Day 272
Yesterday while I was cooking dinner my youngest gallops by shouting, “The toilets overflowing, the toilets overflowing,” like a seven-year old Paul Revere and then disappeared into the night. Well actually her bedroom, but that’s not as poetic.
I launched into action, sprinting up the stairs to check the two upstairs bathroom for our one plunger—found it—brandished it like sword and rushed back downstairs to the offending toilet to fix the situation all the while gasping for air after my race.
This is not a particularly uncommon. We are currently living in a rental house with persnickety plumbing. It would make sense if the house were old or on a septic system or something. But, it is actually your pretty standard late model suburban variety. Plus, the overflows happen randomly in all three of the bathrooms for no apparent reason. Unlike the time several years ago when I extricated a pair of swim goggles from the toilet. I try not to dwell too much on HOW those goggles got in the pipes–nobody was talking. No need for a root cause analysis on that one, it was pretty obvious.
Anyway, the problem with the random overflowing toilets is that we only have one plunger, which should really be enough in a three person household. Except for some reason every time a toilet overflows, the plunger is in a different bathroom. Then the race in on for me to locate the plunger before the water crests and I have rugs and floors to wash.
It’s an annoyance that prior to the Simple Year could have been fixed with a couple of additional plungers. Incidentally even I draw the line at USED plungers.
So, for now, we just continue to play our shell game with the one plunger and I will occasionally get a bit of bonus exercise with the plunger dash.
“The plunger dash”. New Olympic event possibly? I’ll stop by the USOC next time I’m downtown and suggest it to them.
Find a spot that is always the plunger’s spot, so at least you know where to go?
My mom keeps hers in the laundry room.
Mackenzie, as grossed out as I am about having a plunger next to the two toilets in our home, it NEVER EVER dawned on me to move them to a different room of the house. Duh. Thanks!!!!!!!
Keri – You probably have a clog in your main sewer line. Call your landlord now and demand he has Rooter Rooter come out and run a snake through each of the toilets and then snakes the mainline. If it’s happening in all three toilets, it means the lines running through the house are clogged and could break or leak on you. Yuck! Call now!
I only have one plunger for a two toilet household. Before grabbing the plunger, I always turn off the water supply under the toilet to prevent an overflow first. Then I go find the plunger.
I find this conversation enlightening because it reminds me that we are limited by our own field of vision. Several years ago our our furnace “back-up” and spewed black smoke all through the house. It was a huge mess that required hours of clean up and paint. Fast forward a couple of years and we were talking to some friends who had the exact same thing happen to them. They called their insurance company and their homeowners policy covered the clean up including a cleaning company and painters. It had not even occurred to us that this episode would be covered under our homeowners insurance. Maura’s suggestion that the plunger be kept in a centralize location and Pamela’s suggestion that overflowing toilets may be due to a problem with the line are excellent observations. Sharing with friends makes us smarter and happier.
Time for roto rooter!
Ugh, nothing like toilet issues! Hopefully you can figure out what is causing the problem!
Well, I guess it takes a village to fix a toilet sometimes…I taught the kids how to turn the water off on the toilet last night and I’ve decided to try to keep the plunger always in the downstairs bathroom for ease of location and I’ll call the plumber on Monday :)….thanks to all of you for your thoughts.
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