Mad About Toilet Paper

I am outraged, OUTRAGED! I don't know how many of you buy toilet paper, but I am guessing quite a few. I mean whats the alternative? Taking a really big purse into a public toilet and stocking up?

Not and keep your Temple Recommend you won't.

Well I don't know how many of you pay attention to that toilet paper you are buying, but for simplicities sake I will just pretend that I will be pointing things out to you that you may not have thought of before.

Okay Class is in Session.

Years ago I had a friend and neighbor who was probably one of the most frugal people I had ever met. She really didn't need to be because I knew that her husband made really good money. That made no difference to her. She had figured out so many things that were necessary to live within or way under your means, and she would share them in such a non-threatening, non-judgemental way, that I think all of us that lived by her learned a lot in the three years we all lived by each other.

This is one of the most eye-opening things she ever pointed out to me.

One day I was at her house while she was putting away groceries. She came to the toilet paper and all of a sudden she went from mild mannered Elaine to Super Robo Consumer Elaine. She showed me the toilet paper she had just purchased and practically snarled, "look at this". Okay. Not wanting her to turn on me I did look at that. I see toilet paper, I told her. "No no, not that!"
She then pointed out to me how many of SHEETS were in the four pack of TP. Uh okay.

I was humoring her at this point.

She proceeded to show me that there were, now I don't really remember the actual number, this was like over 25 years ago, so lets say there were 275. As I remember that is pretty close.

So 275 sheets per roll. I didn't know what to say. Was that a good number or bad. I suddenly felt so irresponsible, to never have noticed how many sheets there were in a roll of toilet paper.
I took a stab at it though and asked "is that not good?" "No" she said a little more calmly. I think she saw the fight or flight look on my face. Then we spent the next ten minutes with her telling me that she never got toilet paper with less than 300 sheets per roll. She was angry that brand after brand of TP had been slowly but surely decreasing how much product was actually in any plastic wrapped bag of that bathroom necessity. As she explained this all to me I started to understand what she meant. Up to this point in my toilet paper shopping career, I had always gone for whatever was the cheapest. I was suddenly very eager to go home and check out my toilet paper supplies and see how many squares-per-roll my store brand TP had.

I went home. I checked. It was not good.

I don't remember how many sheets per roll there were but it certainly wasn't 275. Hmmpphh. So much for my bargain brand. From then on I was always aware of not just the price of my TP but also sheets per roll.

Now lets fast forward about fifteen years, give or take a few. They suddenly started selling "double" packs of toilet paper. Now by this time there was no pulling one over on me. I of course was skeptical. Amazingly though the first few years of this double roll business, they really did, almost, have double rolls in those packages.

Not quite, but close. Close.

Well I wondered how long good old Proctor & Gamble and Northern and all the rest of these companies would be able to resist their usual tricks of slowly, methodically, giving less and asking for more.

It did not take long.

Within a year and a half I noticed that what was once, say 480 sheets, was suddenly magically reduced to 450 sheets.

Too small for almost anyone to notice, right?

Over the next several years it got more and more flagrant. I didn't understand why consumers weren't crying FOUL. Then I remembered that if my old friend Elaine, hadn't shown me the way all those years ago I wouldn't have noticed either.

Of course the next step, in what I am sure has been a very planned, 10 year plan, was to systematically start getting rid of their single rolls altogether. In fact, I dare you to go to any store that carries toilet paper and try to find more than one package of single roll TP.

And do you know why that is?

That is because the average supreme double roll of toilet paper these days has on average 200 sheets. Yes that's right only 200. I get so angry when I see this. I mean do you have any idea how skimpy a 100 sheet roll of toilet paper would be? You would need a new roll probably every day and a half. So how dare they claim that 200 is a DOUBLE roll.

Less than that if you have kids.

After all, you know how kids, especially the younger ones, tear off a five foot long piece of the stuff. No matter how thick, absorbant and cushy it is.

Believe it or not there are still a few bargains to be found. Costco, at least the last time I checked, had around 425 or so on their Kirkland brand. It may not be the best or softest but, who says you have to use it in your own bathroom. For a few years though I have found a pretty good deal and it is of course at Walmart. It is the White Cloud brand. Granted it's not up there with Cottonelle or Charmin, but have you noticed how many sheets per roll those ones have?
The new super premium super soft Charmin has 200. Courtney calls me cheap but I just can't see spending that much on something that is used for, well you know what it is used for.

So I'm at Walmart the other day and I needed to get soap and toilet paper. I headed straight for the White Cloud. There were the 12 double roll package for around 6 bucks. I grabbed a package and even though I know it has 352 sheets (it used to have 425. See what I mean!) For some reason though I checked out the sheet count. It was 308. THREE HUNDRED and EIGHT.
What is with the eight? I couldn't believe it. I looked through all of them hoping, and sure enough there were a few packages that still had 352.

I had only planned to buy one package but instead I grabbed two.

I was so mad at how shopping these days is just one rip off after another. When I got to the check stand, the checker was a really nice lady that I have talked to before. I was so steamed at this point that I just had to point out to her my outrage over this whole toilet paper conspiracy. She had never thought about it before and she was really glad that I had pointed it out to her.

Now maybe I am wrong and several of my readers have noticed this TP problem already. If you have then I guess we are on the same page. But if you have never noticed this before, I hope that you are as outraged as I am. And if not I hope you have not minded too much my latest rant. I am thinking of sending a strongly worded letter to some of the big TP companies and letting them know that I am on to them.

I am no stranger to writing strongly worded letters.

And the thing is, for every letter they get that arrives by snail-mail they figure that said letter represents several thousand people. So if you ever want to get a strong message to any company about any thing send it snail-mail.

Okay. Class dismissed.