Four years after the toilet paper shortage of 2020, bidet converts say they’re never going back
While the toilet paper shortages that hit the United States during pandemic lockdowns in the spring of 2020 ultimately eased up, they’ve had a lasting impact on one industry: the bidet business.
“The industry here in the U.S. just blew up. You couldn’t get a bidet if you wanted to,” says James Lin, founder of BidetKing.com, an online marketplace for all varieties of the bathroom appliance. “We all sold out. … There was a huge scramble to get more.”
Help me understand. You spray your butthole to clean it. Your butt is now wet. How do you dry yourself?
You dab with toilet paper afterwards to dry. Bidets do still require toilet paper, but significantly less and they leave you significantly cleaner.
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I have the ghetto 35$ version that just blasts your ass with cold water. Even that is heavenly compared to wiping.
But to answer question, your butt is wett and you dry it with toilet paper. The difference is that it’s almost always 2 sheets of paper and there is no real rubbing as you’re just drying the water off. With paper it can be tons of sheets and I still might not be convinced I’m clean.
It’s not like your soaked. I usually do a “safety wipe” and that’s all I need.
You accidentally place your hand in poop. You wipe it with dry paper until it doesn’t smear any more. Why does that count as clean for your butt and not your hand?
Yeah, that’s what I also never got. If you have dirt in the kitchen, that’s semifluid, no one in their right mind would clean it without wetting it. But for the butt that does not count. I do not have a bidet, but I can reach the faucet from my toilet. So I just wet the toilet paper and produce far less toilet paper waste thanks to this.
Only poop goes in the butt. I’m not putting it near my mouth like I wood my hands. If I am going to eat ass I want it washed first.
Because you don’t handle things with your butt and your hand doesn’t have the poop door on it. Hope this helps.
So a little dab, the toilet paper gets wet and you’re all clean. But without the bidet, there is just so much more to clean.
Some fancier bidets have blow driers.
Mine have warm air blowers. You can either sit for an admittedly longish while whilst the dryer blows you dry, or you can dab with a couple of squares and then let it blow dry you fairly quickly. It’s the difference between a roll a week, and a roll every month or two. Or, none, of you’re really patient.
press the “dry” button
Bum gun is superior to bidet. Change my mind.
🙋♂️ - count me in that camp. I feel like a peasant if I have to shit on anything else. Splurge for the heated seat and heated water if you can afford it and prepare to be spoiled.
I was sad to learn it would cost so much to add power near my toilet, that I might as well fully remodel my bathroom… if money were no object.
Nope, it just attaches to your current setup. No power needed. By default people think it has to be warm water but everyone eventually decides the water is fine without. Plus it’s cheaper. Like 30 bucks to change your life for the better!
BioBidet BB-2000 is the only way to go.
In some countries we use a bidet ‘wand’ which is like a small handheld sprayer connected to the sink. No need for heating the seat or waiting for some computer to squirt water at me. It’s clean, efficient. I use a small amount of toilet paper to dry the area/confirm cleanliness. 🙈
I already had a Bidet when Deadpool II came out and that scene about toilet paper… I fully thought they were gonna go the bidet route… Nope, a shitty ad for shitty wipes that clog your pipes and city pipes and don’t biodegrade in septic systems.
Bidet is the clear winner. Deadpool should know better.
Question from someone interested. Do you let the water do all the work, or is there hand involvement as well?
Cold Bum Gun Crew, representin’
Nah, I dropped that crew and joined the Heated Butt Water gang. Though I occasionally slum it with the CBGC if my girl is using the good toilet.
It me. I got a Tushy. Love it.
I’ve had a bidet for years, before covid even. It really is a game changer. You’d be surprised how much more clean you feel.
They have relatively cheap and easy to install ones that just go under your toilet seat and connect to the toilet’s water supply. That’s what I use.
Mine, sadly, doesn’t hit me in the right spots and I constantly have to move around the seat. Then my undercarriage is wet and takes time drying.
Same, but that’s an installation error. If yours isn’t absolute ass, it’s adjustable.
