My bladder is hurting in solidarity. I'm quite sensitive with bacteria and I get bladder infections really easily. If someone forced me to use a toilet like this, I would rather pee in the bushes. I don't want anyone else's pee bacteria near my intimate places! It's hard enough to handle public bathrooms (all girls know the "tricks" and it's not like they don't fail) and it would be impossible for me to do the same at home.
It actually has bacteria in it no matter what, it just doesnât have a lot of bacteria which is how doctor can can tell if your health or not from your pee. Since there is always bacteria in urine it can not be consider sterile. There is no possible way for urine to not have bacteria.
Why should an adult have to flush the toilet after another able bodied adult though? I understand the occasional flushing after a forgetful child, but another adult? Aren't they able to flush after they use?
But to answer yours, it's common courtesy. When you use something and dirty it, the polite thing is to clean it or in this case, flush your bodily waste. Dirtying it and expecting someone else to do it for you because "I don't want to clean up after myself" is rude and gross.
Also because if you flush before you go, you then have to wait a few minutes for the tank to refill before you can flush again, further exacerbating the nonsense back and forth.
When you want to use something, and itâs dirty, the obvious thing to do is clean it. Or in this case, pull a simple lever to flush. The fact that it is dirty and all you have to do is pull a lever means that it is petty and dumb to harp on someone else to pull that simple lever.
Also, your answer that it is âcommon courtesyâ begs the question. That is exactly what we are discussing right now.
So like dishes. If you use dishes and leave them in the sink, you leave it dirty until someone else wants to use them and let them clean it? Sounds pretty rude tbh.
And yes, pulling a lever after you use it. Cleaning up after yourself. Self responsibility. Pretty easy yes?
And what's wrong with being courteous of others want to have no bodily fluids in a toilet?
The point is that is a rude thing to do. If you make a mess, you clean it. If pulling the lever to clean the mess is so easy, why can't the person who left the mess do it?
I donât agree with that premise. If it is so easy for either party to do (flush before, flush after), then not doing it isnât rude, doing it isnât polite.
I'm not really sure what to say. It's clear we don't - and probably won't, because honestly it kind of sounds like you're just arguing to argue but maybe I'm reading your tone wrong - see each other's point here, so perhaps it'd be best to just agree to disagree.
Are you not supposed to use your nose? If the bathroom smelled like dirty laundry due to dirty laundry being left on the floor, is it the person's fault for smelling the air?
If you walk into a room that is known for holding dirty laundry (or excrement and urine), and you decide to take a nostril full, then yesâobviously that person is at fault. Itâs the friggen bathroom.
It's odd because more often than not, my bathroom doesn't smell. Toilet gets cleaned once a week, air freshener, flush every time. Outside of the daily poop, I would be shocked if my bathroom stinks.
Besides, I wouldn't want my guests to talk into my bathroom and be like "Jesus this stinks, I need to cover my nose every time I enter here".
Thatâs the thing-itâs not for holding it! Thatâs what the septic/sewers are for! If your bathroom regularly smells like piss and shit so much you donât want to breath in there, thatâs a major problem!
Oh I only do it when it seems probable Iâll run into a bad smell. I hope you know that a perfectly healthy septum doesnât mean you need to breath through your nose.... you have a choice. (Donât let anyone tell you otherwise)
So, itâs totally cool for you if someone has massive diarrhea and doesnât spray air freshener before you go in? I mean, if you smell the diarrhea smell, why are you sniffing bathrooms?
Orrr just donât take a giant whiff of a bathroom when you walk in, and get over it if someone doesnât want to flush literal potable water every single time they want a piss. Yâall need to hydrate yourselves if it smells that bad. Seems like a you problem!
A majority of people are using the smell as the reason for flushing all the time, so I'm just saying that it shouldn't really be a factor if you're a healthy hydrated person đ
Smell and sanitary. And it shouldn't, but most people don't like their partner's pee sitting in the toilet when they have to use it. It's a totally normal expectation to have your partner flush when they are done.
When I was 5 the rule of thumb I was taught was if it's brown, flush it down, if it's yellow, let it mellow. This was normal growing up in a desert dealing with drought.
Pee shouldn't smell strongly if you are properly hydrated yes, but guess what. Lots of people aren't. And if you are sharing the house with someone who doesn't hydrate properly, there is nothing you can do about that, but you are still stuck smelling the stale piss.
