It occurred to me today, after rushing down the shop on a desperate errand to buy toilet roll, that we use an awful lot of it. I remember my father telling me that after the second world war he would be sent to the “outhouse” with newspaper squares with which to wipe, it sounded barbaric. Then there was the school experience for any of us lucky enough to go to school in the 70’s and 80’s, we had what we called “tracing paper” toilet tissue, and if our school was particularly lucky you’d have the wonderful disinfectant coated “tracing paper”. Our twenty-first century “bottoms” are so much luckier, we have quilted, textured, fragranced, infused toilet paper, and in certain upscale supermarkets you can occasionally buy illustrated toilet paper with little fishes on it, and we can use it in abundance.
I digress, back to my emergency trip down the local shops for “loo roll,” and the issue of our excessive usage. With three grown men/teens, a teenage girl and a “tween” it is used in the most versatile of ways. I have been known to pick up wads of it that has been used to blot lipstick, to take off nail varnish, blow noses on, mop up spillage (we do have kitchen roll, cotton pads etc). My inner hippy cries at the trees felled to fuel this wastage of toilet roll. I will be having words with said housemates about the appropriate usage of this precious commodity, and be pointing them in the right direction when it comes to nail polish removal. We need to be re-educated in our usage, and wastage of toilet tissue. I mean after all what did our parents use to blot their lipstick? Surely, we are spoilt?