Great Scott!

If you thought I possibly couldn't discuss anything more mundane than laundry detergent and my period, you were wrong. Today, we're going to discuss toilet paper. And for the unprepared, this is going to be a frank discussion about shit. Honestly, you can't talk about toilet paper without excrement. It's the whole reason someone thought to invent toilet paper.

I still know a lot of people who used outhouses as children and even into adulthood and they always speak fondly of the glossy sections of the Sears & Roebuck catolog. While they may have great memories, I don't see trashcans full of shitty Sears catalogs in their bathrooms. No, typically I see Angel Soft or Charmin brand toilet paper.

So while wiping your ass with catalogs and corncobs may have been a great time as a younger person, apparently it's not something people actually want to do anymore and not only do they really not want to do it, they don't even want to wipe their asses with that cheap forty grit toilet paper you can pick up for a buck. Oh hell no. They're going for the full comfort of quilted double ply. Can't say that I blame them.

In addition to washing a lot of clothes, we also apparently use a lot of toilet paper. I've fiddled around with different types of toilet paper. I've tried the 40 grit single ply and found I basically had to use twice as much to wipe me arse than if I'd just splurged and bought the nicer shitpaper. So that didn't seem to economical.

Now, hardcore frugal types and tree huggers tout flannel ass wipes over paper. I'm not exactly going to say I would never do that, but it just doesn't fit with my aesthetic right now. When all my children were little, I used  cloth wipes out of old towels and that worked pretty well. Had an entirely different laundry basket and all that good rot to keep the nastiness away from the regular clothes. I'm only half crunchy tree hugger since I lived by disposables. I tried cloth when my first was born and I'm just too shot out for all that. I did let my kids run around naked a lot. I beleive everyone needs a good airing out.

And the more I think and write about this, the more I'm starting to eyeball flannel asswipes. Why am I automatically dismissing it? How is it going to inconvenience me? Do I really want to wash shitty flannel? What happens when I have to pee and all the flannel is covered in poo? Do I have time for this shit? How much time am I going to have to spend snaking flannel out of my pipes before my children remember they don't flush these? I'll think more on it later. I do have to say that people who actually go out and buy flannel ass wipes are a little weird. Dude, Just buy some flannel and wipe your ass.

At any point, I currently use Scott's toilet paper and I spend about ten dollars a month on ass wiping materials. (So deduct $10 from the $990 I have left after I buy my daughter's tampons and laundry detergent and that leaves $980. Except I've now made my own laundry detergent and have enough supplies to last me for some eight months. So I guess beginning this month I actually have $985 left after basic supplies. Or do I divide that ten buck initial start up fee over an eight month period and count that? I think that tends to be more of a . . . hypothetical cost analysis rather than an actual "What in the hell do I have to pay out this month" analysis. If that makes any sense. I guess. I don't know. Screw it. Let's just say I have about $985 a month to work with this month.)

Scott's is one ply, but it's surprisingly nice - comfortable and effective. There's nothing I hate worse than ineffective toilet paper. I used to buy Angel Soft but it was just . . . too soft. And Charmin is just too damned expensive. I'm not paying that kind of money just to wipe me arse.

I've also stolen toilet paper from the university last year. I was really broke. Seriously, deeply broke. The transmission in my car went out in oncoming traffic and my water heater followed suit shortly thereafter. Life is messed up when you start eyeing the forty grit toilet paper at your place of higher education as a "good find."

I really don't like to think I was "stealing" it, though. The cleaning services folks always changed the toilet paper roll in the stall when it got down to about a third of a roll. (They were those big, industrial sized rolls of paper.) Well, then they'd put the "leftovers" on the counter in the bathroom and I watched that toilet paper for months before I finally got broke enough to take some home. Sometimes it would be gone within a day and other times it seemed like the same used roll would sit their for a week or more.

I finally decided that someone needed to do somnething wtih that toilet paper and I decided that someone was me. I never did really know if the cleaning services folks put that paper on the counter for starving students to take home or what since no one ever put up a "free toilet paper" notice, but I saw it as a sign that my needs were being met somehow and took it home. Hey. You do what you gotta do.

I think I'll just call this post a day. I have to go think about these flannel asswipes some more. If anyone wants to link a cost-effectiveness site, that would be cool. Or figure it up for me since I'm mathematically disinclined. I don't know if having to wash and dry (using water, electricity, detergent, and bleach) is really any more cost effective than just spending the ten bucks in toilet paper. I don't know our bathroom habits that well to sit down and know exactly how many loads of  flannel ass wipes I'm going to have to clean to keep everything covered in the bathroom. All I know is we are very regular people. Four people every day, at least once a day. If I'm feeling particular happy, I'll go twice. So yeah. Throw a sister a bone.