Screw Coronovirus: what can we do about the current toilet paper crisis?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Seriously? Toilet paper?

The coronavirus doesn’t lead to greater consumption of TP. AFAIK, the factories are still turning it out at the usual rate. AFAIK, trucks are still able to carry it from factories to stores. The stores are still open.

And yet the shelves are empty. Even Amazon doesn’t have much in stock, and what is listed gets bad reviews and won’t be delivered until May.

WTF?

There’s a certain logic to it: if we couldn’t leave our houses for weeks or months, TP would be a bad thing to run out of. There’s no downside to buying a lot: it won’t go bad, and no matter how much you get, eventually you’ll use it up.

But if no one bought too much, there would be enough for everyone, and the shelves wouldn’t be empty.

And it turns out that we’ve been here before, in the middle of the 1973 oil crisis, when Johnny Carson made a few jokes suggesting there was going to be a TP shortage and actually caused one. (FYI, the short film is amusing, but light on facts.)

How do we fix this?

The most obvious solutions include having the factories make more, which I assume is happening, and having the stores ration what they get. I don’t know if this is happening on any widespread level. I do know that my local grocery store has posted signs in certain sections saying that you can only buy x number of items from this section (e.g. canned tuna). I didn’t happen to notice if those signs were up in the TP section, because the shelves were completely empty, so I didn’t go down that aisle on my last trip.

In our house, we have about 40 rolls on hand for two adults (one man, one woman), which I estimate should last us at least three or four weeks. (I intend to start monitoring our usage, so I can make better estimates.)

I’ve also ordered us a bidet seat for our toilet, which will help reduce our TP use. Coincidentally, several months ago, before all this came up, I had been looking at a similar unit which was then selling on Amazon for $100. Now, Amazon doesn’t have any, and the sellers that have them are charging $160. Apparently lots of other people were way ahead of me on this idea.

But my wife is getting a little freaked out about the possibility of running out.

What are your thoughts?

2

I’m going to start using both sides.

3

We have a bidet spray attachment here (about $40, but a bidet seat is certainly nicer.) My TP use is as near to zero as it could get. We (family of four) haven’t even gotten through a single roll of toilet paper in the last week (and we have something like 18 rolls in stock.) And I’m the only one who really uses the bidet. (The two younger members, though, under 6 years old, don’t require more than two or three sheets of toilet paper, anyway per poop.)

I’m not concerned with the TP situation. A bidet will help you enormously.

4

commasense, your new bidet seat will go a long way toward ameliorating your wife’s fears. Your 40 rolls are going to stretch much, much further than they currently do. (I admit I am agog to learn that even in a bidet-less household, 40 rolls will only last three to four weeks. My goodness, you don’t need to wind TP around your hand like a cast!!)

Once you have a bidet seat, you need only use toilet paper to blot away residual moisture. At the risk of oversharing, I have this down to 4 sheets for a 1 and 5 sheets for a 2. A roll of toilet paper in my house now lasts for weeks.

Smart of you to order one, and after you have it, you’ll wonder why you waited so long. :slight_smile:

5

My thought is that running to the store to buy a small amount of toilet paper every week is antithetical to reducing one’s public exposure. That said, I see no need for anyone (outside the areas where it’s also still snowing) to stock up more than 2 months’ worth, whatever that looks like for their household.

6

Holy crap, how are you using that much? I don’t monitor my own usage, but I think it takes me a couple of weeks to get through a regular-sized roll, unless I use extra for miscellaneous cleaning purposes. (One poop per day, approximately a dozen squares per poop.) I understand why women use more, but still, that much more?

I LOL’d.

7

You both go through 40 rolls in 3-4 weeks??? Are you into mummification?

8

For those of you who are worried if you have enough, here’s a handy online calculator that will tell you how long your supply will hold out.

9

If things get bad then things like kleenex, paper towels and wet wipes can be used, then disposed of in the garbage. I believe some sewers are already seeing backups of people flushing things other than TP down the toilet.

Also you can use a bidet. Or if need be a spray bottle, or take a shower after a BM.

I’m sure there are other options.

One webpage recommended using the old yellow pages book. I’m not sure how comfortable that would be.

I saw some funny comments on twitter where Mike Huckabee recommended using corn cobs to wipe your ass. People were mentioning is this what make america great means, toilet paper shortages and telling people to wipe their asses with corn cobs.

10

Good god, it as if peoples brains have gone out their arses.

All you do is use a cloth and rinse it out, we are so used to changing kids nappies and cleaning up our dog’s mess - it’s no worse than that.

Lack of tp is not any sort of problem at all.

11

Yeah you can use cloth. But a lot of people would rather use that as a last, last resort. scraping off the large bits of crap and then putting them in the washing machine isn’t too appealing to a lot of people. Personally I’d rather use a spray bottle bidet and kleenex to throw it in the trash before I do that.

12

I’ll separate the three layers, and then use both sides of each.

13

I only just started tracking our usage today, so my OP was just a rough guess. I’ll have a better idea in a few days.

And this will be a big help. It says we have enough for 62 days, but that’s also with a few assumptions on my part. And it doesn’t allow for the differences between male and female consumption.

14

Hey, there are reasons I didn’t have children! ETA: Or dogs!

15

That’s exactly what people are needing all that extra TP for.

16

Holy crap, how are you using that much? I don’t monitor my own usage, but I think it takes me a couple of weeks to get through a regular-sized roll, unless I use extra for miscellaneous cleaning purposes. (One poop per day, approximately a dozen squares per poop.) I understand why women use more, but still, that much more?

I LOL’d.

17

The toilet paper curve, at any rate.

I did our once weekly shopping trip last night, at the end of the day, and there was still toilet paper in stock! Two different brands even, and I noticed one shopper examining the brands, deciding which to get, not just snagging a 36-pack like mannna from heaven. We’re turning the corner!

18

Store I went to Friday was much the same. On the other hand, the paper towel section was empty: seems the great unwashed have realized that COVID-19 symptoms don’t (typically) include diarrhea, but they’re going to be cleaning stuff much more than they’re used to.

19

And the thing is, until this moment, nobody had paused to assert their level of consumption of this product.

Oh, sure, in most locations a warning of a bad storm will cause people to go and pick up among other supplies an 8-pack of TP. But the thing is, usually bad storms mean from a couple of days to a week of having the road impassable by snow/mudslide/high water. People thenwhen faced a potential lockdown of between two weeks and two months, somehow extrapolate they will need ten times as much, not remembering that in the last blizzard they did* not* consume the 8 rolls in the 5 days they were snowed in, they kept on using them for a while afterwards.

20

Any economy can run on Campbells soup, Whiskey, and TP.

I bought whiskey and soup for this incident.