My mom uses so much toilet paper she stops up commode after having b.m. she goes through 2 rolls before I finish 1. Before it was boxes of Kleenex like she is obsesses. I bought her handkerchiefs because I got tired of picking up Kleenex. There was handful of toilet paper in waste can this am--probably using it to wipe nose also. She gets mad at me when I tell her not to waste so much, even tells me to shutup. with her alzheimers
At least she hasn't forgotten how to wipe yet! Do you have room for a trash can next to the toilet. Maybe you could get her to put the tissue in it instead. Disgusting for sure but better than stopping up the toilet??
Almost wish we had that problem. Ours is the reverse. No more than 4 squares. EVER. Guess what's all over her hand before she's done? And, I'm here to tell ya that she uses those four squares as many times as she can fold them over.
Ugh!! Oh .. I forgot to mention .. she loves biting her nails. Soooooooo gross.
We finally got her to use wet wipes and we managed to drill it into her that it HAS to be thrown in the trash. At least it doesn't plug up the toilet, that way. And supervise. Really. And ignore her 'shut ups' .. you're doing what's best for her and her home. Sometimes YOU gotta be the mom.
Sorry .. I feel like this hijacked your question NiceNurse. But, hope you got a little giggle out of it.
if quirky personal habits is the theme here my mom farts when shes walking thru the house sometimes continually. it doesnt embarass me a bit. getting rid of gas must be a real relief for her. caregiving has taught me a lot about humility and patience..
I recently saw an ad for Flylady's Clog Cannon, which is a hand pumped toilet pipe blaster. I'm going to preemptively buy it and try it on PEAT MOSS that one of my little kids dumped in the basement drain a few years back. Even when we snake through the peat so it will drain, the peat grows bigger and blocks the passage of water again. Metal snakes have to be rewound, but a blaster would be convenient. I'm sure it would work on TP troubles!
This is a subject near and dear to MY heart as my mom harassed me from the time I started accomplishing my own personal hygiene until I moved out of the house. She thought I was always using too much toilet paper. lt was my thinking that I wanted to come away from the task with reasonably clean hands. It wasn't until her disabilities and illnesses, where I was either observing or supervising her bathroom activities, that I came to find out she was one of the "4 sheet" ladies. Unlike myself, she never cared if she got pee on her hands or poop under her fingernails. Ewwwww.
Once I realized this, I asked her, Mom, why do you do that? She informed me that toilet paper was expensive (cheap, like many others?!). I told her not to worry about that, the price had been lowered and we have plenty of money to buy toilet paper. She said that didn't matter, that "you never know when it might be hard to get". While further questioning might have allowed me to ferret out additional information about her thinking, it was obvious that the conversation was irritating her, so I had to let it go.
But my elder relatives, and most likely many on this site, who went through the depression, were taught to live on less money and to conserve in the extreme. On top of that, my mother's father died when she was 2, and her mother when she was 8. Between those ages, she sometimes lived in "the country" outside of St Louis with her maternal grandmother, 1/2 indigenous Indian descent. My great aunt told me that they didn't always have toilet paper (they didn't use corn cobs, haha, but they did make use of vegetation such as inedible weeds).
Just for reference, my mom was born in 1918. They ate differently in the city, but out in the country, they often had gruel for breakfast and rattlesnake with dandelion greens for a late dinner (which would be like a late lunch for us). For "supper" (our dinner), they might have tea and leftover bread or biscuits.
Makes it easier to understand how their generation came to be "cheap" as well as feel the need to save a scrap of anything, because they never knew when they might need it. This belief is so internally strong, it just gets magnified during dementia.
In the woods, when you got to go, you got to go. Wiping your butt with a leaf is NOT out of the question if you have no TP.
When I was growing up with mom she, had 1 sheet for pee and two squares for the other, we were monitored. She also used Scott tissue the hard single ply, which in my adult life, I never used.
But I am not her caregiver at this moment, she does not need it yet,
but if she did, I am sure this would be an issue.
Wshe uses paper towels to dry a counter, she saves them, by drying them out and folding them and putting them in the lower under sink cabinet. If she spills something on the floor. she uses those instead of getting a new one.
Instead, I am a caregiver to a hoarder of every napkin and tissue
and would have an endless supply of tissue, but it is napkins,
so I cannot use them ot it as a money saving device, so I have to throw them out.