Toilet paper has only been in existence for roughly a century and mankind has been around a whole lot longer than that. So how did folks wipe their bottom before toilet paper factories existed?
They used plants. Once upon a time, affluent people wiped themselves with lace, wool, or hemp, followed by a washing with rose water. But everyday people used plants as an early form of toilet paper.
Wiping yourself with leaves might not sound like an ideal way to clean yourself up, but in a survival situation you must be prepared to adapt. We need to be able to find safe and suitable alternatives for items that are impossible to find when SHTF.
Three Toilet Paper Plants To Grow
The top three varieties of toilet paper plants to grow are Mullein, Indian Coleus and Dombeya Burgessiae. The leaves of all these plants are soft, absorbent, and do not commonly cause any type of allergic reaction.
#1. Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)
Mullein, also known as the “Cowboy Toilet Paper Plant”, or the “Indian Toilet Paper Plant” is a biennial plant, commonly disregarded as a weed by far too many people.
Not only is Mullein generally deemed safe to use as toilet paper, it also boasts a copious amount of natural healing properties.
This plant can commonly be spotted in partially shaded areas and along roadsides in nearly every region in the United States. Mullein grows over six feet tall on average and sprouts a bright yellow top, making it easy to both spot and identify, even by novice wildcrafters.
Thankfully, the Cowboy Toilet Paper Plant does not have any poisonous look-alikes. Some folks who are prone to skin irritations could experience contact dermatitis when using the Indian Toilet Paper Plant. The skin irritation tends to be temporary.
The leaves on Mullein plants are incredibly soft. They are so velvety soft that, in fact, they would be likely more pleasing to your bottom than the scratchy, cheap manufactured toilet paper that is likely stocked at your workplace.
You can dry the Mullein leaves to ensure that you have a survival toilet paper source during the winter months. The leaves will not be fuzzy or velvety soft like they are when freshly picked, but they are still surprisingly absorbent and get the job done nicely.
You can forage for mullein in spaces where you know it has not been sprayed or grow your own to keep an abundant supply readily available.
Related: Edibility Test: Find Out Which Backyard Weeds are Edible
#2. Indian Coleus (Plectranthus barbatus)
This toilet paper plant is also often referred to as “Indian Coleus”, “Kikuyu Toilet Paper”, and “Coleus forskohlii”.
Like Mullein, it is also a biennial plant but it grows primarily in tropical regions.
Outhouses and latrines were once (and still are in parts of Kenya) built amid the Plactranthus barbatus plants. This way folks on their way to relieve themselves could simply pick a few leaves to use on their way in.
This toilet paper plant has a sweet smell and broad leaves that are incredibly soft to the touch. The leaves, which may hold medicinal properties for humans, are thick and fleshy, so you do not need to snag too many of them at once to clean yourself up after a trip to the outhouse or a squat behind a bush.
Plectranthus barbatus plants have been used as tissues, as well as toilet paper in many cultures throughout the centuries. Eating this toilet paper plant is toxic to animals, allowing it to grow in large quantities in the wild.
Related: 23 Medicinal Plants the Native Americans Used on a Daily Basis
#3. Dombeya Burgessiae
This beautiful plant has both been used as a natural or emergency source of toilet paper and to adorn the hair of young women who are off for a special evening out.
Dombeya Burgessiae flowers with delicate pink and white clusters, as well as soft and thick leaves.
This plant grows naturally only in horticulture zone 1, but it can be cultivated in nearly any location, as long as it is brought indoors for the cold winter months. You can also extend its growing zone by growing it in a grove, as described in how to grow a wild food forest. The proximity of other plants creates a microclimate, enabling you to grow plants that wouldn’t usually grow in your growing zone.
In its native Kenya, the fiber from the bark of this toilet paper shrub-like plant has also often been used to make rope and for basket weaving.
Why Grow Your Own Toilet Paper
Can you really stockpile enough toilet paper to service the needs of your family during a long-term disaster? Think about the sheer volume of toilet paper that you would need to amass to even modestly fulfill the needs of a four-person family for just three months.
In case of a doomsday-level disaster, the likelihood that society would return to normal after just three months would probably be nothing more than a pipe dream. It will take only few hours for store shelves to go empty of all staple commodities.
The toilet paper you happen to have on hand when disaster strikes will be all that you have until the disaster is over and society rebuilds itself. This could take many months or even years.
Imagine the savings if you were to grow your own toilet paper plants, whether you’re in a survival situation or not!
