Three rolls a week? Really?

Ok, I’m in. I think I don’t use that many, but I think some do. I think that the study wants a month of data, especially for households with women who get periods.

Well, you’re right, longer tracking would produce more reliable results. But this is just an informal survey, so let’s see what a ballpark figure is like.

Don’t forget, if you’re out of the house at work 8 hours a day or whatever, the toilet paper you use during that time has to be considered into the total.

Good point. Well, I’m not. But if I were, for the sake of the count I suppose I might adjust my usage by the percentage of waking hours I spent away from home.

Rolls of toilet paper vary anyway in a number of dimensions, including count; we haven’t defined “roll.” So this is all very approximate and just a matter of curiosity.

Yeah, I do use pretty high-count rolls. Some other types of rolls don’t have many sheets on them.

Well. At least half of the year, my usage jumps. When I get allergies, I usually blow my nose in TP. I think it could average out to 3 rolls a week, over the course of a year.

I’m at about a roll a week (high count roll) but my daughter has UC, I’m guessing she might be a three roller.
I have wondered how to reduce my usage, but it seems that, short of going to reusable cloth circumstances and pails, mindfulness is key.

I use about 1½ 300-sheet rolls per week.

Being a fan of forests everywhere, I use TP that’s made from 100% recycled paper.

I haven’t paid careful attention, but I think in my household of one adult and one 11 year old we use about one roll every four days. Plus I’m out at work 10 hours or more per day, between the work and the commute. So maybe we’d use double if I factor in the work time.

I probably do, I buy a family pack about every two weeks or so. Thats 9 rolls.

@Jeruba – look back on Fluther about a year or 18 months. @luckyguy and I had a lengthy discussion about toilet paper use and the rate of consumption. He did some measurement and calculation.

A lot of people don’t use toilet paper all the time, some use baby wipes for certain bathroom things so this might cut down on toilet paper consumption. In my household, I don’t but my daughter does.

I might use 1 mega roll a week but I use it to blow my nose and clean up around the sink some besides the normal usage. I’ve been curious about how much I use, too. Will look forward to your report!

Our house uses pretty much 1 or at least half of one a day

I have 1 to 3 BMs per day and I use 4 large wads of butt wipe per BM. I’ll try to cut back a couple sheets of butt wipe per wad to save the planet.

^TMI
I’ll keep a count for a week at my house. I live alone and just put a new roll out Saturday because I was expecting company. No one went in the bathroom though.

@gondwanalon Interesting. ;) I only go every other day or so and I don’t use TP for anything else, so I don’t think I use as much as some people here. When I shared a bathroom with three other guys in college it did seem like we were using a few rolls a week, but I never actually took statistics. Now that I only share a bathroom with one other person, it seems like maybe one roll per week? Certainly not three. I’ll try and count.

Factor in the fact that each roll depending on the brand has different number of sheets per roll.

Also double rolls and ones that are one ply,two ply or three ply thickness as well.

Each variable would have to be factored in for accuracy.

@gondwanalon….are you serious?
So, starting tomorrow I shall count how many rolls we have, and a week from today I shall recount and post those results. Bet you can’t wait!

Well, women use toilet paper more than men, so it’s all your fault.

@Caravanfan For sure, fingernails, make-up, all kinds of things.

We usually use Costco brand toilet paper which is known for wide sheets, while the rest of the popular brands’ roll width has really shrunk a lot.

I’m pretty sure Rick uses the most TP between the two of us!

Great. Keep it up.

We may not have defined “roll,” as acknowledged above, but use is use, no matter for what. If it was there and it’s gone now, it’s been used. Even if the cat clawed it down or the toddler stuck one end in the toilet and flushed.

@elbanditoroso, is this the thread you mean? It’s the only one I found.

One way to reduce TP usage is to minimize one’s fiber intake. Avoid all fruits, veggies, legumes, nuts, etc. and switch to an ice cream diet; white bread with butter should be okay once in awhile.

I heard that Elvis only used 10 rolls in the last 10 years of his life. ;-)

@Jeruba No – I’ll look for it and send you a link. I was the OP on that string and I asked how long a roll lasted.

@Brian1946: I saw a show about Elvis’s autopsy and it said that he had a heart attack after straining to do a bowel movement. He was severely constipated from all of the pain killers and sleeping pills he was taking. He got up in the middle of the night, strained to have a BM, couldn’t go, got up from the toilet, took a few steps and fell down dead on the floor. When his girlfriend woke up a few hours later, she wondered where he was and found him dead on the floor.

Remember all the conspiracy stories about how Elvis wasn’t really dead? FINALLY someone pointed out that if the man was going to stage his own death he wouldn’t have it staged it to happen on the crapper!

I expect I do. My tail feathers are delicate.

