2025, Farming Update, home, Nature, pets, Uncategorized

Bathroom BRRR??

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Not much happening on the farm this week, it’s been pretty cold.

The chickens are appreciating the fact there is / was no snow- or very little snow, so they’re still able to go out and move around. They get up against the south side of a building and stay in the sunshine and I try to spread their corn out in those areas. I did get nine eggs the other day, so production is slowly coming up.

Luna is still trying to find another rooster to play with her, but they are not interested in this activity.

Our bathroom and laundry room remodeling is progressing. Rough in plumbing has been completed, the fans, ductwork, and dryer vent have been installed. A little more demolition happened with the downstairs bathroom ceiling and the closet of an adjoining room being removed to allow access for pipes, which of course means the bathroom downstairs is gonna end up with a fresh paint job as well. “It all started with a new bathroom fan.” And that’s probably OK since it hasn’t been touched since the house was built in 1968.

At least the sink and toilet are not pink.

Striped wallpaper on the hot pink walls. Pretty much it’s just been me and daughter using that bathroom and I always kinda liked it. We’ve always joked about my mom painting it that way and she says it wasn’t her idea. I would expect she got a couple gallons of pink paint from somebody. We laugh that upstairs it’s 2020 but when you open the basement door it’s 1968 again. Our little time portal. That bathroom even has a wooden toilet paper roller! Speaking of which, we’ve started using bamboo TP. It’s OK!

It’s also unfortunate the cold weather coincided with tearing out the ceiling sheet rock and removing all the insulation in this area. They have plastic up on the ceiling, and zipper plastic walls, so it’s only cold in this area.

It also strikes me as a bit of a paradox that when it’s the coldest is when the electric company turns off the heat. Part of the dual fuel program, and I know it’s for the greater good, I know it’s all part of conserving energy and keeping the rates low, but that’s a big picture thing and it’s hard to keep in mind. For a lot of people.  

Luna is getting frustrated because it’s been too cold for her to stay out and get the exercise that she would like. Daughter has decided it’s too cold for her long walks, too. I do play fetch with Luna and whatever stick I find while doing chores, and Luna loves running with that, but then she gets distracted by something else and leaves it lay somewhere until we find it again the next day. Course there’s always another stick in our yard.

I have been talking the dogs for walks. Through the woods or down the creek or across the pastures.

And that’s been nice. It reminds me of how often I had to walk out and get the cows for milking and I wonder if that chore made me so grumpy about walking? As a kid, it was one of my chores to go get the cows. As I got older, it was just part of the job. Often, they’d come home by themselves, they knew it was milking time. Cows love routine. We share that.

DID YOU SQUEEZE THE CHARMIN?   GOT ANY GROCERY STORE MIS-ADVENTURES?

66 thoughts on “Bathroom BRRR??”

  1. no i squeeze the kirkland. kirkland is 19.99 for 30 rolls. charmin is up from 25.99 to 29.99 this week. i dont know if thats because its on sale for $6 off and that makes it 23.99 which everyone should be happy with. i shop for folks as an instacart guy and you get inside their brains a bit. the people who buy charmin and the name brand paper towels instead of private label are about 30% of the folks i deal with. a buck a roll for toilet paper…
    my daughters like sams better than costco they say costco is not the right version of fluffy
    the costco in carver carries stuff not at regular stores because its 20% bigger and one of their items is a 36 or 42 pack with smaller rolls. im in favor because those big rolls are too snug in the wall for the first day or two but you dont want to give up the paper just put 20 feet on a different roll no charge. that appears to be the deal.
    beer is also a buck a can these days. that was the price for hoidy toidy beer before the pandemic now miller and budweiser are a buck and stella or any of the microbrewries are more. delivered pistachio cream ale last night. has my curiosity buds peaked
    grocery store stories… ive got a few.
    yesterday i asked the produce manager at cub as we stood next to a 55 gallon garbage can full of lettuce, squash, etc if they gave any to food shelves and he said yes but first harvest had already been there at 7 am friday and wouldnt be back until tuesday and the food would be spoiled. i suggest a soup kitchen would have a party with these and feed many. he shrugged. thats not how it works. bacteria starts after x amount of time and then its trash so it all goes out to the dumpster. my kids read expiration dates. i tell them the government insists on those dates to stop selling . the food is still good for quite a while after that.
    my wife threw out my thanksgiving tofurkey yesterday because hair started to grow. i sould have added tomato sauce to the recipe. the acid in tomato paste adds lots of time to leftover life. think of how long catsup keeps
    wanna come over and raid the back corners of the fridge with me?

