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Comment by firekvz | Hacker News Reader

Funny story, as a Venezuelan and having toilet paper shortages I was forced to go water and soap.

Never comming back, not even with all the toilet paper in the world

The feeling is shared with alot of friends (we joke about this as a way to keep the good mood agains the crisis) but a lot of people have realized that toilet paper is not the correct way plus a huge waste of money (we have to pay around 0.5$ per roll nowdays)

Bidets are not a thing here but since alot of Venezuelans are on my same position and also alot of venezuelans have migrated to Argentina, a country where bidets are pretty common, I foresight it becoming a thing in the next few years.

Invest in bidets!

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The legend goes that bidets where associated with whorehouses in literature from europe (as most literature not focusing on body fluids would not have reasons to mention bidets), so that when apartments started to be retrofitted for plumbing (initially for a kitchen!) in the USA, the extremely puritanical society left the bidets out.

Bidets are quite common in France and Spain, but I haven't seen many anywhere else in EU.

A really practical solution to simulate a real bidet is to buy bidet cleansing foam and/or a portable bidet.

You spray the cleansing foam into regular toilet paper, and it does improve performance a lot. Afterwards, just use the portable bidet.

Italians are quite keen on bidets. My (Italian) partner always complains about the lack of bidets here in Germany (and anywhere else we go).

Rightfully soo.. the forrest cut for the butts stinks to heaven.

Germany should have bidets like any other civilized country.

I dare to mention, that a lot of bidet development has to do, with the lack of piping that could handle large congesting cellular clumps of matter.

So - the more recent the canalisation - and the bigger the pipesizes used, the less need for biddets.

Dude you can spit into the toilet paper for free and that works pretty well too

Forgive my ignorance, but how does ‘water and soap’ work?

I can immediately see the application of a tersorium, but not water and soap.

Use a small hose to wash off the stuff. Use soap, a hand, and water to wash off anything remaining.

In the Philippines, we didn't have fancy hoses most of the time, so we just leaned over, poured water down the crack, and used our hands to knock off anything that didn't fall on its own. We'd then wash our hands thoroughly afterward, usually using alcohol and lotion to sanitize.

That sounds disgusting, but is it really more disgusting than the stuff toilet paper leaves behind? A friend of mine once explained, "you wouldn't use a dry rag to get peanut butter out of carpet, you'd use water and potentially some soap, so why is the bathroom any different"? I don't know about others here, but I'd rather be clean than have little bits of feces being carried around all day, and I already touch poop fairly regularly since I have small children in diapers, so it's really not that gross to me anymore.

Here in the states, I use toilet paper again, but that's not because I prefer it, but because people here don't have small buckets or bidets (and I'm not bringing one with me), and I feel those disposable wet wipes for bathrooms are too wasteful.

Just shower after you do your business, you can imagine the rest.

My ‘business’ area and shower are not one and the same though :P shall I make a trip through the living room first?

And how do you get dry after showering at a friend's house?

I imagine the underwear will absorb the excess water and evaporate it over time.

Sometime back I remember reading a paper where it was hypothesised that using hands is less hygienic than using toilet paper.

And to demonstrate this they used human stature (height) as a way to workout the effect of this practise on health and well being, and the results were constinent with the hypothesis.

Conclusion: People are taller in the countries where toilet paper is used.

Unfortunately, few minutes of googling didn't turn up any links now.

The problem with using hands is that the people often shortcut and do not wash hands properly now if you don't use hands, then this entire problem disappears.

What do you value more, then money spent on toilet paper or the time spent washing your hands properly?

The law of life is that people will often take shortcuts where it is possible to take one and along the way suffer consequences which weren't in their mind at that point because all they wanted to achieve then is to get through this fast enough to do something else later.

To get best of both, there can be a service where someone else washes you but then you lose privacy and you need to allow others to touch you but then it's also possible if that person's health suffers then you might also suffer on subsequent contact.

Aren't they just correlating poverty?

Bidets are cold water? And you need a "rag"?

You can get heated bidets if that's your thing (just mix the hot and cold water pipes), and a rag is to help you dry off afterward.

When I lived in the Philippines and used a bucket and my hand (and yes, alcohol afterward to disinfect), I didn't bother with a rag because it was so hot and I'd dry off quickly anyway. However, in fancier places with bidets, a rag to dry off after is completely normal. And it's just as sanitary as using a hand towel after washing your hands because you're already clean.

Advanced bidet models also include heated air drying.

> Venezuelans are on my same position

I see what you did there.

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