h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's not worth arguing about. Leaving the toilet seat up is a perfectly male practice, and it will never change. Get used to it

No, all parties should agree to lower both seat and lid. That's what the lid is for.

Alternatively, plumb a urinal, like that which you'll finds in a pub, into your bathroom. Then there's no argument ... the seat stays down.

T

There is an argument

and his name is

I'm not so sure about the lid. I seem to recall that the toilet is less hygienic with the lid down.

When you flush the toilet the water rushing in has to displace a certain amount of air. If the lid is up then this air (with its payload of water droplets) rises gently above the bowl then falls back. If the lid is down then this air is forced out as a high-speed horizontal jet across the room.

Thats about the most pedantic thing I have heard this week.

People need to accept that despite common belief, owning or using a toilet does not anticipate any amount of responsibilty for the post-flush position of the toilet seat in the slightest.

People should be more concerned with the concealment of pubic hair left in the shower, the world would be a better place, frankly, if we all just rinsed...

Thats my tuppence gone.

The toilet seat issue shouldn't be an issue. I suggest everyone reads the "Bad Habits and How to Stop Them" entry.

It's not a bad habit. It's a very natural instinct

If you need the seat up, put it up. If you need it down, put it down.

Can't say as it ever bothered me, apart from in the middle of the night if I assumed the seat was down and it wasn't . But I always used to wonder why blokes didn't get annoyed that we women left the seat down all the time......

Us men sometimes need the seat down as well. We do have to take a dump every once in a while. We just look in what position it is in, and make our actions accordingly.
Men just do their business, flush, wash hands and leave the bathroom. We don't look back, we just go. Why check and adjust at entry as well as at exit? Can we just agree on 'check on entry'?

BTW, the lid is there, in my point of view, to show that the toilet has been cleaned and not been used since if it's lowered.
It just has no use. It's not comfy to sit on (why would anyone want to do that anyway?), it's only in the way when we want to use the facilities, and it just plainly looks bad.
A toilet with the lid open, however, looks inviting. It's as if it is saying, come, sit on me. Kinda like an open shop door. If a shopdoor is open, the shopkeeper is giving the world the message "come inside, and look at what I sell". It's open for business. Same goes for the lid.

I, have never really understood why it was such a bone of contention either. Except, as you said, when you go to sit down on the toilet seat in the middle of the night and it isn't there. I never turn the light on in the loo when I go at night - so if dh has been before me and not put it down, there I am, half asleep in the pitch dark, dropping half an inch further than expected onto a freezing, thin porcelain throne instead of the nice round wooden one I was expecting.

That's cruel and unusual punishment in my book.

Personally, as a woman, I'd very much exceedingly and ever so rather that the chap put the seat up. Even if he left it up. If the seat is up, I can be reasonably sure that he hasn't 'sprinkled' it and I am not expected to sit on someone else's half-dried wee. Seat-downers never ever wipe, by the way. They rarely even flush. Just spray and away. Hence little dried crystals on the seat, on the floor, under the seat, and in a few cases all over the cistern because the aim was so truly out.

The sad fact is, men can't pee standing up either.

The toilet lid goes down in my house because my cats like to drink from the toilet, and then they get cat litter all over the toilet seat, which, frankly, is disgusting.

CelloCelloCello

Hi there
I wonder if anyone can help me have been looking at the front page article about living with someone and was interested in the picture of the hearts in the box. Does anyone know the code as I was thinking of using it on my page. Hope that someone can help, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Men, in general, lift the seat up if they need to and lower it if they need to. With women, I think it depends on the gender balance in their family. The more female-dominated their family were, the more annoyed they get when the seat is up.

There is one way that you can guarantee that a man will lower the seat, and the lid. Live in a house with a tiny bathroom, where the toilet is beside the sink/hand-basin (like my house). This works for me, because I know that if I leave the lid open then one day I will drop my toothbrush or razor straight down the loo.

Does anyone else find it unusual that women object to lowering the seat, yet they don't complain when they have to lift the lid? Surely it takes more effort to lift than to lower.

Scumbag, you got it.

tjing
Milla

We haven't had a seat on one of our toilets for about 2 years, you get used to it.

My Dad and brother use the other toilet so no sprinkles.

Try just dragging & dropping it onto your desktop- Rick

Does anyone have external refs for the lid up = more explosive distribution of the germs.
I've read both views - but have yet to see any conclusive proof - this *makes* sense, (though quite how you'd tell that all the droplets that went up would just go UP & not mushroom - so fall down elsewhere ...
(See, this current view might suggest that things below loo height are more at risk with lid down, those above it more at risk with lid up)

Found this on Google:

Always flush with the lid down.
According to Charles Gerba, PhD, a professor of microbiology at University of Arizona in Tucson, flushing the toilet with the lid up is not wise. "Polluted water vapor erupts out of the flushing toilet bowl and it can take several hours for these particles to finally settle -- not to mention where," he says. "If you have your toothbrush too close to the toilet, you are brushing your teeth with what's in your toilet."

Now that I've seen this, I'm never going into the bathroom again.

So glad I keep my toothbrush in the bathroom cupboard