Toilet paper shortage? Learn how to hygienically clean your butt without toilet paper 💩

Toilet paper shortage? Learn how to hygienically clean your butt without toilet paper 💩

Why this article?

The toilet paper shortage made me write this blogpost about how you can hygienically clean your butt with water only.

After reading this, you won’t need to buy paper anymore and you will be cleaner than ever.

Toilet paper doesn’t clean you properly

If you get dog-poo on your hand, would you just wipe it off with paper and continue your day? NO. You would use at least water remove it. Why don’t you do this with other parts of your body?

Your behind gets not clean if you just use dry paper, yet most people in “civilized countries” use it. Especially straight men never learn about how to clean themselves down there properly. I was like this for a long time, until I got itching problems in that region. I thought, it is from squatting to heavy weights in the gym or sitting too muchin frontt of the computer but it turned out that the problem was dry toilet paper. When I switched to a water-based cleaning method, my problems went away instantly.

Most humans on earth use water, not toilet paper

The majority of people on earth use water to clean themselves. This includes “modern” countries such as Japan, Italy, France and others.

The Japanese method

While Japanese toilets may be preheated, play music to distract from loud farts, clean your behind with rotating water movements, and even dry you with warm air, I don’t like them. I find it weird that water is hitting your butt from a 90° angle. Also, the small mechanical parts are within the pooping region and will need extra effort to clean.

Also, these things will make you dependent on tech. I want to be able to clean myself even without $500 worth of tech, like e.g., when I am in the forest. If you don’t learn a low tech way, you will be helpless at some point. If there is one situation in life, where I want to be in control, it is pooping.

The complexity and price is not worth the purchase because other methods are better and cheaper.

The Italian method

“Bidet” is a French word. If you go to a hotel in Paris you will find one. I hear, French houses don’t have them anymore because they are built tiny and with space in mind. Napoleon had a silver bidet that he took it everywhere with him. Silver has antimicrobial properties so it was no brainer. He gave it to his son in his will.

In Italy, bidets are required by law: “The installment of at least a single bidet per house became compulsory starting from July 5th 1975, with a hygiene law stating that every house must have at least one bidet” (Quora)

I asked many Italians how they use that thing. Some say, you go on the bidet right after business and you use it to “pre-clean”. (My problem with that is that bigger poo pieces may stuck the bidet.) Others say you pre-clean with toilet paper and then switch over to the bidet to “fine clean”.

If you’re Italian, please let me know, how you do it.

None of us is as rich as Napoleon was and the extra space-need of a bidet makes this not practical for most, especially if you’re renting.

Japanese vs Italian toilets

With both models water shoots from a lower point to a higher point (your butt). If you relax, water might even enter your butt. You don’t want that and it is unhealthy, because the flora inside your rectum shouldn’t be changed. Anyway, I am not an expert on this and this article is about regular cleaning after pooping. The biggest downside of the Italian method is that you need another “toilet like” thing in your house which isn’t practical for most.

Now, I will show you low-tech methods how to clean yourself hygienically. 👇

More practical: The Asian method

In most toilets in the region of Indonesia, India, Nepal, you will find a small shower like this which is sometimes referred to as “Muslim shower”. You can adjust the pressure and let water gently run from top to bottom of your behind and wash the pieces of poo down the toilet. This is much less complicated than the Italian method, because you don’t need to move to another toilet-like thing during your session and you don’t need extra space for a toilet-like construction. It is better than the Japanese method because water runs from “top to bottom” at a 10–20° angle and gently washes stuff away rather than shooting at your butt at a 90° angle. Instead of relying on complicated electronics, you adjust the water pressure with a mechanical valve. The price is very good: ~$20 USD.

Muslim showers are forbidden in Switzerland

Although you can buy “Muslim showers” here, the sanitary technician won’t sell it to you before asking for what you will use it. If you say, you use it to clean your pet, they will sell it to you. If you say, you need it for cleaning your butt, they won’t sell it to you.

Here it is forbidden to install an additional shower next to the toilet for the purpose of washing your butt. Yes, that is really a law here. The reason is that theoretically feces could go back to the clean water supply and contaminate it. A toilet technician told me that this is kind of dumb because some people use their normal shower heads to clean their behinds, so it anyway could happen anytime.

The Asian, low-cost method

The simplest way is people discovered to clean their butts is to just use a water bottle to let water rinse over their behind. A 500 ml bottle usually sufficies for a cleaning, if you practiced a bit. One uses a little bit of pressure from the non-dominant hand to ensure that no feces are stuck in skin lumps or hair. Afterwards, hands are washed with water and lots of soap. For extra safety, you can practice the habit to not touch food with your non-dominant hand, like it is common practice in India.