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      1. I’m the fridge monitor in our house… in fact, YA just left for a work trip tonight so cleaning out the fridge is on my to-do list for tomorrow!

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  3. Nope, no squeezing – what a dumb commercial!
    I hate trying to do the math to figure out the cheaper TP at Target or wherever… Have found some off-brand that’s not too scratchy but not Charmin-soft either..

    I’ve noticed at Aldi, you encounter someone in the veggie aisle, and then you’ll meet them again and again as you work your way through the remaining aisles – one day I said to someone “See you at checkout,” and they snorted…

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  4. We used Kirkland TP for a long time until it got nearly impossible to tear a square off evenly. Too frustrating for my wife, so I shrugged and we switched back to Charmin. Pick your battles, folks. 😉

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. In Japan, the tp holders have a flap that swings down to provide a tear-off strip. It works well regardless of the perforations in the paper.

      Here’s an example:
      https://www.ebay.com/itm/164875529504?chn=ps&_trkparms=ispr%3D1&amdata=enc%3A1JFQJlFOURnK5RYlXruqOdg37&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=164875529504&targetid=2319404999269&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9019659&poi=&campaignid=21222256297&mkgroupid=167054596991&rlsatarget=pla-2319404999269&abcId=9408285&merchantid=118882964&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_QDh8QcCCLPRTh3Gy_lLtsHWm7D&gclid=Cj0KCQiAyoi8BhDvARIsAO_CDsAcQO8R537zhmEtTr-SVI8z4mwNdrpGSL-_uInQMVI6Xr6sHDm0f4EaAs71EALw_wcB

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  5. We had a busy, tiring week, and decided to do all the weekend grocery shopping on Friday after work and not leave the house all weekend. The weather is supposed to be nasty, and we don”t ring bells or sing so we are staying home from church, too. That meant we had to agree to no impromptu baking or cooking and have the menu set in stone. We are usually running to the grocery store for something most days. Of course as we shopped yesterday we thought of many things we could possibly make, and Husband impulsively asked in the produce aisle if I would make a blueberry pie, and I agreed and so we ended up with twice as much in the cart as we had on the list. We also went to the local cookware store for special flaky salt, the drugstore, the pet store for dog treats, and Runnings for cat food and cat litter and sunflower seeds for the birds. Last night I made gnocchi topped with cherry tomatoes and melted mozzarella. Today I am making foccacia, banana bread, and a blueberry pie, and tomorrow we are having garlic roasted chicken. We will not run to the store for anything! We have enough frozen leftovers to eat for a couple of weeks if Husband wants something else.

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    2. Oh crudniks! I did end up going out today. I couldn’t remember if I had turned off the space heater that sits under my desk at work, and the doubt was plaguing me, so I quick drove to work in my pajamas to make sure. It was off, of course.

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        1. My early Wednesday morning donut run is something I do in my jammies occasionally. Covered up with a sweatshirt of course!

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  7. RIse and SHine, Baboons,

    Ben, that bathroom is really pink! No grocery store stories here, but I do have a plumber “OPED about TP” story. An uncle on Dad’s side was a plumber/contractor/excavator in Nevada, Iowa for city, county, and private construction contracts. He also owned a trailer park. He was so picky about the type of TP his tenants used that he specified it in their leases. He also spent some time lecturing us about this particular topic. NO CHARMIN! The formula that made it soft also made it clog up pipes and create never ending plumbing problems. So he forbid the use of it on his properties and warned us against Charmin for the course of his lifetime. However, Northern TP was fine which became the family brand. So now you all know, too.

