Photo courtesy 123rf.com
I just discovered a new book, The Book of Rules. It's a very good book, a fun and funny book, and I'm very glad to have it. Although it is right about everything else, it's wrong about toilet paper placement, which also happened to be the impetus for the author's writing the book.
The book states that toilet paper should be placed on the roller so that the sheets come out from below the roll. In this position the sheets will touch the wall, which even in the cleanest homes do not escape the spray caused by a flushing toilet. Also, more of the roll is exposed to the spray from a flushing toilet: both the back of the sheets that aren't touching the dirty wall, and the top and outside of the roll. When placed in this position the user also must touch the wall as well as more of the paper and roll in order to grasp and tear sheets off the roll.
If the roll is placed so that the sheets are dispensed from the top, then the sheets never touch the wall, the sheets are touched only by human hands. People can roll off and throw away the four sheets that have been exposed to flushing toilet spray and the hands of the previous loo user. Then everyone uses cleaner and less tainted paper than if they had placed the roll in the other direction. Also, everyone touches less of the roll because the paper is easier to grasp.
My best friend and I tease each other about this, and when we were younger had a running joke-fest on this topic. I know one young man who says he wouldn't marry a woman who didn't put the roll on the same way he does... I have another friend who says that's the best reason for becoming rich enough to have separate bathrooms for the spouses; he also believes that strong marriages are based on separate loos...well, that's another topic.
For more information click here and click here. Oh, and don't forget to check out the Toilet Paper Encyclopedia website. What did you learn today?
