DH insists he wants a new toilet brush. I think they are eughhhhh!

[JintyMcGinty]

AIBU in refusing to buy one of those toilet brush things that sit next to your loo? DH says we absolutely need one and thinks they are for forcing poos down the loo that refuse to flush (very important, apparently ) and for "cleaning" the loo.

I think they are really unhygenic [vomit emoticon]. If you use them, poo clings to them and no one ever washes them afterwards and so they smell. And guess who will have to bleach/clean the horrible thing? What's wrong with DH simply cleaning the loo more regularly? Does anyone else use them? Are they necessary? Is it just me who gets the heebie jeebies thinking about them?

[TattyDevine]

Get him to buy one, if he wants one, and if it needs cleaning, ask him to do it.

How do you teach your children to clean off any skid marks that may happen? Or do they not happen in your house? Because really its the only practical way to get a 4 year old to learn to be responsible for any mess he makes etc. Handing them a bottle of bleach isn't really practical at that age.

Someone will sanctimoniously pipe up that my 4 year old must have a bad diet if his poo creates skid marks. No, its the shape of our toilet bowl that encourages skid marks, not our diet or lack thereof. Its an impractical design.

YABU and a princessy-princessy ewww ewwwww ewwwwww ponce.

[TattyDevine]

Forgot this

[southeastastra]

are your poohs radioactive then

[Lonnie]

its not very enviromental friendly but you can get disposable ones. Would that make both you and dh feel better about it? that way it is not eugh on the side of the toilet once used its thrown out.. Most large supermarkets sell them.

I have to ask though I am fairly certain that I wont be able to cope with the answer but how do yu wash it inside without a toilet brush?

[Sidge]

How else do you clean the toilet if you don't have a toilet brush? They are the only way to clean below the water line, aren't they?

I buy them for a couple of quid from Asda and change them every couple of months. But then I don't force floaters down the loo with mine.

[FindingStuffToChuckOut]

I have one & don't see the problem with it at all BUT never have I heard of them being used to force poos down the loo!!
Now that would be really gross!

[TattyDevine]

People either stick their hand down, or consider bleach to be enough, Lonnie.

[jeee]

Your husband is quite right - you do need one, but I'd buy cheapish ones and get new ones frequently. I am definitely about really expensive loo brushes. Even B & Q have £20 ones - I bought a cheaper one there yesterday.

[PuppyMonkey]

So how do you push down your "floaters" without a brush then? Genuinely curious?

[TattyDevine]

OP, I'd put to you that you'd be even more grossed out if you didn't have one and he wasn't able to push unflushable poos down the loo.

(How does one do an unflushable poo anyway - are they unflushable in the floaty keep coming back way or unflushable in the sink to the bottom of the pan and just wont move kind of way?)

[jeee]

'People stick their hand down' - er, no, that is vile.

[TattyDevine]

Well, they do - I've been on these threads before. Yes agree its not my chosen method. They either stick their hands down or use bleach.

That's really the only 3 ways of cleaning a toilet though. With chemicals alone, with elbow grease alone, or with a combination of an implement and some chemicals.

[HeroShrew]

I am perturbed by the amount of anguish reserved for bog brushes on MN. As long as they're kept clean, kept out of the reach of toddlers and changed regularly, what's the harm?


Better than constantly throwing gallons of chemicals down the khazi, surely?


If it really upsets you OP ask DH to keep it in the shed / his sock drawer / on a string hanging out of the bathroom window.

[jeee]

TattyDevine - do people really claim to put their hands down the loo? Because I'm not very squeamish, and I think that's really disgusting.

[oldraver]

I've never had to push a poo round the loo maybe we're just lucky

We me do have a problem with a 5 year old that forgets to flush which wouldn 't be too bad if he didnt leave half of his poo above the water line and it dries. I think he sits to far forward

I buy cheap brushes and change them regularily as needed. I do make sure they are free from poo segments when put back though

[JintyMcGinty]

PuppyMOnkey - i think that's DH's point. He wants one to get rid of floaters.

I think they are eeuugh, because you never seem to get them clean if they are used and there is always a puddle of muddy water at the bottom. Usually, I just clean the loo with rubber gloves and kitchen paper.

[Lonnie]

Tnx Tatty Devine and omg yes as i thought I wouldnt want to be eating or drinking with that answer.


I got to know..

How can a toilet brush be yuck but your hands down not be? do you use disposable gloves? or gloves that are just laying there after?

[Changing2011]

So do you clean your toilet with your facecloth?

[shesparkles]

EWWWW toilet brushes are minging!!!!
Rubber gloves and bleach here every time....and for the "floaters" a basin of water does the job

[TattyDevine]

They'll come along in a minute and answer!

Actually, whenever I've asked the glove question, I've never managed to get a straight answer out of the hands-down brigade - they always are too busy going ewwwww ewwwwwwwwww ewwwwwww at the thought of a toilet brush to consider that what they are doing is really no different, except that they probably then use those gloves to do the dishes with.

[JintyMcGinty]

I'll admit to having a traumatic experience when someone - think it was a visitor - used the bog brush and coated it with poo and left it. Found it the next day. Would have preferred to clean the loo than discover that

[PuppyMonkey]

I lived in a terrible student house once where poos never ever flushed down the loo. Really bad design or something. So floaters were quite common, shudders at memory. Even chucking more water down from a bucket or reflushing didn't shift those blighters.

[GetOrfMoiLand]

I think loo brushes are the only way - I buy a new one every 2 months or so, and every couple of days one of us shoves bleach down the loo, and leaves the loo brush sat in the bleachy loo overnight.

Keeps it clean enough.

HOW do you clean under the water line with kitchen roll and rubber gloves? You can't. I just imagine those people who don't use loo brushes and/or bleach have slightly stained loo pans.

Plus, rubber gloves for shitty tasks. HOW do you take them off? So you take one shitty rubber glove off? How do you get teh other one off without using your bare hand? And then what do you do with the rubber gloves? Shove them under the sink? I don't think that is any more hygienic than a loo brush sat unobtrusively behind the loo.

I would NEVER use one to shoe-horn a recalcitrant shit round the u-bend. What are you people eating? Plus have never had poo flakes on the brush - the trick is to scrub the loo with the brush whilst it is flushing.

[TattyDevine]

Having read too many of these threads I'm going to sum things up as follows.

1. Toilets are yucky. You poo in them and poo is yucky, thus, toilets are yucky. Eww.
   

1. Toilet brushes are yucky. Yucky but useful for removing poo debris. It should be remembered that toilet brushes themselves are as responsive to cleaning as toilets themselves and therefore need not be any dirtier than the newly cleaned toilet.
   

1. Chemicals are yucky. They are bad for the environment, they smell unpleasant, they exist only to kill germs and whilst that is a good thing they are not pleasant in their own right. They kill fish, flora, fauna, and naturally occuring enzymes.
   

1. Whilst the 3 aforementioned items are yucky, we are adults who can handle the fact, and deal with the aforementioned items as we see fit, in a manner that suits our preferred methods of abluting, the layout of our house, and the structure of our families. This does not impact on our intelligence, our heirachy in the British class system, nor does it make us a scumbag or a skank, unless we dont clean anything at all or just say to hell with it and shit in a bush, wiping our ass with a leaf, and sticking it on our neighbours fence.