The Toilet Paper Disaster

The high price I paid for taking ten minutes with my feet up

It was one of those average days in the life of a mom. After work I picked up the kids from kindergarten (no car) and transported them home by bus, which is a major task in itself. After I had hauled the pram, the kids, their stuff, my stuff from work and the grocery shopping into our apartment, I definitely needed a break. I was not ready for the toilet paper disaster. 

A glass of red wine and a book

I watched the kids disappear into their room and took a deep breath. Two minutes later I made myself comfortable in a chair with a glass of red wine and an edition of Tolstoy’s “War and peace”, feet on the table. You got to know how to treat yourself. (How do you treat yourself? Write it in the comments!)

The high price I paid for taking ten minutes with my feet up

I heard the kids giggling in their room and assumed that everything was fine. At least, there was no dead silence, which would be a reason to worry. Ten minutes later my mum instinct made me go and investigate if everything was really fine. Well… The kids weren’t giggling in their room. They were giggling in the bathroom.

Oh.My.God

The two little monsters angels had had the hilarious idea to check what would happen if they tore two rolls of toilet paper into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Well, what do you think would happen? Every toilet on earth would react in the same way to this brilliant plan: it got blocked by all the paper bits and water was already overflowing. No, not just overflowing – it covered the bathroom floor several inches high. The kids were thrilled.

I am not cleaning this alone

I wasn’t. After I finally managed to lower my volume again, I started thinking about what to do. Since the two monkeys had caused all that mess, they would at least have to help me clean it up. Now how do you get rid of inch-deep water on the floor with millions of tiny paper pieces swimming in it? Towels wouldn’t do, I would never get all the paper out of them. So I handed each child a plastic cup and told them to gather the water from the floor and pour it into the bath, where I had put the plug in to prevent the pipes from blocking.

My daughter decided to add a little bit of fun

My eldest daughter was very eager to help and stuck to it the whole hour it took us (an hour! For ten minutes with a glass of wine and a book!). But the youngest decided to add more fun to the whole procedure and started taking large sips from her cup. I am not a touchy person, but drinking toilet water seemed disgusting even to me. After I had stopped her, she started drinking out of the bath, where the whole water went. I took the cup from her and the little adventurer started drinking directly out of the toilet using her hands. I put an end to it too so she concentrated on jumping on my back without a care in the world while I was crawling on the floor.

There is still dried toilet paper behind the washing machine

Finally I chased them both out of the bathroom, removed the rest of the toilet paper from the toilet itself (why did I even bother? We had two toilets, after all) and scraped the remaining paper bits from the floor.

Honestly, this was a high price to pay for a little bit of peace and quiet. On the other hand, this incident has become a hilarious story in our family. My kids love to hear about it from me. And I can always prove that I didn’t make it up – there are still dried pieces of toilet paper behind the washing machine.

I hope this little story made you laugh. I would love to hear your funny stories! Please drop your version of the toilet paper disaster in the comments below or send me a message.

Warmest,

Katharina