I really want a home made cloverleaf roll dripping with butter right now!

@Dutchess That sounds so inappropriate in the context of this question! :-)

I know!! But every time I see just the question I get hungry! :D:D:D:D

@Dutchess_III

”... happen on the crapper!”

I’m going to Lost Vegas, to watch afterlife Elvis rapping about it happening on the crapper.

@jca2

Thanks for confirming what I heard about him biting the big one because of bowel blockage.

“Wella wella one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now GO CAT GO!”
Blortch!

In days of old
When knights were bold
And paper wasn’t invented
They’d wipe at last
On blades of grass
Obliged to be contented

Every year, Americans use more than 187 billion tons of paper 749 pounds of paper products per person each year.

I think people also use more paper towels than necessary, both at home and while out in public spaces.

I’m married, so it’s not just me. Not in recent years anyway. My husband gets annoyed at how fast we go through TP. Sunny Hoffstan, on The View, says her husband and she had real fights about it when they were first married, because he complained she used too much.

My husband used to say they make 12 packs of TP for a year supply. Oy.

I think I probably do go through 3 a week on my own, but I work at home, and I rarely have Kleenex in the house, I use TP to blow my nose, wipe off make-up, everything you use tissue for.

@jca2 I love the paper towels that are half size. Not so much for the .5, but for the 1.5. Sometimes one square isn’t quite enough paper to wipe down my kitchen counters, but two is more than I need. I don’t use a lot of paper towels on a daily basis though. I clean a lot with sponges, towels, or rags, depending on what I’m cleaning.

I am super stingy about paper towels. Back when I was poor I never even bought them. My mom said, “But they’re so convenient and so cheap!”
I said, “Yes, and I can’t afford them.”

@Dutchess_III I don’t think they’re so cheap, but I like quality paper towels, so I spend more for the stronger ones. I go cheap on napkins though. Store brand whatever is cheapest.

I just did a massive clean, because my parents just left after being here 3.5 weeks, and I feel like I went through so many paper towels in 4 hours, or however long I spent cleaning everything. I cleaned my bathroom also, and the kitchen, etc., the whole house.

Yikes, @JLeslie, really? People fight about how much TP one or the other uses? I don’t disbelieve you, but I think it’s awful that someone would police the use of TP of another adult.

@canidmajor It is awful! I can only guess that Sunny’s husband grew up without having to share a bathroom with sisters. My husband has a sister, but she had her own bathroom. Men use much much less tp than women. I use less now that I am through menopause I would guess. Although, I mostly used tampons, so not a huge difference probably.

I heard that an ex-military father had expectations of an unbelievably low number of sheets of TP per WC visit, because that’s what he had to do in boot camp . . .

But @JLeslie, whether or not women use more or less than men doesn’t really matter, it’s an intimate and personal thing, and unless finances are so very tight that it actually means the difference between eating and not, it’s just gross that anyone else would have a say.

Try to teach your children to be sensible, yes, but to try to regulate the TP usage of a functioning adult…

@canidmajor Oh, I agree. I think for my husband he just finds it shocking. Not just, I shouldn’t say just. He was sort of complaining about the expenditure also, which I found annoying and awful. You and I are in agreement.

Men can be clueless. When we stay with his brother the guest bathroom never has a trash can.

I once had a male roommate who made some remarks, and said he couldn’t understand why women used so much. Annoyed, I explained exactly why. He was so grossed out at my (rather disgustingly graphic) explanation. I recommended he not ask such a thing again, of any woman.

If I’m home I can go to the bathroom once an hour or once every two hours, because I’m usually drinking either coffee in the morning or diet soda in the evenings. I don’t use TP to blow my nose though, and I remove eye makeup with cotton pads. So I guess I make up for one with the other.

@JLeslie Um, what does your brother in law’s bathroom not having a trash can have to do with the great usage of toilet paper?

@kritiper Just another example of how men are clueless about bathroom needs of women. He’s gay, which probably just makes him more ignorant about how much tp women use, and how women use items that are not supposed to be flushed, and need to be put in a trash can.

@JLeslie I didn’t consider other items since we were discussing toilet paper. (I do know a little about women since I have 4 sisters.)

@kritiper I wasn’t assuming anything about you. I don’t mean all men are clueless, just some of them.

@JLeslie I’m not trying to start anything, I’m just curious. Your husband belongs to a Porche club but he complains about the cost of toilet paper? Am I getting this right?

I go through 5 rolls a week. I’m not the only person in the house. I also use toilet paper as tissue for nose blowing. I do a lot of nose blowing.

@Stache Now, you’re getting my life.

