Recently my house has run out of toilet paper. I live in a large house, and it is surpris­ing how much toilet paper we go through on a daily basis. I will attribute the causes of this prob­lem to the sheer number of people with whom I live, and to incred­i­bly inef­fi­cient toilet paper use by unknown room­mates. I’m not going to air out my living situ­a­tion’s dirty laun­dry because that would be unfair, but I will safely say that there is vast room for improve­ment in our toilet paper efficiency department.

Most of y’alls would be look­ing at this as a down­er. How you gonna be able to poop when your house is devoid of TP? But I am opti­mistic about this prospect because this now increases my propen­sity to use the bath­rooms on campus more often to this blog’s agen­da. There is only one small incon­ve­nience to this and that I have to plan my diges­tive sched­ule to best accom­mo­date my class sched­ule, but to me that is a small price to pay for the advance­ment of the blog and for all the money I’ll be saving by not buying my own toilet paper.

So the bath­room of choice today was Miller Hall, which is a build­ing in the quad. I have a class on the third floor there once a week this quar­ter so it’s been incor­po­rated into my rota­tion for a minute. This has given me ample moments to observe the dynam­ics of this particular restroom.

First obser­va­tion: there is always, always, always an old dude in there. What depart­ment does Miller house? I don’t think I’ve seen that many old dudes in one build­ing at once, and that’s saying some­thing consid­er­ing I’ve spent a lot of time in ESRM build­ings. There’s noth­ing inher­ently wrong with old dudes. It’s not like I hate them or anything. They do have the tendency to give absolutely no fucks about how loudly they poop, which I greatly admire but is also really gross. Every once in a while I have to hold the door for an old dude pass­ing through, and the series of eye contact and giving of thanks can be very awkward.

Second obser­va­tion: really big windows. The entire south wall is a series of windows. Not enough bath­rooms use this to their advan­tage, espe­cially the upper-floor ones that don’t have to deal with look­er­s-on. The natural light is a pleas­ant change-up from the eyesore CFL’s they’re putting in every room. With that being said, it does­n’t get very good venti­la­tion for what­ever reason, so it smells pretty dank every time I go in there.

Third obser­va­tion: imbal­ance in water dynam­ics. The urinals in Miller 3 are super old-school ones that use 472 gallons of water per flush and look like toilet bowls mounted onto the wall that you pee in. But seri­ously there’s an obscene amount of water in there for a urinal. There can’t possi­bly be a need for all that water. I think that other people notice this as well, and this has led to a sense of guilt regard­ing flush­ing 472 gallons of water for each use. Ulti­mately the result of this is that people don’t flush the urinals half the time, which is pretty gross, but if water conser­va­tion is more of your thing, it may be worth the sacrifice.

This is in direct contrast to the toilets in the stalls, which use a pathetic amount of water so as to ensure a double flush. Double flushes are typi­cally reserved for the poops that you’re proud­est of. The need to double baby flush every­thing in Miller waters down the sense of accom­plish­ment of a double flush poop (DFP) to some­thing much less than it should be.

Obser­va­tion four: this is one of the larger bath­rooms on campus, and I think is the only men’s bath­room between the second and third floors in Miller. This means that it gets a lot of traf­fic. If you are the timid type, avoid this place at all costs. There’s never been an instance where I’ve had the place to myself. The old dudes that use it genuinely do not care about your bath­room well-be­ing and will shit as loudly as they please. There’s usually pee in the urinals. The smell is a little funky. And the decor is noth­ing to write home about, except for the windows. There’s not a lot to gain from using Miller 3. This is an advanced-level bath­room, not for the faint at heart.