brand I like, I am very loyal to it. For at least a decade, that brand has been Costco’s house brand of terlet paper - Kirkland, of course. I don’t even look at the price.
My partner and I used to participate in the TP selection gyrations, until we sprang for a Toto Washlet seat. Although none of the features are strictly necessary and the calculations of financial pay-back period are complicated by water, power, and TP consumption changes, the REAL payback for us was instantaneous: Not only do we only need a single square of TP of any size or thickness for any event, but lingering odor problems have been eliminated and the comfort of a warm seat on a cold night is of incalculable value.
“Value” is no longer a consideration when we’re replenishing the TP supply: whatever is convenient at the time of purchase will be just fine. Even a small, expensive pack will last a long time.
For those who disagree with this stance, Costco has a flavor of Charmin that’s wider than anything I’ve seen elsewhere. The package even says, “Wider sheets for wider ****s!” (OK, no, it just says the first two words)
Seems like they couldn’t get a whole lot wider before they can no longer fit on the TP holder. My holder has about a half inch of space on each side of the toilet paper roll.
Kirkland toilet paper (they call it bathroom tissue) is the primary reason to pay for a Costco membership. It’s the only one I’m aware of that’s still the proper width—4.5” I believe— other than aforementioned Charmin, but I find that too thick, also too expensive.
Kirkland rolls contain less sheets than they did about 3 years ago.
Yeah, we were remarkin’ on that just last week, when I came across a package of off-brand TP in the basement that dates back to the pandemic. It was SO much narrower that it made us wonder about whether the wide stuff would fit every “standard” holder.
OTOH see Keith1’s post below yours, which suggests (if I’m inferring correctly) that this 4.5” stuff was the old standard, and all the narrower ones are just enshittification.
They could use the width the holders were actually designed for, instead of the shrinkflated width most brands now go with.
But yeah, I’m with the OP on the mythical “regular roll”. Going by how much bigger all the rolls are than “regular rolls”, a regular roll must have like 50 sheets on it.
My TP holders are floor standing poles on a base meant for something else. I think they were bubble gum machines or something. I have 4.
In a pinch they could be used as weapons. Pretty heavy.
Anywhoo, width, breadth, thickness of ply, at home, are a non-issue.
I simply wanted the most paper for the least money.
If it takes 12 “regular” rolls, 6 big rolls, 4 even bigger rolls and of course The " mostest, biggest giant sized roll" ever. I don’t care.
There is no cromulent way to math this out in my pea brain.
I think that’s likely the case. Making the rolls a smidge narrower improves the manufacturer’s profit margin. And, then, you do it once, it works, no one “notices,” and you do it again…and again.
When I worked in consumer products, we called that “creeping incrementalism.”
Correct! It’s why holders are the size they are - to accommodate a 4.5” roll.
Back to Kirkland for a moment. Their rolls formerly contained 425 sheets. That’s was cut back to 380 sheets about 3 years ago. The quality had been cut back a bit as well. Perhaps not really noticeable to some. I’ve heard they’ve upped the quality closer to the original once again though.
Toilet paper isn’t something to be skimped on.
I was in a government rest area/viewpoint last year and was unfortunate enough to have to visit the outhouse. Inside there was this huge roll of single ply toilet paper about the width of a roll of adding machine paper (remember adding machine paper?)
They had it padlocked! It was padlocked such that you could use the paper but couldn’t steal the whole roll. I’m wondering who could possibly be so desperate as to steal this paper the consistency of which was closer to emery cloth than Charmin.
IMO, the number of sheets is probably immaterial. Because the size of a sheet is utterly not standardized.
Speaking for me and the people I’ve known well enough to know how they wipe, they do not select 1 sheet off the roll per wipe. Instead they unroll about “this much” length and use that. For some that might be ~6" per wipe; others might prefer ~24" per wipe instead. But it’s enough sheets that the sheet count isn’t the number that matters. It’s closer to the number of linear feet on the roll that matters.
Aside:
Based on the width discussion upthread I just measured mine, one of Northern’s variations. Width is 3-11/16. Which is about 82% of the formerly standard 4.5" width. So a roughly 20% shrinkflation since whenever full width last really existed.
Conversely, the number of sheets is probably the most important metric for me. I use between 15 and 18 squares (sheets) of Kirkland TP per session. If it’s Creep Bears Brand, I use fewer, probably 9-12. That see-through single ply stuff? More like 20-25, or the equivalent if it’s not perforated into sheets (a lot of that institutional stuff isn’t).
I do know a way to wipe using a single sheet - and it’s freakin’ hilarious - but it’s the kind of thing that is best demonstrated, not described.
The embossing pattern in the toilet paper adds thickness and probably some softness to the roll without adding any extra length or number of sheets. Their engineers and marketers have the science down to what sells. Big soft roll, same number of sheets, and you will probably use less. Embossing is not just there to give you a pretty pattern to look at.
Jeezus! What a sad world we are part of. Some places have washroom attendants that will dole out toilet paper to ‘guests’. For example the train station in Budapest, where the attendant will give you a single sheet. That was a few years ago. Maybe now they just place an old glove beside the toilet that ‘guests’ are expected to rinse out as a courtesy to the next person in line.
In this case (Kirkland) the size of the sheet remained the same, I checked. I’m not cheap, but I hate being ripped off. Unfortunately, being ripped off has become the norm, what with products being watered down & downsized at the same time prices increase.
