AIBU to be so naive - embarrassing question!!!!

[loveyouradvice]

Almost too embarrassed to ask... so simple, so ignorant....

Im a long-term Lillets user... occasionally I buy Tampax as desperate and nowt else to buy....

So much stuff... Lillets, everything flushes down the loo....

Tampax - nice little paper wrapper AND double tube thing.... At home, where do you put these? Presumably neither flush....

I've spent last 3 days, carefully wrapping in loo paper and putting in bathroom bin... feel a bit ridiculous... but they feel too revealing just lying there for all to see in the bin.....

Guessing Im missing something really obvious....

Broopsy - that's the point I made. Technically there is other Sanpro available but I am with you. I need tampons, however I don't flush to minimise impact.

You don't need a car, it makes life easier but not necessary

With respect I do. I live rurally with no bus routes to DD's school which is too far to walk as we didn't get allocated a catchment school. So it's either pay for a taxi four times a day. Or it's choose a car with lowest possible emissions, economical on short journeys etc and make less of an impact that way.

Can't see the problem with wrapping the tampons up and throwing them in a bin and then chucking the bag out at the end of every day.

Not that big a deal.

To the pp asking about cheap £2 moon cups from Amazon / eBay, I use one of these. It's made of medical grade silicone. I had to cut the stem off as it was irritating me but you don't need it to get it out - you can get it out by bearing down and grabbing the bottom of the cup itself. If you feel like your insides are being sucked out when you try to remove it, then the little air hole at the side has got clogged and you need to break the seal with your finger.
I find it works best for me at night, and lasts a whole night even on the heaviest night. During daytime, I find it is sometimes prone to slippage, particularly if I'm exercising so I use tampons instead in that case. Also I find it often leaks after I first put it in whereas once it's been in place for a few hours it seems to seal itself better.

Who do you live with that you're so scared to see... some kind of alien species whose females don't have periods?!

Whilst we are on the subject of things not to flush down the loo. Dental floss - I cannot describe the horror of the blockage in the down pipe - my plumber was nearly ill - to this day he thinks it was my daughter's long hair.

To be fair to OP I recall being told as a teenager that tampons were flushable and that was not that long ago.

More to the point...why are you embarrassed that you have periods?

Wrap in tissue, put in bin, job done! Get a bin with a lid if you don't fancy 'leaving them on show's 😀

Oh and to everyone wondering how anyone couldn't realise you can't flush sanitary towel, I onve worked on a B&B doing house keeping, once found on of the toilets blocked and it was like a balloon was stuck in there. Turned out to be an incontinence pad. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's people out there flushing disposable nappies down the toilet. I use cloth nappies and they have "flushable" liners to put down the loo with the poo, I'm too scared to even flush them!!!

I always have nappy bags and put my used bits in a couple, the dog poo bags have a stronger perfume make me happier with 3 girls in my house!

Maybe plumbing has changed over the years? When I had periods, the bonus and selling point of tampons was they were flushable. The soil pipe on a loo is many ,many times wider than a tampon, especially a mini size Lillets for example. Towels yes, can see that and have never flushed them.

I'd be interested- genuine question- to know when someone decided tampons should not be flushed.

My old neighbour blocked the drains that ran through her and her neighbours garden. The guy cleaned it out and presented the stupid woman with a bucket of all the stuff- towels, tampons, wipes and the like. Never EVER flush this stuff!

(Nappies. I can't begin to see how someone would think it would fit!)

Polly perky- because they don't break down and they expand. So it the pipe has a bit of debris already it gets caught, which catches the next thing and so on.

It is seriously irresponsible to flush them. As the entire thread says, wrap it - or not and bin it.

If you are this squeamish about periods/tampons/your own bodily functions you need to get a grip frankly.

It's sad that as a society women are made to feel the need to hide what is a natural bodily process, it's not as if it's a big surprise that women have periods.

All the sanitary products plus fats disposed of down the sink plus wet wipes go on to form giant fatbergs that clog up the sewage system

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatberg

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/2696552/fatberg-found-in-sewer-stroud-gloucestershire/amp/

On A Tampax box

I use cloth nappies and they have "flushable" liners to put down the loo with the poo, I'm too scared to even flush them!!!

I don't use them (highly recommend fleece its great for catching poos) but from what I've read on bf nappy groups they take forever to biodegrade (if they did quickly they'd turn to mush in the nappy) so you're right, I wouldn't be putting them down the toilet either.

I would highly recommend trying a menstral cup! I started using one two years ago and it has changed my life - I have been having periods for over 30 years (!) and wish someone had told me sooner! Yes it took a little getting used to - but then so did using tampons as a teen. So much safer for your health (no risk of toxic shock) infinitely better for the environment (how many pads and tampons are going into landfill). I always thought 'yuck no thanks' but it has made my period so much easier.

A lot of people asking why you would want to hide the fact that you're having a period because it's natural - but seriously, would you want the rest of your family flipping open the bin to see a mass of used tampons? It's a personal matter, and the used products are not that pleasant to look at (and attract flies in warm weather, and can start to whiff as the blood starts to break down...).

• I don't think wanting to cover them so that you don't have to keep revisiting it each time you open the bin is odd at all, and I'm a bit surprised so many people seem to think it should all be out there for everyone to look at.

I put the tampon inside the new wrapper, then bin. If it doesn't fit, sometimes I wrap it around with toilet tissue. Never flush. My mum used to flush tampons and pads... We lived then in a ground floor flat and became inundated with waste water from blocked pipes... Horrible. It took weeks to sort out, most furniture had to be replaced.
I do avoid using tampons unless necessary, because of the toxic shock syndrome (TSS) Please read about it if you use them regularly, just to be aware of symptoms.

Stop flushing!!!

Everything in the bin. Used tampons wrapped well in tissue and binned

Just a word of warning, wrap used applicators up well if you have an inquisitive toddler who likes to rummage through your bins... found my ds having a chew on the jammy end of one of mine last month... boak

hi.... op here... fascinated by this... and how genuinely ignorant I am/was... I'd no idea!

So firstly - no more tampons going down my loo, and going to brief DD ... who probably knows anyway, and will just assume her mum is yet again in the dark ages!

And secondly - how truly bizarre that something like this which should be so easy to make biodegradable/recyclable is going to be filling up our landfill... seems utterly mad. So agree with posters who argue what the hell are all the manufacturers doing making them sweet-smelling/cutely packaged rather than actually making something that works for the 21st century ..... and surely they must know that most people don't read their tiny little annoying little inserts except the first time they ever use tampons in their teens. Surely should be big bold letters somewhere talking about hazards of flushing down the loo so people actually notice it!!!!

Thanks all for a truly enlightening discussion - the kind that can only be had on Mumsnet! Though I confess Ill be asking mates if they've known all this for years... though most are now post menopause, I'm just annoyingly going strong in my mid 50s....