Toilet paper substitutes

[opsec]

Dried corn cobs, large leaves, small leaves (more of them), dried grass, sand, rocks (thanks to the Ojibway indians for this one), telephone book pages, old newspapers and magazines, the Sears catalog, and lastly...the ass rag.

All of the above assumes that you have some kind of an outhouse or an army style burn barrel set up. If you want to get away really cheap, there are plastic toilet seats that are made to fit on the top of a 5 gallon bucket. Use a two garbage bags inside the bucket.

[konomonose]

BUT, corn cobs, broken in half, make awesome handles for files to sharpen/repair your tolls and their handles, a better use of corncobs imho. I guess you could use them for tp, perhaps as a final wipe, then rinse, let sun bleach, then reuse as a file handle and let it be known, then tool borrowing might slow down.

[Atash Hagmahani]

I knew about corn-cobs from old farm-hands.

Corn isn't a very productive crop, but the non-edible parts are surprisingly useful for a lot of things. Among other purposes, animal bedding and human bedding (stuffing pillows and mattresses with the dried husks).

[Lady Lilya]

A lot of women I know use cloth wipes for their children and themselves (usually the husbands aren't on board).  They use cloth diapers anyway, so it is just a few more pieces of dirty cloth to clean.

There's always just plain water.  About 2 months ago I stopped using baby wipes to clean poopy diapers, and just started standing my baby (now 14 months) up in the sink, leaning on the counter.  It works well.  For those who use a toilet, a peri bottle like this one seems like basically the same idea. 

[AndrewG]

I HATE the whole rag thing, but have had to do it when paper wasn't available. (I've also cut pockets off of a shirt in a "pinch...") Funny, I have a HUGE bag of rags, old shirts and want not, that I keep on hand for many chores I wouldn't want to use my "good" towels for. It has run across my mind that they may well come in handy for that purpose as well.

[Brosia]

"Dried corn cobs, large leaves, small leaves (more of them), dried grass, sand, rocks (thanks to the Ojibway indians for this one), telephone book pages, old newspapers and magazines, the Sears catalog, and lastly...the ass rag. "



okay, I don't know how well that will go over with me (rocks? )  Time to start storing up TP too, in containers that are rodent and moisture resistant!

[mjk33663]

"Dried corn cobs, large leaves, small leaves (more of them), dried grass, sand, rocks (thanks to the Ojibway indians for this one), telephone book pages, old newspapers and magazines, the Sears catalog, and lastly...the ass rag. "




I agree with Brosia, I am not sure that my "O" ring could take too much of that. Call me spoiled.

[AndrewG]

By the time this is all said and done we'll all be using hundred dollar bills. I'm just sayin.

[Dame]

The pre-settlement aboriginal solution was moss, and daily baths.  Or perhaps a small pile of dry leaves in the back corner of the yard would work well. 

[konomonose]

Just don't use crops, ie spinach leaves, like our food harvesters did last year south of our border, iirc, giving us e.coli in the process.

Seriously, I guess  you could use your fire starter paper, let it dry. Then it could still be used (recycled) for fire statring, as long as you are upwind of the smoke/smell.

[Karmick]

Snowballs work great, but really more of a seasonal thing.  Just be careful who you throw them at afterwards....

[konomonose]

Snowballs work great, but really more of a seasonal thing.  Just be careful who you throw them at afterwards....

forgot about that one, did that in Co one winter on a survival trip where we built and lived in quinzhees, hollowed out churned piled snow domes. the point of the snowballs was two fold--1 functionality, obviously, and 2 so the woods would not be littered with piles of tp come the spring melt.

It was a refresshing method none the less, but was very cold on the snowball holding hands, especially.

[Beeherder]

ok, here's a real plant that grows very abundantly and wild here, and there are very good reasons why it is effective, see:

http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/growing-mullein.html

[opsec]

Yes. Mullein is truely nature's gift to mankind. Just be sure to fold the leaf over and rub it vigorously against itself first to remove all the tiny, sharp little hairs.

[Ozark Lady]

Thanks for the link on the mullein.

I collected alot of seeds, and shared them with folks.

I did save one baggy of them for myself.

But, I didn't have a very good description of how to grow them from seeds.

I saved the seeds, to use them with tobacco leaves, to make a milder smoke.

And I was aware of the medicinal and 'other' uses for mullein.  I just wasn't sure how to grow it.