Mine is, I’ve just been too lazy for two years to fix it. I should do that.
I have the cheapest of the cheap lol. It has an adjuster that doesn’t work. Need to invest into something better.
Ahhh that makes sense then. Mine was like 70USD and goes back and forward, but I’ve got it too far back. The vaj wash hits my bum so I gotta lean REEEEALLLY FAR forward to clean everything off. I could fix it but like… ehhhh… lazy.
You’ve just convinced me to try again!
Ughhhhh maybe I will too then. I even have another toilet seat for it but when I got it, it seemed too complicated to install. I should like… do that.
Pshaw! Need. Should. Someone give us some adderall
We had ours during the pandemic. While my friends and coworkers griped about toilet paper shortages, it was like having a hidden superpower.
Is it not chilly as fuck during the winter, when tap water is like 4°c?
Can be. But really adds another wakeup jolt to the morning coffee ritual XD
This isn’t as bad as you might think it would be.
It’s a dollar more to install the ones onto the hot and cold taps, then you can set and forget the temp of the water, so it’s always the right temp.
And obviously they have the tech on-demand heated ones, but you can buy the sprayer and taps version for 15 bucks with stainless steel parts.
I’m lazy so I use the kind you can screw directly into the sink tap itself, find the right temp in the regular sink faucet handle, set and forget.
30 second installation, adjustable water temp, switch adjustable nozzle to use bidet or sink faucet, easy.
Probably why my mother-in-law doesn’t have a bidet, no hot water. Yes, I offered to buy her a water heater and pay for it to be installed she turned it down
That would make it tough in colder climates, but still worth it for 6 months out of the year, in my opinion.
It’s just such an obvious equation to me now haha, like do you want to touch any of that?
No, I don’t want to touch any of that and I want to be perfectly clean.
Okay then there’s this option that saves on toilet paper, feels better for your skin and is far more hygienic.
There’s just no comparison, although I perfectly understand how conservative and resistant to change people can be.
I worked with some old folks once and there was this old man who refused to buy a mouse for his laptop cuz he was like look this is the trackpad. I don’t need a mouse, that’s just newfangled b*******.
She lives in a part of the world where you can die from the heat 12 months of the year.
Whatever, I tried. Pretty much every year I can get her to accept at most one improvement to her situation. Last year I got her to let me and some workers I hired to clean up her backyard. So at least she some nice plants to look at instead of a motorcycle parts graveyard.
There you go, take the wins where you can
I just went with the basic cold water ones because I don’t have a hot water tap at my toilet and didn’t want to go through the trouble of installing hot water due to finished walls.
Yes, definitely. But it’s like jumping into a chilly lake: you might not want to stay there long, but god damn is it refreshing.
Many pre-heat the water. I have one lux one that has a heated seat, heated water, and a warm air blow-dryer. $300? $600? I don’t remember, I’ve had it for a decade; it was cheap at whatever price and 100% worth the investment.
I wish the dryers were better. The rest of the features are sick.
Yeah, I think they’s just physics. You’d need the equivalent of a bathroom hand dryer on the toilet to improve the drying. Or, god forbid, a Dyson. I shudder at the thought.
Oh gawd. Like the inverse of one of those clit-succ devices. I’ll stick with my two slices of TP, thank you.
The little bit of water needed is usually already in the house and relatively heated by ambient warming. Its enough.
And when it’s hot out, it’s INCREDIBLE
Nope. Many are plugged in and it will keep the seat and water warm. It further warms the seat when it detects someone is sitting on it. Kinda depends on budget, features, manufacturers.
NGL, middle of the night visits are still a bit jarring because the heating logic tries to conserve energy at night so it tends to me room temperature. But whatevs.
Honestly, worth it. Absolutely no regrets other than maybe not spending more 😂. At a couple hundred dollar Costco Toto model, it was already a risky purchase that at the time I simply wasn’t sure about. But yeah, it’s awesome 😎.
No, its not bad at all and our cold water is usually in 50s Fahrenheit in the winter.
It’s definitely not bad at all. My wife resisted to getting a bidet for years but then we got one and now she can’t live without.