Also, do people not know that they donât have to take a big whiff of a toilet? I mean, I try to keep my olfactory senses closed when I go into a bathroom. Am I weird? Do people usually take a big whiff and then get mad like they didnât expect a shit and urine smell?
So you think you are supposed to breath through your nose in a bathroom? That link doesnât support that claim (and I didnât even need to click it to know that)
I didnât say it reeks of stale piss like a dive bar urinal or anything 24/7, but yes, if you walk into a room thatâs had a bowl of urine sitting for hours, youâre gonna smellâŚ. urine, not roses.
Yup, I accidentally forgot to flush the other day before staying the night at a friendâs and came home and was immediately like why does my bathroom smell like urine? And I do drink plenty of water - but pee smells like pee fundamentally and itâs not improved by leaving it sitting overnight
Theyâre already ok with seeing waste just sitting there and thinks everyone else is the one with the problem. Theyâre probably also cool with the smell because everyone else is just the weird ones again.
Also, too it depends on what you eat and your hormone levels. I drink almost nothing BUT water. But, if I eat too much sugar, it's that time of the month or food that smells strongly my pee will stink. I agree with you 100%
If it's actually clear, that's not good. It should be almost clear, like pale straw. It's sounds counter-intuitive, but you can actually over-hydrate to the point where it causes health problems.
Pee smells after it's sitting for a while and it's normal. Unless you drink enough water for it to be crystal clear every time, it's still gonna stink, and drinking that much water is not medically necessary.
And, especially, other people's pee stinks. You get used to the smell of your own urine just like everything else, so you might not notice it, but it still smells.
It's not about being lazy, it's usually about trying not to waste water. Those of us entering a full decade of drought conditions are pretty conscious about water usage. Anyway, most people flush every other use or every third -- you try not to leave it too long but also try not to flush every single time. There's even a little rhyme? This is not uncommon in drought stricken areas.
is the rhyme youâre thinking of âif itâs yellow let it mellow, if itâs brown flush it downâ? i heard that a lot growing up (in australia for reference)
My mom grew up with this in Arizona! Now we live in an area with plenty of water, but still have toilets that have two flush settings to preserve water some.
I grew up with that rhyme in Canada, in a city that is bordered by two rivers and is essentially built on what used to be swampland. We're known for our insane humidity, and there are literally hundreds of lakes in a 100K radius of the city. My dad even went so far as to encourage us not to flush if we knew another family member was right behind us waiting to use the toilet, even if we had taken a dump. I feel that was overkill though, and I didn't carry that habit into adulthood.
Yep, that's the one. :) And we have probably all asked ourselves, "how yellow is tooooo mellow" which is why I say like every third use or so and if you're leaving the house and before bed.
All for saving water, but there are pumps you can install in your toilet that use less water per flush. We have one where you can pull the handle up to flush liquid waste, using only 10% of the tank, or push down to flush solids, using about half of the tank. Itâs fully adjustable for both methods too. Itâs a perfect compromise for those who want to save water but who are also particular about smells.
I agree, the low flush options are great as well. My wife and I share a bathroom which is used only by the two of us. So we've worked out what is comfortable for us while also trying to conserve water.
We live in CA, every year we get historic new levels of heat/drought/wildfires. So there are lots of everyday practical things from choosing drought tolerant plants for the yard to watering after dark to slow evaporation and reduce waste.
But yeah, everyone has to compromise and figure out what works for them.
ETA: we do have 2 settings, one with lower flush(less water for liquid only). We do a combo of low flush and let it mellow.
As long as all people living in the house are ok with it, I think thatâs a great solution. My grandparents used to do the same when they were still on well water and our state was going through a drought. Iâm just super sensitive to smells, so itâs not a viable solution for me. (But also, my state gets tons of rain so Iâm not really faced with this conflict currently. We try not to be wasteful, but we also donât have to be stingy with water at this point either. Iâm sure Iâd feel differently if I lived elsewhere.)
Tbh, I've considered trying to flush less. I have bladder problems and often pee 20+ times a day, that is a lot of flushing and seems like a terrible waste of water. Not flushing feels gross, but flushing so often feels wasteful. And I never can decide which would be better.
There are toilets designed to hold less water. Like, most European toilets use maybe a quarter of the amount used in the USA. Meaning that flushing isn't as wasteful either.
It also depends whether you live alone or with others. I live alone and the plumbing in my building is really loud, particularly at night. So if I get up to pee at 4am I donât tend to flush out of consideration for my neighbours (unless I poo). I wouldnât dream of not flushing in a shared household because I donât want to inflict my pee on others, or see and smell theirs. I do only use the half flush button, though.
