When Covid started, we had a huge amount of TP from the combined warehouse shopping habits of me and my mom, whose supply I’d inherited years before. We shared it with family and friends, and I now deliberately keep at least a couple of the really large packages on hand.
In case no one else remembers, I’ll remind you that colored (and scented) toilet paper and Kleenex were widely available in the 70’s. Most manufacturers discontinued it due to concerns over health and environmental safety. Apparently many of the dyes used were known irritants and carcinogens and weren’t biodegradable.
The scalloped edge thing bothered me a bit at first, but after we had our upstairs bathroom remodeled, we no longer had a good place to fasten a wall-mounted toilet paper holder and we got a freestanding one. I will (grudgingly) report that the scalloped kind really does tear more easily, although it’s not something I’d care about if the roll was less precariously situated.
Scott toilet paper once had a commercial that used the “Atholl Highlanders” as the theme song. One of their marketing people must have been a piper and had a sense of humor.
Having picked up some at the dollar store recently (Dollar Tree? Dollar General? I can never keep 'em straight) my friend, I can assure you, there’s 2-ply, and then there’s 2-ply.
And then there’s whatever the hell this thin, scratchy crap (HA!) is. There are two layers, so they’re not lying, but … damn.
It’s also NOT packaged as being scented, but whenever I use some to blow my nose I definitely get a whiff of artificial fragrance of some kind.
Probably picked up by proximity to something highly scented on the shelf at the store.
Since I don’t like artificial scents and do not enjoy using thin, flimsy paper that doesn’t hold up to its one job, I give this stuff a 3.5/10 “do not recommend.”
Back to the O.P. the absolute worst was when I was visiting my grandparents in Poland during the (IIRC I was a little kid and didn’t really follow geopolitik) late 80s and martial law or shortly thereafter.
The roll in the bathroom was one-ply, brown color, and seemed almost deliberately, maliciously extra-scratchy. And I found out later that was the “good” stuff put out for company, because we were honored guests.
I’ve also used leaves during absolute emergencies in wilderness camping situations, but that’s only because there was just enough light to see and I was confident in my ability to locate and NOT use poison ivy.
Yeah we keep multi-month quantities of these things also, as well as prescription medications, canned goods, yeast, flour, sugar, and probably some other things I’m forgetting. In late spring of 2020 I was so desperate for some sort of actual cleaning and disinfecting solution that I ordered some stuff from a beauty supply company: this reeking blue goo that smelled just like the local hair salon. It was literally the only cleaner I could find anywhere, including online. It worked, but OMG did it stink. So now we keep Lysol and Pine-Sol and bleach and lots of disinfecting wipes on hand. I also have a stockpile – well, not really a stockpile, but several coffee cans’ worth – of loose change, mostly quarters and dollar coins, which was something I definitely didn’t keep around before Covid.
My mom would only buy Quilted Northern Ultra Plush. No other TP was acceptable. I have no idea what she did during Covid because her and my dad were the antithesis of hoarders: They only buy enough of anything to last about a week: no big packages of TP or paper towels, always buying the smallest bottles of shampoo and hand soap or laundry detergent, only buying groceries enough to last a few days.
I’ve never tried QNUP, maybe I should just to see what the fuss was/is about.
I work in a government facility where the TP is single ply and apparently made from the recycled scraps from a sandpaper manufacturing plant. So pretty much anything I buy at the drugstore or Safeway will be exponentially superior to that.
I definitely want a bidet as well, but I’m too bougie to get one that doesn’t have a heater/heated water supply, and that would require some electrical work in the house, which I’m too cheap to do right now (being bougie and being parsimonious is a constant struggle…).
I’m allergic to perfume, so no thanks. My allergy has saved me thousands of dollars in 45 years of marriage, so I’m ahead.
I was just in Europe, Germany and the Netherlands, and the toilet paper was so tough you could write on it in a pinch. The worse though was “Springfield Oval” which was used throughout MIT 50 years ago. On oval holders designed to give you only what you absolutely needed. Slightly better now.
It’s not puffery. While I agree that “single” rolls of TP are ridiculously skimpy, the triple rolls of Cashmere that I usually buy are the limit of what will fit in the holders. Likewise, my artisinal paper towel holder will hold only some of the larger rolls of Bounty – I can’t remember if the limit is 50% bigger or double rolls – but some bigger ones won’t fit and have to sit on the counter till some of it gets used up. I try to avoid those unless they’re on a deep-discount sale.
During the Sochi Olympics in Russia, there was a lot of commentary about signs warning tourists not to flush toilet paper, but to put it in the provided wastebasket. Some folks were questioning the quality of the plumbing, but I’m sure the problem was not the plumbing but the TP. You shouldn’t flush cardboard down the toilet!
Iron curtain toilet paper, no question. It was like crepe paper, but with wood chunks in it. We always brought our own western roll along when traveling to any of those eastern countries, and had to lock it in our suitcases to keep it from being stolen by hotel staff.
It’s a hand-crafted wooden paper towel holder (holds the roll vertically) with the carved and hand-painted head of a puppy with big eyes wearing a giant ribbon. On the back side of it, meant to be mounted on the wall, you can see the puppy’s tail poking up above the paper towel roll, carved into a curl.
My grandmother had a toilet paper holder, a porcelain doll with a wide skitrt, in the vicinity of the toilet so that no one would ever know she occasionally pooped.
You don’t see those anymore, which is too bad. All the toilets at my mom’s place also still have the 70s brightly coloured, carpet-like fluffy-pad on the lid. I went to Wal-Mart to buy one of those recently. To my surprise they didn’t sell them. Possibly since even before Covid they probably were (and are) remarkably unhygienic.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any in any color other than white, but when I was a kid (1970s), toilet paper routinely came in other colors, like pink and light blue. Whatever happened to that?
I’m with you. My toilet paper holder in my bathroom is a homemade thing made of deer horn… it’s testy about what rolls fit on it.
I’ve seen people stack them on toilet plungers.
I swear I’d do that. But it’s to unstable. And the bottom roll might concern my germaphobia.
My paper towel holder(s) I have two. Are wire things that you put the roll down in. They float allover the house. Hence, two. Sometimes we have to hunt them down.
I keep saying I’m gonna tie them to a concrete block to keep them in the kitchen.
Mid-dau says "Just get one that is attached to the wall!'. Nope, nope, nope. I do not want holes in my expensive tile job. No upper cabinets close to the sink.
