Hanging the Toilet Paper: In Defense of Under
The ICBE’s official stance on hanging the toilet paper is that you should do whatever you need to in order to ensure happiness in the home. Both the over and under methods have their advantages. That said, my own personal preference is for under, so I was intrigued to get an email the other day pointing to a rather long-winded blog entry that contained the following tidbit:
My mind is going to explode! Everyone knows that toilet paper should roll from the front.
(You can read the post in its entirety here)
News to me, a self-professed under-er. Even more intriguing though was the supposed scientific basis for this assessment! Sadly, the entire argument (found here) consisted of this one fatally flawed diagram:
It depicts two possible ways to tear the toilet paper with one hand, and suggests that the under method will always result in you tearing off more squares, thus wasting TP and hurting the environment. Problem is, the diagram is just plain wrong. From my own personal experience I know that I can routinely tear off as little as a single square of TP with just one hand when hung under, yet cannot even manage a single handed tear half the time when hung over. Now its entirely possible that other people will have different results, but to put this forward as scientific fact? Ridiculous!
I for one will continue to happily hang the TP under, and to happily tear off a square at a time with impunity.
10 comments
I am, will be, and always have been in favor of hanging the toilet paper with the roll dispensing from the top. But more power to you! There was an interesting Twitter discussion earlier this year between Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore about how to “properly” load the TP. A small post about it here: http://tinyurl.com/kktnsb
The toilet paper industry needs to help decide this issue… by packaging half their products with labels saying that the rolls are for “top hanging” only (and the other half as “bottom hanging” only). Then this matter will be decided by how many more rolls of each type are purchased by consumers..
Not a bad idea, but can we really trust consumers to read packaging? I don’t think so!
Thank you for considering the opposing position, though I am disappointed that you could not be persuaded to leave the dark side in favor of the “proper” method of rolling from the top.
As always, your sage input on all things bathroom related is valued and respected. Nonetheless, I felt your massive influence in this topic needed some “fair and balanced” counterpoints:
http://homefixated.com/2009/08/26/toilet-paper-over-or-under/
Keep up the good work. . . . it’s intense debates about critical topics like proper toilet paper hanging that make this country great!
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I personally hang the TP so it dispenses forward. It’s really more that I would scrape my wrist because of where it hangs, but that’s a moot point. But I really don’t mind the slight effort of reaching my other hand over to help tear the TP. Also, I always flip around the TP when someone hangs it under (in my bathroom, of course. I wouldn’t do that as a guest in someone else’s home).
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How do you deal with having to pluck the toilet paper off the wall, using the under method?
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