14 DAY TRIAL // Here is a piece of news bound to make some heads turn: there are people in this world who consider toilet paper to be obsolete, and who have decided to replace it with reusable pieces of cloth.
Three of these people are Angela Davis, Kathleen Quiring, and Mikala Earley, three bloggers currently living in the United States.
The women recently had a chat with the press, and detailed how much it had been since the last time they last used toilet paper, and why they had decided to opt for other wiping options.
According to Daily Mail, both Mikala Earley and her husband haven't bought toilet paper since about a year ago, and are quite happy with their choice.
Since then, they've saved a considerable amount of money, and are confident that they have also improved on their ecological footprint.
This is because a lot of dead trees go into making toilet paper, and also because the chloride dioxide used to bleach it has been documented to have a negative impact on the environment.
“It is definitely possible. It [toilet paper] is almost seen as a necessity, and it doesn't have to be, and it's been a lot of fun to learn how to do it this way,” Mikala explains.
Angela Davis, on the other hand, says that she and her family stopped using toilet paper for about two weeks as part of an experiment, and turned to flannel cloths instead.
The family kept the cloths in a box near to the toilet, and washed them once every two-three days. Angela claims that, as surprising as this may sound, the cloths did not let out an unpleasant odor.
Kathleen's substitute for toilet paper is a bunch of pieces of material that used to make up a baby blanket. She too washes them regularly, except that, unlike Angela, she only does this about once a week.
Some might argue that whatever money the families save by not buying toilet paper is eventually spent on water and electricity bills, and laundry detergents.
However, Angela stresses that, at the time when she and her family used coupons to buy toilet paper, they parted with some $136 (€99.5) annually. By comparison, washing the pieces of cloth only costs them $42 (€30.7) each year.
Despite their not buying toilet paper for themselves, the families still keep some in the house, just in case some of their guests are not all that comfortable with using pieces of cloth to wipe.