Porsche ok, TP not ok. Porsche ok, new socks not ok. Porsche ok, lunch out not ok. Lol. He’s ridiculous sometimes. Luckily, the last two I mentioned he just imposes on himself. I bought him 2 packs of 3 socks a couple of years ago, and he made me return one pack. He didn’t want me to spend the $20 on socks. Many of his socks are old, losing the elasticity at the top. He finally used a new pair, and said, “amazing how good the new socks feel.” He won’t let me buy more of them.

He’ll spend a ton of money on a house too. You know, we need a huge garage for all of those cars.

I tend to be frugile also, so overall it’s fine, but it’s when he is annoyed about these ridiculous things I just shake my head or laugh. I’m not going to worry about how much TP I use. I also don’t worry about eating lunch out or buying new socks if I need them, however I do agree with him that not spending lots of money on little things is partly why he can buy a Porsche. If anything, I’m glad he’s more like that than not.

He grew up in a family that spends money, and winds up with none. That’s how he can buy expensive things and feel exhilarated and happy and I suffer buyers remorse (which I get really bad on big purchases). He grew up with a new car every year as a teenager and traveling to America or Europe was all about shopping.

Everyone spends money their own way, and everyone has little things that they think are wasteful or unnecessary.

@JLeslie they can be very cheap. In the 90s you could get a roll for .25. I couldn’t afford to buy them.

@Dutchess_III The quality is terrible on the cheap ones. Plus, I bet it has fewer sheets in a roll that looks like a similar size to Bounty or Brawn. The cheap ones seem to be wrapped around the roll looser, but I’ve never actually compared the count.

Who the hell cares about the quality of freaking paper towels when you’re so poor you can’t afford to buy them?

@Dutchess_III When you have to use two sheets instead of one the math matters. Maybe the cheapest ones still come out much cheaper, but it’s just not as cheap as it seems is all I am saying.

I see at Dollar Tree how some of the things aren’t cheaper, it’s smaller packages. Some things are a great value for a dollar, no question about it, but things like Ramen Noodles just have 5 instead of 6 in a package, it’s not cheaper. Some things are more expensive at the Dollar store than Wallmart. Some things if you buy in bulk you can save, but it’s very hard for the poor to buy in bulk, and sometimes they are taken advantage of because of it.

@JLeslie True enough!

One standard roll per person per three days sounds about right.
I use mega rolls which are supposed to be the equivalent to three standard rolls.
I just changed out a roll that lasted just over four days. I am single, with a sister who came over for one day, and a friend who comes over almost every day. Obviously, we all use the bathroom. TP is also used to wipe up around the bathroom sink, and I blow my nose at least four times a day using the TP.

My test time is up. I have gone through a roll and a half in a one week time period. I do work away from home 5 days a week.

The results are in! And . . .

At my house, we’ve gone through just about exactly 1½ rolls in each bathroom, for a total of 3. That’s three for the household, or an average of one roll per person per week.

Time away should figure in, though. Each of us spends a little time away from the house, probably averaging not more than 10% of our total time (i.e., out of 24 hours, not out of waking time only), and not just to use other people’s bathrooms. But let’s say 33% just for the hell of it, because it makes the math easier, even though that would be 8 hours away out of every 24 and we are nowhere near that. Even so, that would add only one roll to the week’s total usage, making it 4 instead of the projected “average” of 9.

I knew we couldn’t be using 3 rolls per week apiece, not even on bad days.

We do, however, use facial tissues and paper towels. Toilet paper is pretty much a single-purpose resource.

Oh, I was figuring per household, not per person. No way in the world do I use 3 rolls by myself!

Fluther says it’s only been five days so far.

I was actually observing my usage before the OP, and here are the results:

I used 12 rolls over a 72-day period; I therefore used about 1.17 rolls per week.

Crap. I forgot to do my homework. Crap.

I’ll be polite and say that ^ looks like an I-forgot-to-do-my-homework samwich! ;-)

All I did was mark the date of my previous purchase on a digital calendar.

It makes a great chronological measuring-device, and I’ve developed a habit of using it for tracking different things. Otherwise, I might have forgotten too.

I used it to realize that I cut my toenails about once every 3 or 4 months, with a growth rate of about 1/16” per month.

We use a 12pk a month so we’re at 3 rolls per week. I need to get recycled online I think.

@KNOWITALL That’s hilarious!

@janbb I mean buy recycled rolls online. They exist.

@KNOWITALL Oh – made from recycled paper but not pre-used! I thought you were making a funny joke.

@janbb I figured. My hippie aunt brought me some once, just never saw it again to buy.

I lost track of this thread (did it get moved out of Meta to limbo or something?) and meant to report back that I seem to use about one roll per week on average, though it is a “Kirkland Signature” roll (the Costco brand, which is a large roll with many sheets). I know of people who use rather more.

Also females tend to use more. Hard to average not knowing jellies physical gender.