This Is What People Used Before Toilet Paper Came Along – And It Wasn’t Just Leaves

Ahh, toilet paper. What would we do without it, eh? Life would seem if not impossible then somewhat unpleasant. Surprisingly, though, the soft bottom-wiping tissue has only been with us for less than two centuries. Before that, people had to make do with whatever they could find. And that was whatever nature – and weirdly, Sears – provided. We’re not just talking about moss, that’s for sure!

If you do run out of toilet paper, don’t worry. There are some ready-to-hand alternates available. You could repurpose a paper towel, for example, or even a tissue. And then there’s printer paper, newspapers or even a dishcloth if you’re really desperate. But all these things are modern inventions. Our ancestors couldn’t just rip off a page of The New York Times now, could they?

Nowadays, it seems there’s hardly anything more panic-inducing than running out of toilet paper. And that’s probably why tons of it is sold. Every year, Americans get through about 36.5 billion rolls of the stuff. That’s the equivalent of 15 million trees! Interestingly, that’s the same number of trees you’d need to make seven-and-a-half million toothpicks. Though we don’t recommend using them for toileting!

On top of the trees, toilet-paper making in the U.S. uses a mindblowing 474 billion gallons of water. Then, manufacturers also get through a whopping 253,000 tons of chlorine when bleaching the rolls. And there’s the huge amount of electricity that’s needed, too – more than 17 million million watts, to be precise.

We can’t forget about the packaging that’s needed as well. Or the energy used to ship the rolls to all corners of America, for that matter. And toilet paper can also pose a problem once it’s been used, as it places pressure on the sewerage and has to be sifted out during water treatment. That’s if it makes it to the plant, of course; TP can often cause blocked pipes.

Now we know this, some of the sillier uses for toilet paper seem pretty wasteful. You may have heard of the prank “TPing,” for example, which is also referred to as “yard rolling” or “house wrapping.” And yes, you need a lot of TP to coat a yard. Chicago Blackhawks’ coach, Joel Quenneville, found this out back in 2015 when fans pulled the prank on him after the team took home that year’s Stanley Cup.

Thankfully, toilet paper is rarely in short supply. But rarely isn’t never. In 1973 Japanese housewives were queuing up outside of stores so that they could buy as much TP as they could carry. They were afraid that the economic problems at the time would make the world so unstable that there would be none left.

“For the first time since the late 1950s, it didn’t seem certain that the future would be better than the past,” historian Eiko Maruko Siniawer told National Geographic magazine in April 2020. And the Japanese weren’t alone in their panic: people in America were starting to worry, too.

And it was all Johnny Carson’s fault. On the December 19, 1973, episode of The Tonight Show, he said, “You know, we’ve got all sorts of shortages these days. But have you heard the latest? I’m not kidding. I saw it in the papers. There’s an acute shortage of… of toilet paper!” Well, people heard that and boom! They were off to the store.

And you may remember a more recent time when toilet paper ran short in America. In the chaos that was 2020, of course! Yep, in April of that year buyers stocked up to weather the global pandemic. Worried consumers put more than they needed into their carts, leaving close to half of all stores empty. Who knows how much you’ll get through if you can’t leave the house, right?

According to a spokesperson from toilet paper manufacturer Georgia-Pacific LLC, families use around 409 rolls per year in normal circumstances. But when everyone is spending the majority of time at home, they apparently need an extra 40 percent on average. More specifically, the tissue makers said, “To last approximately two weeks, a two-person household would need [roughly] nine double rolls, or [roughly] five mega rolls.” So it’s no wonder the stores ran out!

To explain more, Texas State University professor Susan Signe Morrison got down and dirty on the reason for hoarding. She told History website in April 2020, “It’s psychological. We hoard toilet paper because we fear having to face our poo. If we run out of toilet paper, how will we wipe our bottoms?” And she has a point.