It’s not nearly as bad as I’d expected. You’re only doing short bursts of water, so you’re not getting brain freeze on your butthole or anything.
I have one that has its own seat lid. The one my son has is the type you mentioned that just slips under the standard seat.
I had one for a while, but honestly, my water pressure is a little too high to keep it.
The ones I purchased from Amazon have adjustable dials for pressure.
The one I bought mailed me an extra pressure valve for free. Also who needs the pressure valve? Go full bore for that salad tossable freshness
Mine did too, but it was either off or ON!
I just partly closed the water supply valve to turn pressure down. Toilet fills a bit slower but no biggie.
Sounds like a blessing not a curse. Get that colon cleansing!
Just turn the pressure valve on the wall where it connects a little to where it’s the right spot for you.
But then the toilet bowl takes forever to fill up
I told my partner that if the pan wasn’t gonna make us USA folks switch to bidets, nothing will. We suck. Lemme smash shit all over my asshole and pretend it’s clean.
If that’s your technique no wonder you need a bidet lmao
I don’t have a bidet but toilet paper is objectively insufficient. As an illustration consider your response if you spilled peanut butter on the carpet. Are you reaching for a dry paper towel?
Your skin is not a carpet. You could remove toilet paper from, for example, a granite countertop with a dry paper towel. If you also regularly sponge down your kitchen surfaces it works perfectly well.
A granite countertop does not have hair.
Maybe yours doesn’t
Imagine you got dog shit on your arm. Would you just rub it with a piece of toilet paper and call it a day? Of course not. If all you had was a hose, wouldn’t you at least rinse it off?
Other people’s shit isn’t usually in my buttcrack
Well, yeah, duh. I wasn’t making that claim, I was demonstrating a point to you where even you find using just paper to be insufficient and not merely a matter of poor technique.
I just moved into a camper trailer, and one of my favorite things is the tiny showerhead is close to the toilet, and even has a little valve lever at the spray end to turn it on and off, just like it was designed to be a bidet. I don’t care if it was designed that way, it is one now.
Holy fuck, are you me? That’s what I’ve done when I go to my camper at the river. And I can actually adjust the temperature instead of the cold water I get out of the home one.
I hope not, no offense. I was just getting myself figured out and that’d be a whole new thing.
Truly the headline we all needed.
That being said, yes, use a bidet!
All these comments are amusing for me as an asian
I’m super confused as a Spaniard because we have actual bidets here, an appliance that’s separate from the toilet, where you can also clean you feet and stuff. It’s so hard to guess if people are referring to that bidet or the toilet add-on bidets.
The bidet as a reference: https://www.wikihow.com/images_en/thumb/2/28/Use-a-Bidet-Step-2-Version-3.jpg/v4-460px-Use-a-Bidet-Step-2-Version-3.jpg.webp
On a trip to a very rural part of South East Asia once the “bidet” was a garden hose and you had to sort it out yourself.
I don’t really want to towell off my butt after I poop. Wet wipes do the trick and I need way less paper.
I still use less paper drying off my starfish than I did to clean up before I got my bidet.
I have a bidet thing on my toilet that costed just 30 Euro. You don’t have to clean your ass by yourself ever again. It just does it for you. Was also raised with wet wipes but trust me a bidet upgrade for your toilet is like magic!
I use one, I do my business and wipe once. That’s it. There isn’t a drying process to worry about.
a lot of them come with air dryers
and wet wipes aren’t flushable even if they say they are
For my Australian counterparts here, don’t get too excited just yet: https://www.productsafety.gov.au/news/covid-19-supplying-and-installing-bidet-products#:~:text=While many housebound Australians may,risk%2C and it’s also illegal.
I’m onboard with the idea, but the spray would have to be like a high pressure hose to shift the fudge off my hairy backside.
One of the bidet I have will back flush your sinuses if you want
It can be
I got a bidet, unrelated to COVID and I never want to go back. ~~~~
i took it a step further and bought a peri bottle for when i travel.
Same. I got one after a trip to Japan. Life changing.
