Tissue Issue

For some odd reason, toilet paper has become the most wanted on grocery store hit lists. There is no reason why this should happen in a country where there are ample paper mills gobbling up trees and massively spitting out papers of all kinds. Grabbing toilet paper and hoarding it, is going to be a joke when this Covid19 disaster is all over. At present, it isn't a joke because those rolls we take for granted, are becoming hard to get. Anywhere.  Tissue paper or toilet paper is one of the things we never discuss socially, and yet no one doesn't use it every single day. What no one suggests is how to economize on the unspeakables used in bathrooms all day, daily. It's time we did, but tastefully, although that adverb's use doesn't quite fit on the subject. We on this continent are somewhat bashful when it comes to what goes on in the little rooms in our homes. In Europe, where they're quite used to talking more openly about natural functions, they have not merely three or four pieces of plumbing, but an extra one in bathrooms. France especially, but many other ancient lands also sport a bidet that is often called the "lady appliance". North American tourists who are unused to continental habits, find this addition in foreign bathrooms puzzling and amusing.  If they spend more than a day or two, say in France, they come to understand and learn and finally, to use and admire the additional piece. Europeans are not as shy as North Americans about natural functions and see nothing amiss in cleansing bodily areas properly, ones that we swish and forget rapidly as possible. The extra appliance, the bidet, sends a directed volley of water, usually warmed, at the dispensing target after it has done its work.   Beside the bidet there is a small rack with towelettes that look like table napkins, but aren't. In our bathrooms that cry out for rolls of paper, not having the benefits of bidets, we can if driven, use the idea creatively. It is possible with some adjustment to our pristine habits, to take up the use of towelettes after using the toilet. To be perfectly direct, it is possible to use a minimal number of tissue sheets supplemented by a farewell of towelette with soap and water even if  not having the benefit of a bidet. One drops the rinsed towelette, into into a special hamper for future laundering. We do this for babies or used to, when society wasn't too lazy or too busy or too squeamish, to deal with such human matters in the old fashioned way.  In these times when most of us are stuck inside, we could scour the linen cupboard for old sheets, old towels and cloth table napkins no longer in a set, and get busy putting together and/or cutting up a supply of towelettes. I feel that some who read, will have faces of disgust, but honestly, why not? This natural function of elimination, that we treat as the leper of subjects, is completely normal, and is with toilet paper shortages lurking, time we got realistic about how to stretch our minds and habits as we increase our innovative gifts and reduce our environmental footprints.