    This same uncle was also buried alive in one of his excavation trenches and came within minutes of dying in that accident. His work crew uncovered him. It injured his back permanently causing him to walk quite crookedly. But he kept on with his business of excavation. He would gives us unique tours of Nevada, pointing out several points of interest: 1. Where late relatives had lived. 2. Where they are buried in the Nevada Cemetery. 3. And city sewers that he had built or that were particularly problematic. WE became aware of systems that were likely to back up or flood in a heavy rain. This was not your usual town tour but it was the one we got.

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  8. I’ve never been a toilet paper squeezer, or a Charmin user. I’m embarrassed by those tv commercials.

    I don’t have any grocery store stories either, except small vignettes. Like the time I was trying to look at the spinach in Aldi, and a worker came along with a loaded cart and began throwing the cucumbers and other bagged veggies up toward the shelves – just pitching bags of veggies up there. They’d come flopping down to the floor, getting all bruised. Then she’d just grab them off the floor and stuff them in willy nilly, crushing and bruising them and making it hard to even see what was what. There were bell peppers across the aisle, so I went to check them out instead. I could smell them as I approached (not a good smell.) When I reached up to touch one, my finger went right through its flesh. I left Aldi then, and I haven’t been back.

    Call me a veggie snob – I like my veggies.

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        2. Yes, I agree that the Co-op has a great selection of veggies that you won’t find at other stores. There’s always something I need there. They have all the unusual mushrooms, various odd roots like turmeric, and some good locally made Kimchi. They also have a good selection of bulk stuff, like nuts, rice, and granola. St. Peter Food Co-op’s bulk section is the best I’ve ever seen anywhere.

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      2. I don’t know. She didn’t look angry, just very rushed and perhaps a bit uncoordinated. I haven’t been back there since that day. The only thing I ever got there was veggies anyway. They’re great from the Co-op.

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        1. No doubt the veggies from your co-op are better quality, and they also have a much greater assortment to choose from. If you want something like leeks, celeriac, or fancy greens, you won’t find them at Aldi. There’s a big difference in price, too.

          I happen to also live close to a large Asian market, so that’s another source for vegetables and fruits not carried in your average supermarket. I love having easy access to such a variety of exotic fruits and vegetables at a reasonable price.

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    2. I’m not too big on veggies at Aldis, but mostly because I almost always want just ONE onion or ONE tomato and Aldis like to sell multiples in bags.

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  9. There used to be a large, warehouse-style grocery store in Faribault called Bonanza. Mom liked to shop there when we were kids. There were these huge, flat Nutting carts which you would use to pile large quantities of packaged foods or grocery items on. Of course kids love to ride on a cart like that. The place was wonderful for kids. The shelves were just frames of wood arranged in aisles. We’d climb under them and hide behind the stacked boxes. It was a big place so we explored up and down the aisles. I think we might have been a little too energetic in there, but it was fun for us.

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  11. I’ve probably told this before, about toddler Joel riding in the grocery cart… I’d put a green pepper in and he’d pick it up take a bite out of like an apple. And one time I added a package of strawberries; he yelled out “MOM, THESE strawberries are not furry!”

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  12. I recall when you could get pink toilet paper. I bet that bathroom once had some. It was also available in blue, yellow, and turquoise, I think.

    My bathroom has a wooden roller dispensing the tp. It’s held in by metal plaque that says Ed T. Doyle Plumbing & Heating.

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  14. No Charmin or squeezing TP here–I hated those ads when I was a kid. I hope the actor who played Mr. Whipple got paid well for such a humiliating job.

    I haven’t had many misadventures at the grocery store. When my daughter was a hot-tempered toddler, she threw one of her signature tantrums while we were shopping at our local Cub store. It started because I wouldn’t let her grab things off the shelves. I ended up abandoning our cart, grabbing her and her brother, and fleeing the store. She screamed at top volume the whole time. After that, I left her at home with Husband and shopped alone.

