I suspect it’s a case of “We always did it this way, so it’s the superior way”.
This. In my part of the world, Nordics. No one has it, except really old bathrooms that have a separate bowl with o detachable shower head. But I only saw that once in my life. I installed one a year ago and it’s a game changer.
Today you have the bidets you can install on your toilet, but traditionally they were a thing on its own, that required about as much space as a toilet and all the extra pipework associated with it.
In some European/ Mediterranean countries (I suspect France may have started the trend) this caught on well, and bidets were a must have in most houses that had toilets as part of their main architectural structure. Most people in South America had bidets this way, it’s rare to see a house without at least one bidet, and this comes from the culture inherited from colonial times .
Now, things are different in othe parts of the world. England seems to traditionally have the toilet separate from the house and for some reason the bidet trend never caught on. This is in turn reflected both in USA and Australia. I don’t know about bidet popularity across all of Europe, but this is definitely a cultural thing and I suspect distance and language may have kept UK without bidets until relatively recently. And as you know, old habits die hard, so… Yeah in Australia I use the shower.
in Italy, there is literally a law obligating houses to have a bidet. the separated from the toilet kind.
not surprised that Italy (who has a history of fascism and from what I heard currently has a fascist leader) has an authoritarian law requiring that people do things in their own homes (kinda like some HOAs in the US. Although, I have to admit, we must have lucked out with a HOA that’s not one of the shitty ones you always hear about)
you are not obligated to use it.
fascism is when regulation
England seems to traditionally have the toilet separate from the house and for some reason the bidet trend never caught on
Uh… wut?
The UK has lots of old housing stock, built before the concept of indoor plumbing, so there was nowhere to put a toilet in lots of properties when they started to become a thing, hence you’d put it seperate from the house in an outhouse style set-up. We also lost less of the country to warfare during the two wars so didn’t have to rebuild whole cities, so the conversion to move those toilets inside was still going on as we moved to the later half of the 20th century. My old man didn’t have an indoor toilet in his childhood home until he was a teenager, he was born in the late 50s.
You still go to pubs these days that are old enough that the loos are disconnected from the main building as they’ve been there for so many years.
Because its a hassle for landlords to install one
I once read a book where this particular bathroom appliance was very intimately connected with prostitutes throughout history and that association created a big push against having it in every house. It was an interesting read.
In my country in particular, it became mandatory in every newly built house starting around the 50s and later it became mandatory to have one bidet and one bathtub in every house.
This was pushed to enforce a notion of hygiene that was lacking, as the country was very poor at the time. Paradoxically, it was easier to have higher standards of hygiene in the country, where access to water was easier and the field labour demanded a minimal cleanliness to be at the table and socially than in the growing cities, where poor living conditions made very difficult for the poor to access running water.
I know your country based just on this comment!
What a strange journey this thread has been, overcoming national boundaries through the power of bidets.
There are some informative answers elsewhere, however, I noticed a gap between the comments and my expectations, bidet-wise: here’s a link to the relevant SNL Bidet sketch: https://piped.video/watch?v=zQx-ZbSQSBM&t=0. Enjoy
If you have a small bath you can use the bath tub or the shower or even the sink (with a wash cloth). No need to further cram the room - if there’s any free space at all.
The utopian city of Atlantis sunk due to bidet overuse.
I can’t get a bidet because my friend is fat and breaks the toilet seats on the regular. He of course replaces them. I’ve tried bidets at other places and it was nice but i still had to use toilet paper to clean my now wet ass so I’m really confused when people say they don’t need toilet paper anymore. I really hope they aren’t just wiping their ass on a towel or some shit.
Serious question: you use it instead of wiping, not in addition to? I have a hard time imagining the bidet would be more sanitary without the use of mechanical force (wiping) and/or soap. Is it really just a jet of water that is supposed to remove any residue, regardless of consistency?
