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I agree: PUT the dayum seat and lid down. It looks better, IS easier in the middle of the night when I go, and it's more hygienic. Also keep the pets from "taking a drink". To me it is a bigger deal and very simple to put it down for these reasons. The men in my family have no problem with this simple courtesy and don't whine it's a pain to put down.
6) If you use the last of the TP, replace the roll.
Oh AMEN!! My guys are incredibly gifted, talented, competent males, however, they fail to grasp the simple concept of replacing the roll of toilet paper!! Honestly, I don't even sweat it when they don't actually put it on the toilet paper holder...just grab another one out of the cabinet for cryin' out loud!!
As for the toilet seat up...yeah, not as big an issue if you're not preggers and/or it's broad daylight...but when your center of balance is off because you have a humongous belly, and you come down for the 3rd trip of the night....and one of the boys woke up to pee in between YOUR trips, and failed to put the seat down?...somebody is going to be hearing Mom's wrath in the morning!
Hey, I quit fretting and nagging about the toilet seat being left up though. I've got 4 guys in my house. My husband would have never DREAMED of leaving the seat up....but having had 3 sons, frankly I grew tired of the damned argument!
For all our kids, foster kids, and visitors, the rules were the same.
1) If you want respect, you give respect. Even now, the grown kids all say yessir and no ma'm, please and thank you - to everyone, not just to us! (And all of the boys to this day would never dream of leaving the seat up!)
2) Everyone has chores. No one is anyone else's maid, nanny, or caretaker. If you make a mess, clean it up. If you want clean laundry, there's the washer and dryer. If you want to eat, I'll teach you to cook. (Since we had very little geedunk ever in the house, snacks were always homemade or fruits and vegies) Some of our best times were all of us in the kitchen, making cookies, brownies, getting creative with all sorts of things. They all learned how to shuck, boil, and freeze corn, dig potatoes, peel them and cook them, gather eggs, and butcher chickens.
3) There is no 'allowance'. We allow you to stay here, eat our food, wear the clothes we buy, swim in our pool, go camping or fshing or whatever. We do not pay you for merely existing, and we do not spend our hard-earned money on the latest fad- for you. (Although we did pay for really hard jobs, like spending a summer laying out, sinking and cementing posts, and building an entire picket fence.) From this everyone learned - there is no 'free lunch'. Whatever someone earned could not be taken away from them. We didn't "make them share" we taught them that they were responsible for their own possessions, and if they wanted someone else's they would have to trade or work to get them.
4) If you want to be treated as an adult, be responsible as one. Otherwise, you get treated like a kid. This meant, responsibility for truth, for behavior, for how one treated another. Stealing from or hurting each other got them penalites of losing their own property or finding out how much what they did to another would hurt them.
5) Education comes first. We would take trips to the zoo or the museum, and have pop quizzes in the car on the way home. We would read books and discuss them at the dinner table. We would have open political or social debates in the pool or in the car. We would play dominoes (math) cards (probability) or trivial pursuit at the supper table. We would quote passages from books or movies back and forth, each taking a part or paragraph. (Admittedly, many of the quotes were from Monty Python or Mel Brooks - we weren't as tight-arsed as we sound!) We made education a part of their daily experience.
All of our rules were with the aim and purpose of teaching our children to be alert, cognizant, polite, well-rounded, multi-experienced, and rational adults.
I had three boys, all pretty close in age. It seems to me that boys just like to fight with each other...I don't know...I told them not to fight, but they were always like puppies, scruffling around each other, pounding each other down. I felt more like a referee than a Mother...was it just my kids, or all boys like that? I tried to have a "no fighting rule"...that was shut down pretty fast...they just decided to fight with each other outside, because I told them that if I caught them fighting I would make them all vegetarian for a month. They stopped fighting, around me, anyway...
I had three boys, all pretty close in age. It seems to me that boys just like to fight with each other...I don't know...I told them not to fight, but they were always like puppies, scruffling around each other, pounding each other down. I felt more like a referee than a Mother...was it just my kids, or all boys like that? I tried to have a "no fighting rule"...that was shut down pretty fast...they just decided to fight with each other outside, because I told them that if I caught them fighting I would make them all vegetarian for a month. They stopped fighting, around me, anyway...
I think that's just how many brothers are. My children's god-brothers were like that.
They also had a no-snitching code of ethics. Nobody told on anyone, no matter what.