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  15. When daughter was an infant in arms I took her to the grocery store. She was in her infant car seat that I took into the store. I had an armful of things and I put her car seat on the store floor when she started fussing. I accidentally dropped a rather large can of Italian tomatoes right on her head. She really cried then!

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  18. I’ll say this about your pink bathroom, Ben. You either have to lean into it and go with it, perhaps to ridiculous extremes, or totally reject it. Even if I leaned heavily into it, I’m not sure how long the charm would last. But it does transports you to another time and place. I can’t wait to see what you do with it. Are you making another time capsule?

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    1. I kept saying it was retro and it was gonna come back in style. Didn’t help that daughter started peeling large chunks of wallpaper off when she was in a mood

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  19. You know when your kids are learning toilet training, you have to know where every bathroom within a five-mile radius is? When YA was little, there was an old Red Owl store up on the corner (it’s a Kowalskis now). The Red Owl was sad and the bathroom facilities were a little shocking. At one point YA (around 3 years old) announced that she needed to go when we had about a half a cart full of stuff. There was no way I was going to take her into that nasty bathroom so we abandoned the cart and hurried quickly home. We went back about an hour later and the cart was still sitting where I had left it.

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  20. We use Seventh Generation tp at our house. It’s a bit more and I buy it in a huge case twice a year or so, because I hate thinking about how much money gets spent considering what we do with it. This way, I only have to get worked up two times a year!

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  21. I remember being in England once on a concert band tour, and we stayed at a private school out in the country. We rehearsed outside, and it was rather wonderful playing Holst and Vaughan Williams out of doors. What wasn’t wonderful was the toilet paper, which was strangely similar to wax paper.

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  22. When I went to China to pick up YA, there was a lot of advice, and there was a list that people who had been to China before gave us and it included toilet paper. They said that sometimes when you were out and about you’d find toilets with no paper. So I dragged toilet paper to the other side of the world and never needed it once.

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  23. My first trip to Europe was a summer school program the year I graduated from high school. We spent time in England, France, and Italy along with 4 weeks in Germany. We rode quite a few trains and experienced a variety of toilet paper. Some felt like wax paper, some like dried corn husks (ouch!), some looked like brown tissue paper, and one kind was dark gray with the texture of perhaps cheap paper towels. One girl in our group was smart and packed about a dozen rolls of toilet paper from home. We would have paid a king’s ransom for just one roll. I never squeezed the Charmin even though that was what we used at home. I now usually buy Up & Up from Target.

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    1. I grew up with an assortment of toilet paper,, and I never really thought much about it. I’ve also been exposed, so to speak, to various facilities that functioned as public toilets. In Denmark, England and Ireland I was exposed mostly to old fashioned indoor toilets; the kind where you’d pull a chain to release the water from the high up reservoir.

      My year in Switzerland introduced me to facilities where a footprint on either side of a hole in the ground helped you position yourself correctly to hit the hole. My year in Moscow introduced me to a huge outdoor latrine on the bank of the river where we’d cool of on hot days. At least 10 to 15 wooden seats suspended above an open pit, and not segregated for privacy in any way. I don’t recall that there was any toilet paper involved. In retrospect I have to wonder how much of that waste ended up in the river.

      My experience in China involved several toilets that were holes in the ground, similar to what I encountered in Switzerland, without toilet paper, but we always carried some of our own.

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  24. I am surprised at the vehement reaction to the squeezing Charmin! 🙂 I thought it was just a commercial.
    And I agree, those blue bears are dumb. Way to go kids!

    We spent a week on a houseboat, and they have special TP for the grinder and sewage needs of the boat. Single ply to say the least. I assume motor homes or campers have the same thing?

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  25. Friends of my have a cabin north of Grand Marais, just across the highway from the lake. They have an incinerator toilet. There is a special liner for the stainless steel bowl and special toilet paper. It works well (as long as you remember the liner).

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