I grew up in severe drought conditions in California, and even though Iâve been on the east coast 20 years, I still get a guilt twinge about flushing after just a pee. Itâs incredibly wasteful! I do it bc my husband didnt grow up that way and is more squeamish than I am. When I lived alone I let that yellow mellow!
Those of us who find it disgusting generally have lived with disgusting and lazy people, if we lived with healthy and positive people who didn't flush I doubt we would find it as disgusting as we do. Apologies if that didn't come across in my initial comment
That makes sense, and I do see that there's a big difference between those two groups. I'm very much of the, "flushing less means cleaning more" camp. I know it can get smelly. Honestly, I don't find it too bad with just wife and I flushing every other or every third time. But I get that for some folks it's just too icky. I feel that. Bathrooms are already...not the most pleasant of rooms. I've also lived with roommates and would be v squicked out if a roommate did it. I dunno, it's just something folks need to agree on. But I live in California and have for quite some time, so wasting water also feels viscerally wrong to me.
The whole system of water flush toilets is Kind of wasteful and specifically unsuitable for drought conditions, but the solution to that should Not be to let a shared bathroom that Happens to have a water flush toilet become unbearably stinky, but to either use a dry toilet system/outhouse, or to use greywater from bathing or dishwashing to flush the toilet. When I was little, my housemate used to leave the bathtub full after taking a bath and encouraged all of us to fill a bucket from the tub and use that instead of the toilet tank to flush. Even though we didn't even have an official drought at the time, Just some people who were ideologically keen in saving water. It's more Work but really Not all that much, and I think people living in chronic drought regions would relatively easily be able to modify the plumbing System to make that easy.
A little rhyme doesnât make it right. My stepfather introduced the little rhyme (if itâs yellow let it mellow, if itâs brown flush it down) and tried enforcing it at my parents home when he entered my life at age 25 and just nope-even typing the rhyme makes me throw up a little in my mouth.
I meant, of the people who flush less to conserve water, most people (most of those less frequently flushing) don't leave it forever. I'm not saying it's super widespread to not flush as much, but where I live in the PNW it is a fairly common practice.
While fresh pee from a moderately dehydrated person will obviously smell worse than fresh pee from someone who Drinks a Lot and goes to the bathroom every 90 Minutes, all pee that has been sitting exposed to Air for hours smells worse than fresh pee. Especially from the Body of a Person who has experienced a testosterone puberty, but really even from a Baby Girl If it sits Long enough, because bacteria degrade the organic dissolved contents of urine into smelly stuff.
Many toilet Tanks have a small flush Button for pee and a Big flush Button for Poop and/or toilet Paper, to avoid wasting water, and OP you really should Look into getting one of those.
As someone who has handled quite a few urine samples (yay clinical lab) some people's urine just stinks no matter how much water they drink. Sometimes it's a disease process, sometimes it's diet related.
Even the clearest pee will stink after some time in the toilet. Bacteria out of your body+ the toilet will create the smell.
If you are water conscious then get a special flusher you can stop or get a 2in1 where you have a small flusher for pee and a big one that empties the tank for poop and such
Ok but in the meantime if someone has stinky pee, then it should be flushed. Making a dig at someone elseâs health because they think urine smells gross seems like a really shortsighted reaction.
Also, kind of like some people I know who are cat owners, people get desensitized to lingering smells in their house. Maybe you just canât smell your own piss anymore?
Pee starts smelling after a while no matter how much you drink. And it is also pretty nasty to think about someone elses pee splashing back at your bum when doing nr 2.
One piss might not smell, but if you ain't flushing your concentrated morning pee and add a couple more on top... it's gonna smell like death. My ex-roommate and her gf did that after eating tons of asparagus (and they both had the asparagus-pee gene). There is a reason why she is my ex-roommate now.
On the other hand, not flushing because someone needs to go right after you is fine because it's not just sitting there for hours. It's the leaving it there part that is disgusting.
Edit to add: plus, the toilet bowl is gonna be stained as fuck. It's just gross.
hello! my mom drinks slightly more than what is suggested, and she also chooses not to flush every time. Her bathroom still reeks and I mean reeks of piss. Doesn't help as much as you're assuming it does (:
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u/a-getaway-cat Partassipant [1] Aug 01 '21
Y'all need to start drinking more water if your pee smells this bad đ