But toilet paper hasn’t been around forever. How did people cope when faced with their poop back in the day? Well, while the first record of normal paper dates back to the 100s B.C., toilet paper only cropped up in the sixth century A.D. Back then, Scholar Yan Zhitui wrote, “Paper on which there are quotations or commentaries from the Five Classics or the names of sages, I dare not use for toilet purposes.” And from this, we can assume that other types of paper may have been used for wiping.

While it’s still a little unclear when the Chinese first started using toilet paper, we do know that they were making loads of the stuff by the early 1300s. Yes, records show they were producing 10 million packs of as many as 10,000 sheets every year. And not just your rough stuff, either: the Hongwu emperor’s butt even enjoyed the touch of scented paper! How bouji!

And the emperor didn’t just like his paper perfumed! Oh no, he also preferred it jumbo-sized. So much so that he made an announcement requesting that his sheets be three feet long and two feet wide. What on earth would he have done with such enormous tissue? Actually, let’s not think about it.

But while the Chinese were using perfumed paper to do their bottom wiping, Americans had to make do with a much rougher choice. That’s right: in the 18th century, you’d have found corn cobs in latrines. Ouch! And so people were probably quite grateful when newspapers, leaflets and catalogs became so common that they, too, could be used for the job. Though it still doesn’t sound much better, if you ask us.

“The legend goes that people were primarily using the Sears catalog in outhouses,” explains University of Minnesota professor and TP guru Barry Kudrowitz to History website in 2020. But after Sears switched to glossy paper, wipers sought some new material for their toileting.

Thankfully, they had a ready alternative at hand. Yep, the Farmer’s Almanac became so popular as a buttwipe that its publisher even had to add a hole so it could be easily hung up on hooks in outhouses. In 1857, though, a New York businessman named Joseph Gayetty raised concerns about using printed material for cleaning. “Printer’s ink is a rank poison!” he said.

Instead, Gayetty proposed a medicated paper, which he offered in packs of 500 at the price of two bits. Using his paper, he claimed, would prevent various unpleasantries. Chief among these was hemorrhoids. And just like that, modern toilet paper was born.

Delivered in single pieces, Gayetty’s bathroom wipe came soaked in aloe. This was thought to be a good remedy for piles. And curiously, the inventor had his name printed on every sheet. Though he never explained why he thought having his name dragged across millions of backsides was a good idea!

In fact, printing names on toilet paper is understood to be quite a strong insult – and you can sort of see why. In 2006, for example, a man in Germany had the term “Koran” – the name of the Islamic holy book – inscribed onto toilet rolls. And he ended up getting in a lot of trouble with the law.

Anyway, Gayetty’s paper proved a success. But then a crafty manufacturer called the Scott Paper Company realized that it could sell even more toilet paper if it put it on rolls. So it did exactly that in 1890, and its innovation revolutionized the business. Before long, Scott was the biggest producer of TP in the U.S.

Unlike Gayetty, though, Scott was very much opposed to having its name on the paper. In fact, the company was so shy of being linked to something so “unmentionable” that it pretended to be called “Waldorf.” And to begin with, it sneaked its product out onto the market through middlemen and under private labels.

But Scott’s paper sometimes gave users a painful surprise when they were doing their business, and this may explain why the company was so reluctant to be publically linked to the product. You see, the manufacturing process meant that some of the rolls contained splinters. Ow! Competitor company Northern Tissue managed to resolve this problem in 1930, which unsurprisingly gave a boost to sales.

From there, toilet paper makers didn’t look back. In 1942 an English manufacturer came up with two-ply tissue, for instance. Next, colored TP came into being in 1954. And then, ten years later, Charmin made a scented version. Imagine the emperor’s delight! And it’s been onwards and upwards for the businesses over the last 60 years – with rolls becoming both smoother and more durable over time.

Yep, there’s no doubt about it: toilet paper has come on leaps and bounds in the last century. Even so, there are still some people out there who like to keep alternative bum-wiping materials handy. Sir Ian McKellen, the beloved actor, once shared with an interviewer that he stocked his toilet with pages ripped from Leviticus. “But it’s too much of a curiosity to actually put to use,” he said.

