In the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, I find Rat to be the most unpleasant character so it is disturbing when I find myself similar to him in any way.
Mano Singham
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In the comic strip Pearls Before Swine, I find Rat to be the most unpleasant character so it is disturbing when I find myself similar to him in any way.
Far more important: Which way does the toilet paper roll out? Far-siders are to be cast into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Ha! I don’t just squeeze out every last bit of toothpaste, I also cut the tube open and scrape out the residue.
As for the toilet paper roll, it is logical to have it roll out on the near side so the end is within easy grasp. However if you have a kitten in the house it is recommended to have it on the far side otherwise they will unspool the entire roll.
Trickster Goddess
I do that with toothpaste, too.
Trickster Goddess @ # 2: … if you have a kitten in the house …
Those in a position to know have informed me the same logic applies in the presence of (semi-)bipedal sprogs as well.
According to the original patent application the toilet paper delivery device is designed to dispense the paper over the top hanging down the front.
Paper hanging down the toilet side rather than the wall side, you then fold up so the outside of the roll that touched the dispenser, and is exposed to any fine drops of water+* expelled when the toilet is flushed are inside the wiping paper pad thus produced.
* water+ ie water plus any micro-organisms is might be carrying.
I do squeeze as much toothpaste out as possible, but don’t cut open the tube. However I view that as simple economy rather than a defining characteristic, although I would struggle to share a household with someone that was wasteful in that or other ways, but that’s a perfectly reasonable criteria to consider when choosing a partner. Micro irritation build up and the fewer of them there are the easier living with someone is, so using such habits as part of the parcel of things one considers is just trying to make life living with someone else easier.
I also squeeze the tube as much as is physically possible to extract the last bit because I hate waste.
Jazzlet @6: If you close the lid on the toilet then there is no splashing issue on the toilet paper or elsewhere from flushing. And I always close the lid which probably makes me one of the few males whose female partner has criticized not for leaving the seat up but keeping the lid closed (different type of surprise I assume…). But I also don’t have to retrieve dropped objects from the toilet. I also don’t have anyone else concerned about this now but that’s likely not related.
Hm. Rat is both premature and irrational in this case.
(As well as opinionated, so right there is a similarity to me)
Rat asked “Do you have to?” and Blank retorted “No, I don’t have to”.
(I know, it tends to annoy people when I point such things out)
—
Conveniently, my wife and I each have their own toothpaste, because I use the “sensitive teeth” type and she does not. Good, because she squeezes from the middle, whereas I go from the end of the tube.
Husband, to be maximally efficient, always squeezes from the bottom of the toothpaste tube, folds up the empty section as he uses up the toothpaste, and clamps the folded section with a binder clip. I’m less efficient, but I squeeze the last bit out as well. (We don’t like the same toothpaste.)
As far as toilet paper rolls and kittens go, we learned quickly that with ours, a roll hung either way was easily snagged by a questing claw. We kept our in-use roll in a convenient vanity drawer. (Think small bathrooms.) In-laws visited, and Mom-in-law helpfully put the roll from the drawer onto the dispenser. By the time she’d mentioned it to me and I’d had a chance to deal with it, one of the kittens--undoubtedly Boris, who was more of a trouble-seeking missile than his littermate Natasha--had already made a mess with it.
I’ve had a couple of adult cats (RIP, Rocky and Paddy) who liked to attack paper towel rolls. If you’ve had cats, you understand that “no” to a cat translates as, “don’t get caught doing this thing I want to do”. And so, our kitchen and bathroom paper towels still live inside cabinets, without any external paper towel holders.
rockwhisperer @#9,
I too squeeze from the bottom but I don’t fold up the empty section. Instead, when the tube comes close to being finished, I lay it on the counter and use the hard plastic handle of the toothbrush as a press and move it up from the bottom to the top of the tube, so that the empty part becomes flat. That pretty much squeezes out most of the paste.
What you are missing is that all the characters represent different facets of the human psyche, so all you’re really doing there is denying a part of yourself.
I squeeze from the middle until I get annoyed with myself. Then I push up from the bottom. Never worked with the older tubes
@7 Jean,
We should form a club. “The lid is there for a reason” society.
My father always closes the toilet lid so things from the medicine cabinet, etc. can’t fall in. Good also during the flushing process. Loose end on the outside so I can see the perforation before tearing.
I squeeze the tube with reckless abandon until near the end. Then I hold the far end with my right hand, pinch the tube forcefully between the heel of my left hand and the edge of the counter and slowly pull the tube through. I’m old enough to remember when tubes were metal, and that would have been much trickier.
I don’t understand it, but I’m quite convinced you can get more toothpaste out of the last 10% of the tube then the previous 90%.
Most likely apocryphal but I recall hearing a story of a person being interviewed for a marketing job at a toothpaste company who claimed he could double their sales.
The solution was to increase the diameter of the nozzle, the assumption being that most people squeeze out the same length of toothpaste.
Jean @7
Both I and my partner close toilet lids for that reason, but I’ve never encountered one that sealed, so small droplets, mists if you prefer, will still escape, indeed will be forced out of the gap between the lid/seat and the toilet rim by the force of the entry of water into the enclosed space. You may view this as a belts and braces approach, but it’s my habit now after having thought through the processes involved some decades ago. This probably makes no difference in our home, but when we are elsewhere, particularly somewhere with high traffic it may well help, plus I really, really, really hate both diarrhea and vomiting so the small time it took for the folding to become habit was worth it for me.
Mano @10
I used to fold, but for metal tubes I now do the forcing up, although with my thumb nail which is quite hard enough for the task. Though I’m usually doing it to hydrocortisone cream tubes as the toothpaste comes in plastic tubes which are far more difficult to empty completely.
Various
I’d not considered cutting tubes open, but with the toothpaste now always in plastic tubes here that is the obvious solution . . . not entirely sure I can be bothered. I wonder whether with the emphasis on reducing single plastic use our toothpaste manufacturers will return to metal?
Steve@16- The same error made by those new to sawing firewood: they saw large diameter logs too long.