Too Much Toilet Paper: The Funnier Side of French Life
Do you run out of toilet paper at your home? We do. That is, we do at home in Australia but not at home in France. In fact, in France we have way too much loo paper. Why this anomaly you are wondering?
Well, it all started nine years ago. Yep, that’s right we have had too much loo paper for nine years in France.
I’ll fill in the details because this incredible excess stemmed from actually being highly organised people, not weird toilet paper collectors. When we purchased our house in France we thought we would rent it out and offset a few of the expenses so on our first trip to take ownership of the house we also fitted it out ready for short-term rental guests.
This meant numerous buying trips to IKEA, local home decor and linen stores, white good appliance stores and supermarkets for the daily household essentials. The house needed to be set up to accommodate a full house of guests as soon as we departed back for Australia.
So cutlery and crockery was purchased to accommodate in excess of twelve dinner guests and at least two of every imaginable piece of bedroom and bathroom linen for the maximum number of bed guests, that is eight plus spares, was also bought, washed, folded and packed away in the linen cupboard.
Figuring out that it was easiest if we also purchased and had ready for our incoming caretakers the bleach, window-cleaner, soaps, food cling wrap, garbage bags, tissues, toilet paper etc for the impending guest change overs and house cleaning, we bought these in bulk. And I mean BULK.
A great idea at the time, but as we quickly changed our minds in the first year of ownership not to rent out our home, we ended up with way too much of everything. The upside is however, we are never without a dry bath towel, fresh rubber gloves or loo paper!
A different, but nonetheless very true snippet of our life in France. For more stories on our life in France check out Our French Life series.
