Have you ever noticed when you use a powder room in a friend’s home, that very often, the toilet tissue is rolled the opposite way from the way you put it on the holder in your own home?

I was thinking about this the other day when I changed the tissue. Here are the pros and cons as I see it for each way tissue could be put on the holder:

Tissue coming from over the top:

Pros:
1. Tissue comes off quickly
2. Looks nice…you can even fold the top piece into that little triangular shape like many hotels love to do

Cons:
l. Wind up pulling way too much tissue off at one sitting.
2. Very easy for a cat to whack the top of the roll and pull the tissue down all over the floor dragging it into your hallway and down the stairs.

Tissue coming from underneath:

Pros:
1. Amount of tissue is automatically regulated
2. Saves on having to run out to the store to buy toilet tissue

Cons:
1. Doesn’t look as pretty on the holder.
2. If someone has pulled it down too far and doesn’t roll it backup again, your bathroom can look untidy.

Allan and I used to travel back and forth from North Carolina to Connecticut on a fairly regular (no pun intended) basis, I had become acquainted with MANY bathroom toilet dispensers all along Interstate 81. Most of them function as you would hope and you can take as much TP as needed. Others, however, seem to have a little locking mechanism on the holder itself…limiting you to approximately two squares of tissue. That is really annoying. Usually you haven’t checked the dispensing system of the holder after entering the stall and you find yourself pushing the paper over the top and under about 20 times, while balancing on your legs over the bowl. If nothing else, your quadriceps get a great work out!! And sometimes you are all set to grab a handful of tissue only to find out…there’s none left!!! That’s really annoying since usually when you realize it, your neighbor in the next stall has just left the building and you have to now resort to furiously looking through your pocketbook for that Kleenex you blew your nose into awhile ago. (Hey…com’on…I know you’ve done that too!)

When we traveled to Russia we had to bring our own toilet tissue because what the hotels and public bathrooms supplied was the equivalent of industrial grade sandpaper and for the pampered American tush, that was a bit too much. But then we went to Africa where there WAS NO toilet paper in the public bathrooms…but that was the least of your problems since there was NO TOILET EITHER. You straddle the hole and pray that you have some of those used Kleenex stuffed somewhere in your pockets.

So even though the pros and cons for how you insert the tissue on the holder number the same, I prefer the tissue coming from underneath. Probably, because “underneath” is where it’s put to the best use!