One of the strangest aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic thus far has been people’s panic over toilet paper. Some people bought an awful lot – where they plan to keep it in their NYC apartment, who knows? – and other people haven’t been able to find any.
What happens when you can’t find toilet paper? It’s not like you can opt out of using the bathroom. Not that we want to discuss indelicate matters, but when you don’t have toilet paper, you’re going to need something else. People have identified all sorts of substitutes, including wipes, paper towels, and facial tissue.
These substitutes for toilet paper will do the job, but there is a problem – they’re not designed to be flushed. All across the five boroughs, people are discovering what happens when paper towels jam up the sewer drain pipes: clogged, overflowing toilets.
With everything that’s going on at the moment and all the stress you’re under, do you really want to deal with a backed up toilet? Of course you don’t. That’s why you’re going to tell everyone who’s using your toilet that everything that’s not toilet paper goes in the trash can. Yes – this is a change of our normal routine, but everything else has changed, why not this?
But let’s say that we’re past that point, and you suspect that there are paper towels that have been flushed. You may suspect a clog is forming. Here’s how to tell: when you flush the toilet, watch how quickly and completely the water and waste materials are carried away. If it takes a while for everything to clear, or the water in the toilet bowl gets perilously close to the top before slowly draining away, the odds are pretty good that a clog is forming. It’s time to call your New York City plumbers.
