Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like those stupid hand air driers at public facilities. God, how I hate those. Americans have it easy, in general paper towels are available even when the damn air thing is installed. But here in Europe, most often you only get the stupid air machine with no paper towels.
The high end ones take maybe 20s to dry your hands off. Properly drying your hands with paper towels takes at least as long and it wastes paper. What is your problem with an air dryer?
What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
431–440 of 557 posts
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#432For 22 years I used toilet paper until I traveled to South East Asia where every toilet has a seperate sprinkler. After a few toilet visits I decided to give it a GO. Man, toilet paper feels strange and plain stupid now. Water is way cheaper, doesn't hurt your "behind" and I feel cleaner afterwards. Paper seems an invention to sell something we really don't need (by Mad Men :-)).
After traveling through a decent portion of China I tend to agree. The design of the “facilities” (e.g. “squatty potty”) in a lot of locations made a few in my group question toilet paper all together. Though being back in the states there are a lot of weird looks trying to find ways to mimic the stance... A few years after my time there I saw the “Squatty Potty”[0] on Shark Tank, but haven’t tried it. Anyone with th…
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
The high end ones take maybe 20s to dry your hands off. Properly drying your hands with paper towels takes at least as long and it wastes paper. What is your problem with an air dryer?
A side benefit of the paper towel is that in-swinging doors can be pulled with the paper, not your hand. Imagine how many people _didn't_ wash their hands then pulled that door.
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly did. But the descriptions (just like the StackExchange link's replies) are utterly alien to me (squat..? How?) and I haven't found it in me to go on a video hunt (the StackExchange one links to something which supposedly is safe and helpful).
> (squat..? How?) This is a thing for westerners; the squat position (with feet flat on the floor) is really hard to do for a lot of them, iirc mostly having to do with ankle flexibility (for me personally anyway). In countries with squat toilets the people are a lot more used to the position / motion. I guess most people could get by with doing a toe squat, but that's harder to keep balance.
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paper towels are much more sanitary. Big part of washing hands is wiping the bacteria and viruses along with water into something. Drying just gets the water, leaves everything else.
No. It's a nice idea, but doesn't hold up. (Gustafson, Vetter, et al. 2000)
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#436Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#437Well you don't have to go far back in history to read how people solved it. Sweden during 1920, in Swedish https://www.faltbiologerna.se/faltbiologen/innan-toapapperet...
Got TL;DR for the Swedish-impaired? The sole illustration is not terribly enlightening.
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There are many varieties of things in nature you can use to wipe with, in contrast to the modern choice which has been reduced to white paper with or without printed flowers.
One can carve sticks out of firewood, and use them to scrape residue off. It was important that the sticks had a smooth and sharp edge. They take about a minute to make. They are disposeable, and you could make them ahead of time. When you cut wood with an axe, you get a lot of tiny pieces of wood left which are great for this. You could not use human poop as manure in situations where the used sticks would cause trouble. You did not wash your hands, because you only held onto the end of the stick that hasn't been in your butt.
In case you were out and didn't want to make sticks, you could use moss. Or fruticose lichen (tree moss, old man's beard). The lichen is better than moss because moss is wet. In an emergency, snow works, but it is very cold. Hay and other forms of dead grass work too.
This worked because poop was less sticky in the old days. The types of food they ate made their poop come out in solid pellet form. They did get stomach bugs with the associated loose stool, but simply had to take it for the nuisance it was. Maybe try to get hold on some water to clean off.
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Edit: s/burning wood/firewood/ lest someone gets a really stupid idea...
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like Chinese toilets as well, but I think they're a hard sell here. They're more hygienic (no touching), better for health (in terms of poop position) and simpler to clean (just mop the whole floor and you're done).
An honest question: how these handle when you have to drop a "scatter bomb"?
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#439For 22 years I used toilet paper until I traveled to South East Asia where every toilet has a seperate sprinkler. After a few toilet visits I decided to give it a GO. Man, toilet paper feels strange and plain stupid now. Water is way cheaper, doesn't hurt your "behind" and I feel cleaner afterwards. Paper seems an invention to sell something we really don't need (by Mad Men :-)).
After our trip to Cambodia we wanted to bring the "Bum Gun" to the UK. For those who haven't tried it, it's the weirdest thing and sounds disgusting. To quote a crazy Canadian we met, "if you had poo on your arm and you wiped it off with toilet paper, would you say its clean?" That said, SE Asia really lends itself to the Bum Gun. Its warm and can be humid, so you're not really worried about being a bit damp afterwar…
I can poor water from a bottle of water onto the poo on my arm and I'd still think it'd be unclean. I'd need some positive pressure to think otherwise. Oh, and some soap.
Re: What Did Ancient Romans Do Without Toilet Paper?
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like Chinese toilets as well, but I think they're a hard sell here. They're more hygienic (no touching), better for health (in terms of poop position) and simpler to clean (just mop the whole floor and you're done).
An honest question: how these handle when you have to drop a "scatter bomb"?