The Big No-no with Tissues

20-01-24 00 / episode: 369

Tissues are great for all sorts of things. Blow your nose, wipe your face, wipe other parts of your body… But be careful here.

Welcome to the Les Perras podcast episode number 369. Today I want to talk about tissues and what you can and can't do with them.

Can

The sky’s the limit here. You can do just about anything you want with tissues… almost. You can blow your nose with them or wipe out your mouth with them. You can use them for wiping off makeup. In fact they were first invented to take cold cream off your face. I don't really know what cold cream is. I've heard the name a lot, but I've never used it and I don't want to use it. Anyway you can take it off with tissues. You can use tissues for making fake flowers. You can use tissues for other decorations. I know people who use tissues as bookmarks and some people use tissues to wipe up messes or wipe the grease off their pot before they wash it.

Can’t

I shouldn't say can't so much as I should say, shouldn't. The big deal here with tissues is flushing them down the toilet. That's a big no-no. In the coronavirus pandemic, there was a run on toilet papers and people bought too much toilet paper and some people were stuck without. What do you do when you go to the toilet and you don't have toilet paper? Well, of course you can use tissues… Sort of. What I mean is you can use tissues for wiping, and cleaning up the mess, but you shouldn't put them down the toilet. If you put the tissue down the toilet, you're gonna have troubles, or somebody's gonna have troubles. You see, toilet paper is designed to disintegrate in water. It's really weak and it's weak for a purpose. It has to break down quickly so that it flows effortlessly through the pipes. Tissues are much stronger. When you put them in the water, they do become weaker. But not weak enough to break down and flow with the water. They can clog up the pipes and create a blockage. When this happens, somebody has to go in and clean out the blockage. I don't know about you, but we got our pipes blocked once here in Japan and it cost a small fortune to have somebody come and clean it out. Trust me, you don't want a blockage in your pipes. Don't put the tissue down the toilet, put it in the garbage. That's the safest, easiest way to dispose of tissues. I have a related podcast about plumbing that you can listen to next.