I was brought up with the strict instruction from my partents that you must lower the toilet seat/lid after use, and that to do otherwise is barbaric. It made sense to me, and it has been second nature for me ever since. But I have recently come to the conclusion that I am in the minority. It seems that most of our houseguests do not follow this practice (ironically my father is now an offender!), and likewise it seems like most of my friends don’t close the lid either. Just this weekend I was given the tour of a friend’s new apartment, and he brought us into his bathroon, with the inner cavity of the bowl on full display. Uncouth if you ask me.
So what’s the deal with open toilets nowadays? Are these people just filthy heathens who enjoy showing off their excretory repositories, or is there a change in conventional wisdom on loos I don’t know about?
I don’t get it either. It’s such a small thing to do, the tiniest effort to lift and lower the lid, and it really tidies up the place. An open bowl is just like a big gaping mouth in your bathroom, just waiting for something to accidentally fall in. I don’t think it’s anything more than unpleasant looking, but the effort is so minimal that I cannot fathom why people don’t bother.
I wasn’t expected to close the lid when I was growing up. Now, with three cats and a dog who would all be drinking out of the toilet if we didn’t close it, my husband and I always shut it. I find myself annoyed when people use my bathroom and don’t. Sometimes I do mention it, and ask people to please remember to close the lid, just for the fact that I don’t want the animals drinking from the bowl.
I lived with a guy once and we had a “lid down” policy. It benefits everyone. I don’t have to put the seat down and risk touching the icky toilet bowl where the errant pee splotches land, but he gets the benefit of knowing that I also have to lift something before I pee so it’s not a laziness thing or a double standard.
Also I read something about flushing a toilet creating a spray of germs into the air, and that because of this, you should keep your toothbrush at least 6 feet from the toilet. I like to think that putting the lid down before flushing blocks that germ fountain. Maybe it doesn’t, or maybe the difference is negligible, but hey, it’s my security blanket!
My husband’s trained me to lower the lid - my family never does such a thing. It’s kind of funny now; we always know we have visitors because the lid’s up. What’s more amusing to me is that it’s not always only my family that does it - his parents seem to leave our lid up too.
I always close the lid because of the spray mentioned by rinni. Forget the toothbrush, you’re standing right next to the toilet when it flushes, so do you really want to be in close proximity to that spray? I’ve also been putting my toothbrush inside the medicine cabinet instead of in front of it, again to avoid that spray.
When in other people’s houses, I leave it as I find it. At my parents, no one ever bothers to close it. Our bath room at school has no lid, so it therefore can’t be closed.
I have a guy friend who inevitably leaves both lids up when he comes to visit. I always tease him about it, but I really do find it rude. He’s a heathen Indiana boy though, so I guess I shouldn’t expect too much.
Until we got our cats, I didn’t care if the lid was up or down. I didn’t even really care if the seat was up or down. But now I am afraid the Neville kitties would jump in the toilet if given the chance. They might well drink from it, too. So now we keep the lid down, and it feels strange if I go to someone else’s place and they don’t keep the lid down.
I don’t care if the lid is up or down (in our house, the lid is usually up) but it really does matter if the seat is up or down. Far too easy for a fogged-out infmom to fall in when she staggers to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
I have three younger brothers (no sisters) and I still remember my dad telling me, just before I was due home from college on vacation, “Your mother will be glad to see you. She’s getting pretty tired of seeing the toilet seats up all over the house.”
(When my brother comes to visit, he still leaves the seat up) :mad:
Our cats will drink from nearly any source of water that isn’t their water bowls. They will lick up drops of water from the shower after we finish taking showers. They will lick the bathroom sinks. A glass of water left out is not safe from them. Yet, when that very same water is put into their water bowls, they will drink it only when there is no alternative. I don’t doubt that they would drink out of the toilets, given the chance. Silly cats.
I never closed the lid when I was growing up, but then, we didn’t even close the door most of the time…
I moved into an apartment with my cat and two days later found her perched on the seat leaning into get a drink. I stopped leaving the lid up that day. It also makes it easier living with a boy because no one is inconvenienced, everyone has to lift.
