How often do you flush?

[crunchy_mommy]

And do you have any odor issues?

[bezark]

I think it might be because we live in such an old house, but our toilets have to be flushed every time they're used. If not, we get a VERY strong sulfur smell, and that's just from urine.

[JD5351]

Our downstairs half bath gets flushed every time it's used, because Our 15 month old has learned that he can pick up the lid and will play in the water. Last time I had to wiped down the walls and scrub the floor to get the pee smell out. We also leave an empty toilet paper roll on the roller so he can play with it, and the actual TP is on the sink ledge because AJ will unroll it and spread it throughout the house. LOL I wish we could close the door, but if we do that it gets too hot downstairs. One of our few vents is in there.

Our upstairs bathrooms get flushed probably once or twice a day if it's just pee. We never flush them at night, we just do it in the morning.

[treeoflife3]

Every time. As much as it doesn't fit into my other beliefs on conservation and being green, I just can't stand to sit on a toilet filled with urine already. It seriously grosses me out even though urine otherwise doesn't really bother me. I even use family cloth and feel weird flushing down just liquid, not even toilet paper.. but I can't bring myself to just let urine sit in my toilet.

Sometimes I don't flush at night if I'm the only one home to use it in the morning or I might skip flushing if I need to go immediately after putting kiddo down for nap/bed but otherwise, I flush every time.

[newtomotherhood]

I try to leave it as long as possible if it is just pee but if I notice a smell it gets flushed! It gets flushed probably 2-3 x a day if only DD and I are home, but more often if DH, or my Mom and Dad are around they don't quite get the concept of not flushing! Good thing we now have a dual flush toilet!

[BCFD]

I saw a funny sign in a bathroom once: If it's yellow than it's mellow. if it's brown, flush it down.

[elizawill]

i flush every time. my kids hardly ever do (not that they're trying to conserve...they just forget)...so it evens out in my house.

[Mpenny1001]

We generally do about two pees to a pot. We don't have any odor issues. Solids get flushed immediately.

[ASusan]

Originally Posted by BCFD

I saw a funny sign in a bathroom once: If it's yellow than it's mellow. if it's brown, flush it down.

This was the saying where I grew up, as we were in the country on (hand-dug) well-water, which often ran dry in August.

However, DH cannot abide by not flushing - for anything. So, in our house, we flush. Sometimes my parents don't when they visit, but they don't share our master bath, so that's ok.

[laohaire]

I flush infrequently - obviously if it's brown it goes down, but otherwise only if it's getting stinky or really yellow in there. DH flushes every time except at night (there is a flushing moratorium after bedtime - except for #2 of course).

Sometimes I *do* smell pee in there even after a recent flush. So I've wondered myself. But I'm not completely sure what's going on because when I smell pee, I'll get out the toilet brush and do a scrub, and usually I *still* smell pee (and just as strongly as before). Which makes me wonder if I'm smelling pee that maybe got "missed" (i.e. on the outside of the toilet)? Anyway, I'll be interested to see what folks say.

For anyone hardcore into drinking water conservation, I recommend the book "The Humanure Handbook" by Joseph Jenkins. I just figured I'd put that plug in. I'm not doing it myself yet but have some medium-term plans to get set up. An eye-opening quote (I'm quoting from memory, not an exact quote) was "There's two kinds of societies: those who crap into their drinking supply and those who don't. The US is the former kind."

[mumkimum]

You know, here we'd been letting the toilet get used 2-3 times (urine only) before flushing, without any real problems most of the time but I came to notice odor too more recently. . I've been trying to tell myself it's just my overactive sense of smell. So, also curious about that.

(I also often, in the bathroom, repeat "the let it mellow. . ." to myself, in my head. . . which came to me by way of high school economics class ).

[OkiMom]

I try to have everyone flush after every time. If it doesn't the toilets get dirty fast and I got tired of cleaning them several times a week. Also my youngest thinks its funny to climb into the tiolet bowl and play in the water. I wish we could lock the bowl but my oldest can't open the locks and would have an accident trying to unlock it (because coming and getting mommy to help her would be to much for her.. kids!).

[crunchy_mommy]

This is great to hear the responses!! We had been flushing every ~3 uses but had sort of moved to "if it's yellow let it mellow" lately & it's been grossing me out (the smell, which seems to linger long after I flush & clean the toilet!) so I think we may have to go back to every 2-3 times. I hate wasting water but I'm thinking a dirty, smelly toilet is a worse offense!!!

[34me]

We have ultra low flow toilets so dh and the kids every time, me - eh.

[Jenn_M]

I'm pregnant, have 2 girls, and an older toilet.. we don't flush every time. Unless DH is home. He gets grossed out by it.

[ChetMC]

Every Time

We have four kids 6 and under. I feel that an unflushed toilet is asking for trouble. Items get dropped into the toilet with greater frequency than I would like.

If two kids need to pee at once that will often get just one flush.

All of the toilets in the house need to be replaced, and we're going to get two stage toilets.

[quantumleap]

We only flush about 3-5 times a day. Once in the morning, once before bed, and any time there are solids in there.
During the day it's just me though, not including the solids we knock off of dd's diapers. I'm pregnant and always have a super keen sense of smell, but I don't find that it smells in there.
Recently we've been having more trouble with the wipes pot than the toilet. We've been using family cloth for years, and never had a smell issue, so I don't understand what the problem is! Maybe it's that I smell different during pregnancy? Maybe I'm just more aware of it recently? Maybe it's the crappy ventilation in the room?
Anyway, we hardly ever flush.

[jeminijad]

Always for solids, and every 2-3 pees.

[Llyra]

Always for poo. Well, except sometimes DD2 forgets...

For pee-- it varies a lot. Ideally, I'd like to see each toilet flushed only with poo, because flushing is an enormous use of potable water, but it hardly ever happens that way. If the pee sits in there more than three or four hours, we get a pink line at the water level-- what causes that? Also, DD1 has gross-out issues about peeing into a toilet that isn't totally clean. She's six. And DH is chronically dehydrated so his pee STINKS. The rest of us don't seem to have such stinky pee.

Dunno-- I guess it mostly gets flushed about every three or four hours. We don't flush at all overnight, though, unless somebody poops or throws up or something, because there's a rattle in the pipes sometimes, and it scares the bejeezus out of DS and he wakes up and screams.

I think I'm concentrating my efforts right now on getting DD2 to remember to flush her poo, and getting DS to perfect his aim. I don't mind swabbing out the bowl once a day to prevent the pink line, but crikey I'm getting sick of washing the whole outside of the bowl, AND the seat, AND the floor, AND the wall like six times a day.

We'll work on "if it's yellow, let it mellow" later.

I don't have low-flow toilets. My toilets are provided by the landlord, who also pays the water bill. I did put dams in the tank, though, to reduce the water usage-- we tinkered to see how much we could reduce it by before the flush stopped being efficient.

[Magelet]

in our apartment, we followed the if it's yellow let it mellow (with a few exceptions. well no I guess not exceptions. but on my period, I'm not so comfortable letting urine "mellow". but then it's red lol).

No smell problems at all. (of course the cat's litter box was in there too, but there was also a big window that kept it nice and aired out (window into ventilation shaft but totally open to the sky))

We're at dad's now, and so we pretty much flush every time (since that's what I grew up with.) When in rome.... but when we have our own place we'll definitely be back to when it's yellow. I'd actually like to find a way to flush with non-drinking water (like bath water or something) or even eventually compost our wastes (but that would be a long time in coming)