I concur with that boys fighting business. Most of the time the boys got along okay, but if one of the older ones starting getting bossy or hypercritical of the one just younger than them, they'd get into a "who can say the meanest most threatening things" situation. My 28 yr old and 21 yr old got into 2 physical fights, the last being 4 1/2 yrs ago and my 21 yr old and 15 yr old got into a physical fight a year ago. If that sounds odd that a 20 yr old and a 14 yr old were in a physical fight...picture this: The 20 yr old was 5'5-1/2" tall, 155 lbs, the 14 yr old was 6' 2" tall and weighed 215 lbs. The 20 yr old got into the 14 yr old's face once too many times. Go figure.
Honestly, as boys go, I'd have to say they were pretty darn tame...and that either they were afraid of my wrath, or they're just not big on settling things with violence. LOL
I concur with that boys fighting business. Most of the time the boys got along okay, but if one of the older ones starting getting bossy or hypercritical of the one just younger than them, they'd get into a "who can say the meanest most threatening things" situation. My 28 yr old and 21 yr old got into 2 physical fights, the last being 4 1/2 yrs ago and my 21 yr old and 15 yr old got into a physical fight a year ago. If that sounds odd that a 20 yr old and a 14 yr old were in a physical fight...picture this: The 20 yr old was 5'5-1/2" tall, 155 lbs, the 14 yr old was 6' 2" tall and weighed 215 lbs. The 20 yr old got into the 14 yr old's face once too many times. Go figure.
Honestly, as boys go, I'd have to say they were pretty darn tame...and that either they were afraid of my wrath, or they're just not big on settling things with violence. LOL
Even my brother and I have gotten into physical fights.
Granted since I am female he hasn't done it often but we're gotten into some knock down drag out fights.
Define "gross", and explain why sitting on the porcelain meets your criteria of gross.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with people doing things that YOU, for unexplained reasons, think are gross.
I think it's gross because most of the people in my household aren't talented enough to keep the lower portion of the toilet clean. Add blindness to that and there's nothing worse than almost falling into a bowl that has crud from poop and dry pee on it. Yuck. If you keep that part of the toilet just as clean as people generally keep their toilet seats, then I don't think it would be gross. Personally I've turned into somewhat of a clean freak about toilets because of the numerous traumatic experiences I've had involving unflushed major dumps and the like. I wipe them down every time before I use them.
All that said, most of these house rules just sound like "common sense" to me. Aren't "don't make a lot of noise at 2AM" and "clean up after yourself" and "don't be rude to the people that are letting you live in their house" no-brainers?
I think it's gross because most of the people in my household aren't talented enough to keep the lower portion of the toilet clean. Add blindness to that and there's nothing worse than almost falling into a bowl that has crud from poop and dry pee on it. Yuck. If you keep that part of the toilet just as clean as people generally keep their toilet seats, then I don't think it would be gross. Personally I've turned into somewhat of a clean freak about toilets because of the numerous traumatic experiences I've had involving unflushed major dumps and the like. I wipe them down every time before I use them.
But but whether or not the remedies you have itemized are observed in your house, adding in an intermediate seat as a buffer is not likely to effect the general grossness. It sounds like you have a "talent" issue, rather than a "gross" issue. For those living in a house inhabited by adults, there is nothing at all gross about the porcelain.
The modern "toilet seat" is really the only remaining vestige of the outhouse, that was universal a little more than a century ago. Given the evolution from the outhouse to the porcelain bowl, the toilet seat only came along because people needed something comforting to cling to as they made the transition, and generation after generation kept passing it along.
Actually, the toilets of the world are, for the most part, more sanitary than the American toiled. In fact a majority of the world's population still uses a "squat" toilet, which is merely a hole in the floor, flanked by two foot-pads, which themselves are as clean as the aim of the prior users. The user doesn't come into contact with anything.
Those of you who like to focus on grossness will love this description in Wikipedia of one of the varieties of toilets still in use in the world
Spoiler
The unsanitary 'flying toilet' used in African slums where plastic shopping bags are first used as as a container for excrement and are then thrown as far away as possible."
Last edited by jtur88; 09-11-2011 at 12:22 PM..
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Honestly, I don't even sweat it when they don't actually put it on the toilet paper holder...just grab another one out of the cabinet for cryin' out loud!! 
That's just gross.