Well, McKellen probably wouldn’t use the Bible for buttwipe, but how about jihadists? In 2002 the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades were accused of doing just this when they sieged Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. But Jihad Jaara, the terror unit’s Bethlehem head, said, “It is completely untrue. We believe in the Bible and cannot do such a thing.”

Actually, Muslims have some very strict rules when it comes to cleaning their derrières. Among their holy scriptures are the hadith: phrases and tales that the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have shared. And the hadith that set out the guidelines for toileting give an eye-opening insight into what ninth-century Arabs used for the job.

In one hadith, the Prophet says you have to clean your bottom with an odd number of pebbles – but that there must also be at least three. You can only wipe an odd number of times, too. And if that wasn’t enough to remember, you should always do it with your left hand.

But what about if there were no pebbles lying around? The hadith makes it clear that you can’t use bone, charcoal or camel dung. Wait. What? Who would want to use camel dung, anyway? Well, apparently, when the Prophet once asked to be presented with various items with which to wipe his bottom, someone brought him dung. Word is he wasn’t too pleased.

Wiping with stones was actually pretty normal back in the day. The Greeks and Romans were known to try leaves and moss, too. And then there was also the less natural option of shattered pieces of pottery – a.k.a pessoi. Funnily enough, some people would write their enemy’s name on the fragment they intended to use to clean up. Nice to know it’s not just the modern world that is petty when it comes to insults!

We know these little round pieces of ceramic were used because they’ve been found around and about Greek and Roman latrines. There’s also a cup with a picture of a man using one while doing his business. Not really something you’d want to look at while taking a sip of wine, but hey-ho.

And when Romans weren’t using stones, they may have wiped with a sponge on a stick. This invention was called the tersorium, and the sponge would be steeped in salt water or vinegar. But while the invention looks more or less perfect for bottom wiping, archaeologists still aren’t certain this is what they would have been used for.

“The question is, do you use it to clean yourself or to clean the latrine?” explained archaeology expert Jennifer Bates to National Geographic. And given that the sponge-topped sticks were used by more than one person, maybe it’s best not to find out. We do know that lots of roman bathrooms had troughs of water, so at least they could be dunked between uses!

It seems some Romans felt the sponge-on-a-stick method was a little beneath them. For instance, in an Italian sewer that had been preserved by the A.D. 79 Vesuvius eruption, experts uncovered bits of cloth. “Cloth was made by hand in antiquity,” archaeology lecturer Erica Rowan told History website. “So using cloth to wipe your [butt] would have been quite a decadent activity. It’s the equivalent to using the softest and most expensive three-ply today.”

Mind you, it looks like cloth was also being used by the Chinese. We know this because archaeologists found several “hygiene sticks” in a toilet that they had dug up in China in 1992. These sticks had their ends robed in cloth, and their location was not the only clue to their use.

Nope, Bates’ team analyzed the sticks – which were 2000 years old – and found evidence of feces and parasites from the human gut. Bates then shared her conclusion with National Geographic. “They were found in a very specific context of a latrine,” she said. “And the parasite on them can only come from a human. These have definitely been used in a latrine context.”

As you can see, then, not having toilet paper really isn’t the end of the world. In fact, many people today simply rinse with a blast of water. And lots of Muslims and Hindus actually favor washing like this over using toilet paper. They obviously want to be sparkly clean after toileting. Who can blame them?

Muslims, in particular, like to use a little water jar, which is called a lota in southern Asia. You grab it with your right hand and clean with your left – just as the hadith commands, remember? Sometimes, a Muslim bathroom will have a bidet hose on the side of the toilet. In fact, it would probably be quite rare to just have the option of using toilet paper.

Bidets can be found across the world, and they have the big advantage of being environmentally friendly. But the king of the cleaners is the Asian machine known as the “bum gun” or “butt blaster.” They’re not kidding: this is some rocket-powered hygiene, just like the spray guns you find in a restaurant kitchen. Something to bear in mind if you’re thinking of jumping on the no-toilet-paper bandwagon!