BECAUSE I’M WEIRD

How much toilet paper does one person really use in a week?

This whole thing started because I was lazy.

There isn't a trash can near this particular toilet, so every time I finished a roll of toilet paper, instead of picking up the empty cardboard roll and walking it into the other room to throw it away, I just left it there.

And apparently I did that five times.

Then one day I looked at those five empty rolls and thought, wait a minute. We've been here five weeks.

There are four toilets in this house—three full bathrooms and another toilet in the basement—but Roger doesn't use this particular toilet. This is the one I use.

Five weeks. Five empty rolls.

So apparently I'm using about one roll of toilet paper a week.

And because I'm weird, looking at five empty toilet paper rolls didn't just make me think about how much toilet paper I use. It immediately made me think about COVID.

I took this picture on March 13, 2020, at 1:29 in the afternoon.

Remember this?

The shelves were empty. People were hoarding toilet paper and buying huge packages because suddenly everybody was afraid there wasn't going to be any. What were we thinking???

And here I am, six years later, looking at five empty cardboard rolls and realizing it took me five weeks to use them.

Then that got me thinking about how little we actually buy toilet paper anymore.

We've been traveling full time for four and a half years, and we almost never buy it. Hotels supply toilet paper. When we're pet sitting, the homeowners supply toilet paper. We've occasionally had to buy it in an Airbnb, but I could probably count the number of times we've done that in four and a half years on one hand.

I know we bought toilet paper when we were in Italy, and then in Albania for a month in both places. There was one bathroom in each location, and between the two of us we definitely used more than four rolls.

When we've had toilet paper left over at an Airbnb, we've left it behind. I think there may have been a time when we took one roll with us in the car for an emergency, but we certainly don't travel around carrying our own supply of toilet paper.

And we've never left a pet sit having used the homeowners' last roll of toilet paper.

This house sit is our longest ever. We're here for two and a half months, and the homeowners very generously made sure there was enough toilet paper and paper towels here to last us for our entire stay.

So toilet paper really isn't something I've had to think much about during the last four and a half years.

Except when we were traveling in Asia.

Then I thought about toilet paper.

Have I mentioned that one photo can drop me down a rabbit hole, I can't quite climb out of?

I learned to carry one of those little travel packages of tissues in my bag because there were times when we would find a public restroom and there wouldn't be any toilet paper.

And that reminded me of Sri Lanka.

We were on an excursion from the ship going to see the elephants in Udawalawa National Park. I know from my pictures that we left the ship at 9:00 that morning, and we didn't get an opportunity to use a restroom until almost 11:30.

You better believe there was a line.

Public restrooms in that part of the world were very sacred. When we found them, we used them.

This particular restroom was in an outbuilding. There were functioning toilets and there was running water at the sinks. I don't remember whether there was soap. Maybe there was soap and there weren't any hand towels. That part I don't remember.

What I do remember is that there was no toilet paper.

Thankfully, I had one of those little packages of tissues with me.

Once we all realized there wasn't any toilet paper, I started passing my packed of tissues underneath the bathroom stall partitions to each other.

One little package of travel tissues was making its way from stall to stall so everybody had something to wipe with.

I haven't thought about that bathroom in Sri Lanka in a long time.

But apparently all it takes is five empty toilet paper rolls sitting beside a toilet to bring it all back.

That's how my brain works.

I looked at five cardboard rolls that were only sitting there because I was too lazy to walk them into another room and throw them away, and somehow I ended up thinking about how much toilet paper I use, empty store shelves during COVID, four and a half years of traveling, buying toilet paper in Italy and Albania, and passing a packet of travel tissues underneath restroom stalls in Sri Lanka.

And now I know something I never really needed to know.

Apparently, I use about one roll of toilet paper a week.

How did I figure that out?

Because I was too lazy to throw away five empty rolls.

And because I'm weird.

There's Always a Story