You wipe too. Just- much less. Bidet cleans all of the shit away, toilet paper wipes off the excess water.
sounds like I can do the same with an extended showerhead massager which is what I do at my apartment - then I don’t have to worry about using TP for it even. And my asshole is actually clean after.
That’s exactly how many bidets are designed too. Essentially, a hand-held shower-head.
Mine is built into the toilet (or, well, is permanently mounted to it). Just twice the knob, and automatic water where it needs to go.
Yeah, I feel like I get this done in the shower just fine without needing to buy extra equipment and I don’t have to worry about getting a UTI if I don’t get the aim right apparently.
Assuming you shower after every poop!
I paid for a 250$ bidet toilet seat and i don’t even use it. How is it supposed to work? My stool are soft sometimes, and even with the bidet pressure to the max, it doesn’t fully clean it. I’m left with dripping wet ass covered with shit. Then i need to use toilet paper that’s literally melting from all that water on my ass. As a result i use 3x more toilet paper and my hands gets dirty. Very unpleasant.
Am i using it wrong?
You have to make sure you’re adjusting yourself so the stream kisses your * and definitely do the 00*0
I believe you are, yes. I once stumbled upon this thread on Reddit , it kinda explains it well ! The
*o*o*oIs pretty accurate. I’ve been using my bidet for around 2 years now and never once have I been in your situation. Now, I feel sad and dirty when I’m far from my bidet.Now, I feel sad and dirty when I’m far from my bidet.
So much this. I’ve held my bowels when I had the opportunity to go just so I could shit at home with my bidet lol.
I haven’t yet committed to a towel so I still waste toilet paper (though less), but it’s also nice knowing if I ran out I could just let my ass air dry (speaking from experience).
Exactly, it’s not that I don’t have faith in the cleaning power of my bidet, but still I prefer to check it with a 2 sheet before drying out the rest with a hand towel !
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With the bidet, you don’t see what is going on and you have no way of telling if you did a good job without taking a paper and check it.
It does sound like you’re using it wrong. I’ve been using a $70 bidet attachment for 8+ years and it was the best decision I’ve made for personal hygiene.
Use toilet
Use bidet, making sure to adjust your position so the stream hits your o and the area immediately around it. Whatever poo may touch while going.
Use toilet paper to dry.
If you’re spraying parts of your bum where poop doesn’t even reach then you need to adjust the spray. I’ve used so much less toilet paper this way.
Use toilet paper to dry.
the fuck is the point if you still have to use it to dry off.
It’s a single wipe on clean skin. Much less paper used. No abraison. No mess. If you got shit on your arm would you be satisfied just wiping if off with paper?
No but I can do the same thing with a shower head and use soap and then a towell.
sounds like maybe bidets are for people who either have roommates or family living with them.
You seem determined to take issue with the concept of a bidet. That’s OK no one is forcing you to use one. The toilet seat attachment ones are super cheap and convenient. You don’t have to get up and go anywhere. You just turn a knob when you’re done pooping and you get cleaner than you can with paper. Feels good to be clean.
Like back to the arm poop analogy, if you for some reason were getting shit on your arm every single day, sometimes multiple times, then having to go do the shower soap towell thing becomes a hassle. Maybe it makes sense to have a special hose next to where you keep getting shit on you to make clean up easier.
That’s OK no one is forcing you to use one
Yet a lot of the comments here are like “LOL HOW COME MORE PEOPLE DONT USE THESE R THEY DUMB MY ASSHOLE IS SO FRESH”
I’ll be honest. I never get poop on any part of my body ever. Maybe like once on my hand while I was sick cause I was so sick that I missed but that’s not a common occurrence and probably hasn’t happened since I was a teenager. I’m in my late 30’s now. So that time is FAR far behind me. lmao. I don’t have a perfect memory but I would definitely remember getting poop on my fucking arm.
But maybe if I had a child or something someday - and I had poop getting on my arm cause of the kid making it a hassle to change a diaper… well I’d probably use a baby wipe. Duh.