The great thing is that you can use this method even when using public toilets because water bottles are readily available. You can always carry one with you. But when you use it “in that region”, please don’t re-use it to drink from it.

The Squat toilet

This is a variation of the water bottle method, the difference is just that you have more water available. The squat position that is enforced by this toilet straightens the rectum, so it is emptied more easily. Additionally, the butt cheeks are pulled apart naturally, and you become less dirty because outgoing feces smear the butt less compared to sitting on a Western toilet. You are overall likely to finish business much faster on this one because it requires effort to squat like this.

Humans have been pooping in squat positions for hundreds othousandsds of years. The modern Western toilet is a very recent invention. This blogpost is dedicated to make it disappear.

Western abominations of the Squat toilet

While a Western toilet enable you to sit on it for hours and browse social media on your phone, it doesn’t help to finish business fast and clean. Actually, it does the opposite and is the main reason proctologists have so much to do these days.

The same way Westerners feed themselves processed garbage, get stomach pain to then swallow pills to remove the pain, they “invented” special stools to go back to sitting more naturally on modern toilets.

Squatty Potty Stool

The marketing material of this product shows, why it works:

(If this blogpost is amusing or interesting, and you want to buy a Squatty Potty anyway, consider using my referral link on Amazon to support me.)

There are even more “interesting inventions” to counterbalance the crippling effects of Western toilets:

Health benefits of using water and squatting

Did you know that very few people in India have hemorrhoids? That is because they clean their butts with water and squat.
Most people in the West have problems with their butts at some point in their life. Sometimes it comes from too much sitting in the office / on the toilet or a too rough treatment of their butts with dry paper.

“But if I use water, I will be wet”

Yes, that is why you need a cloth at home which you use to dry your butt after you made it super clean with water and your hand. If you use the right technique, there will be no poo on your hand or the cloth.

“What if I am not at home?”

You can carry and use a 500ml water bottle. Let water rinse over your behind and use your non-dominant hand to remove pieces of feces. Than you can use toilet paper to dry your butt. Note that cheap toilet paper might rip and pieces of it might stay at your butt. That is why you should shower at home and wash yourself again.

“This is disgusting, I neither want to touch my butt nor feces”

Some say the West’s obsession with toilet paper lies in our Christian roots. Same as with masturbation, every kind of “self touch” is considered bad, so people invented toilet paper to abstract away that sensitive area.

When using water and a little bit of touch of your hand, you won’t actually have faeces on your hand because there is always a layer of water between your butt and your hand. Initially, this can be weird to “feel yourself” but once you start, you will get the hang of it. You will feel a lot cleaner and never be able to get back to paper.

“But I can just use wet wipes”

I won’t even start with the fact that most wet wipes have chemicals in them that will irritate your butt, and guarantee that you have to visit a proctologist (“butt doctor”). I have a friend who started a organic wet wipe business for luxury hotels here in Switzerland. These wipes wouldn’t have any chemicals in them. He failed. It turned out, people in luxury hotels would prefer dry toilet paper.

“Why is using your hand and water the best method?”

You need “skin on skin” to get yourself most clean without damaging your behind too much. If you use toilet paper, you can’t be that punctual. As a result you smear faeces all around your behind. That is why it usually takes quite long to get yourself clean with toilet paper but a few seconds if you use water and your hand.

“Ok, ok I will try this. Tell me the right technique”

You let water rinse of your behind, e.g., with a water bottle. At the same time you use your non-dominant hand to remove pieces of feces. This takes maybe a few seconds and you are clean. Then, wash your hands really well with soap.

Here a “tutorial” on movements how to clean. The video uses paper but I advice that you should use your hand and running water:

The area around your butt is not flat. It has lumps of skin and hair. That is why you have to wipe “bidirectionally”. Albeit the video uses toilet paper, which I oppose, it demonstrates the most efficient movement pattern well:

Summary

When we talk about the West, we say it is “ the modern and civilised”. Yet a farmer in India has a cleaner butt than most investment bankers walking down Wallstreet.​ Looking at it from this angle, who is the “true third world country”?

Due to Coronavirus, “people are screaming to bring back bidets”. People grok that all water-based cleaning methods are superior to whatever Europeans or Americans are doing. Also, you will save lots of water, not having to flush down paper.

I hope this article is helpful to learn a cheaper, simpler and better way to clean yourself.

My other articles are also about dirty topics, mostly recruitment. So, if you like my writing style, you might also like:

• Why software engineers don’t get jobs: Four horror stories
• Five years after moving to Switzerland. Why I am still here (reason aren’t the toilets…)
• Nine reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech
• Switzerland: How buying real-estate can kill you financially and two reasons to go for stocks instead

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Or if you dislike it, send me an angry email: iwan@gulenko.ch 😅