Oh Crap, Price of Toilet Paper Expected to Rise

Just when you thought all the drama surrounding toilet paper was over, some crappy news gets announced. If you use brands like Cottonelle, Scott, and Viva - you can expect to pay more for them in the next few months.

The maker of these brands, Kimberly Clark, announced this week that they need to increase prices on their products to be able to keep manufacturing them. They say that the "cost of raw materials" has gone up, requiring the price hike.

The percentage increases are in the mid-to-high single digits," the company said in a news release. "Nearly all of the increases will be effective in late June."

It's not just on toilet paper either, it's on other products as well that you might use on the daily: Kleenex tissues, Kotex hygiene products and Huggies diapers.

First it's a shortage of these products. Now, it's an increase in price? What the heck?

As far as how much of an increase we're expected to see, that information hasn't been announced. We hope it's not anything too dramatic, but we'll have to wait and see.

[H/T Yahoo]

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Did You Know Toilet Paper Was Invented in New York?

Well, sort of.

Back in the day before toilet paper was the communal sponge. The sponges, known as tersoriums, may have been used once or cleaned in a bucket of vinegar or salt water and reused.

Paper originated in China and became widely available in the 15th century. In the western world, modern commercially available toilet paper didn’t originate until the year 1857.

New Yorker, Joseph Gayetty, marketed a "Medicated Paper, for the Water Closet," sold in packages of 500 sheets for 50 cents. It was in fact the only commercial toilet paper in the U.S. from 1857 until 1890. The product created by Gayetty were aloe-infused sheets of manila hemp dispensed from Kleenex-like boxes. He claimed his "medicated paper" prevented hemorrhoids.

Gayetty was so proud of his therapeutic bathroom paper that he had his name printed on each sheet. But his success was limited. Americans soon grew accustomed to wiping with the Sears Roebuck catalog, pages from the Farmer's Almanac and leaves and they saw no need to spend money on something that came in the mail for free.

Toilet paper took its next leap forward in 1890, when two brothers named Clarence and E. Irvin Scott popularized the concept of toilet paper on a roll. The Scotts' brand became more successful than Gayetty's medicated wipes, in part because they built a steady trade selling toilet paper to hotels and drugstores.