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There’s no shit when I wipe either. Sounds like people just don’t know how to wipe.
You don’t need to use so much water, and move yourself around to make sure your aim is right. It’s not a jet wash for your poop chute, it just makes wiping more efficient.
Mine cost like $50 and is probably one of my favourite ever purchases.
god now it sounds like its for people who don’t know how to properly wipe…
Because butt stuff is gay. /s
Really, men rather have a dirty asshole than be perceived as anything less than masculine.
No one understands what a bidet really is.
In the old days, they were a separate free-standing device. Not a lot of people have space or money to add one of these types of bidets to their bathrooms
Now they make them as toilet seat attachments that don’t require extra space and really aren’t that expensive.
But people don’t know. Older people will be like, “Oh a bidet? No I don’t want another toilet like device in my bathroom”
So that gets rid of all those people.
Next you have the people that know about the new style bidets that’s just a fancy toilet seat.
Their biggest deterrent is probably cold water. Spraying cold water on their butt doesn’t appeal to most people.
You can get bidets that heat the water, but you have to have power behind your toilet, which not everyone has.
Then you have older people that just can’t work them or don’t feel like they can. Like my grandfather, I installed one with all the bells and whistles for him. Yet hitting a button and doing all that was too complicated. He was 90+ and could barely use a cell phone for basic functions. But he’d rather wipe his butt like he knew than mess with the “complicated” bidet.
Eventually everyone is going to own a bidet, it really is the way to go.
We just aren’t there yet.
For me it’s because I have had to suffer from UTI’s before and I don’t want to risk some stream of water blowing bacteria into my vagina and then I gotta pee every five seconds and wait for a damn doctor visit because for some fucking reason UTI meds aren’t over the counter where I live.
I can buy the UTI “pain reliever” over the counter but it just temporarily fixes the pain, and the UTI of course continues. Pretty fucking pointless.
Well, for starters, you don’t pee from your vagina. You could get a yeast infection, yes, but that’s a different issue.
That said, if your bidet is angled so it’s hitting your vagina or, especially, your urethra, it’s likely not installed correctly or you’re sitting way far back on your toilet.*
- There are bidets you can get with the option to angle for washing period blood away, but they tell you in the instructions to wash your butt first so that you don’t get bacteria into your vagina, and you also don’t need to use that function either. I never found it super useful myself, so I’d recommend the cheaper version without that function these days.
toxic masculinity (sp)… the number of ‘bro’s’ that question my gender when they hear about my bidet is alarming. i honestly don’t know when being a nasty, grimey dude became the ‘straight thing to do’ but i’m encountered it enough times to recognize the weird perplexed faces i get. for some perspective, i work in a 100+ yr old building in an industrial setting out in a farming area.
but yeah they can think what they want. i’ll die before i give up my bidet.
edit- not that i mind, but more curious… why did i get downvoted for saying the same thing as others are upvoted for lol?
American here. Thanks to woot regularly selling them, I have a bidet on each toilet in the house. I have a battery operated travel bidet, because now I’m hooked.
It has certainly led to… “Interesting” responses from house guests. There’s always TP in stock, so it’s not required. Butt I’m never going back if I can help it.
There’s always TP in stock, so it’s not required.
That’s always weird to read. For me bidets are for after, not instead of.
After TP? Why? TP is for drying and a double check.
You would make a mess of the bidet otherwise.
Not true for any of the six bidets I have owned. the wand sits very far back in the spray is in the opposite direction of where the wand is and the wand itself retracts into a cover while spitting water to clean itself.
And I have never even had a fancy one with power or heated water. All these just run off the pressure in the pipe.
Because of “big toilet paper”. They even tried to assassinate a spokesperson for japanes toilets.
Holy shit? Do you have a source for that because damn. It’s something I would expect though.
It’s was joke. That’s the plot of a south park episode.