Precautions
Simply because an item you want to use, even topically, comes from nature does not mean it may not cause an adverse topical or internal reaction. Although these three plants have been used as toilet paper for centuries in a safe manner, that does not mean they will be absolutely safe for everyone to use.
As with natural herbal remedies and homemade beauty and cleaning agents, always research possible drug interactions and side-effects, as well as speaking to your doctor, before substituting a foraged or naturally-grown item into your daily routine.
This article was gladly contributed by Elle Meager, editor in chief of Outdoor Happens.
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I’d include lamb’s ear in this list. Extremely soft, absorbent, can be used to replace sanitary napkins, and has analgesic properties. It also grows like a weed when left alone in the ground.
From the web site “Ten Things to Know About Lamb’s Ear”
“Lamb’s ear plants have been used as an alternative to toilet paper and medicinally to treat wounds and the like, due to their antiseptic and other medicinal properties, and the leaves are also edible and can be made into a tea.”
No citations or references to back up the statements copied from the web site.
If you are interested, I suggest further web browsing for further info.
Can you flush these down a toilet?
Because of the thick nature of these, I’d be hesitant to flush them as they may cause sewer blockages. I’d be especially hesitant to use them in a septic system.
I don’t know about you,…but if the SHTF,..alot of people might not be using indoor plumbing as it takes electricity to run the water tank and fill the toilet. If you have a water source where you can haul buckets to fill the tank manually, you’d be OK. This is assuming the electricity is off.
grandniem: See my response below. Unless you have your own septic system, the sewer system depends upon electricity to function unless your sewer system is dumping raw sewage. I doubt that it is as the EPA has been cracking down on plants that dump raw sewage.
Even if it is still dumping raw sewage, it still needs electricity to run the pumps to move the sewage. If it is processing the sewage before releasing it, it needs electricity as much as the water treatment plant — maybe more.
On the left coast, the Hyperion sewage plant near LAX run by the city of Los Angeles is the biggest offender I know of for dumping raw sewage into the Santa Monica Bay.
If they were a private entity the entire staff would be serving life sentences in state prison for unlawful dumping.
Most folks and most EOTW fiction writers only touch on the problems of sewage disposal. A lot of them handle it by having the hero and his family have a septic tank and system. They never discuss what problems the folks in town are having.
Thanks for the info! I’ve lived in the country all my life and that is an eye opener! I guess if the SHTF, it won’t go anywhere without electricity for alot of folks.
Our water company (AZ Water) is going solar. They have a backup generation system because this is an earthquake zone. The sewer company has permission in case of an emergency to use the old copper mines to divert black water to.
And, a warning to those (not to you) who don’t know, all towns have a legal right to dispose of raw sewage into any body of water in case of an emergency. the best way to die in pain is to use stagnant or dirty water. That means just using it without first sterilizing. Just because animals can and not get sick doesn’t mean we can. niio
In my 65,years on this rock I have yet to see or even hear an electric toilet or a toilet requiring an electric pump to provide flushing water. I have seen toilets in a basement that required and electric sewage pump but never an electric pump to provide water for flushing. Out of curiosity, do you have an electric toilet? Does it require an electric pump to fill the tank for flushing?
Justme: I am not talking about moving effluent from your toilet to the street. That depends upon water pressure and gravity. I am talking about when all that effluent from all the homes using the sewer system reaches wherever it is treated before being released.
Have you ever considered what happens to the matter when you flush? It goes to the sewer main in the street which eventually goes to a sewage treatment plant. It is at the sewage treatment plant that the demand for electricity is high. The EPA has set standards for release of sewage effluent. It must meet certain criteria for purification before it can be released into holding ponds for insertion back into the water table or into a moving body of water (river, in other words) to flow to the ocean, or in the case of political bodies close enough to the ocean, to be released back into the ocean. We no longer allow raw sewage to flow into the ocean as we did in the past (except for the Hyperion treatment plant in LA which sporadically releases raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay).
Red says that political bodies have the right to release raw sewage into bodies of water. He doesn’t cite any U.S. code for that, but I imagine if we are talking about an EoTW situation, it might happen because no one is around to enforce the laws that prohibit it. So as a practical matter, it might happen even accidentally.
In any event, either the whole system will back up eventually forcing its way into homes closest to the sewage treatment plant and working its way further and further bak into the collection system as more and more people continue to flush into a non-working system or it will be released untreated into some place.
While I am not a sanitation engineer in the sewage treatment field, it only makes sense that such treatment facilities have some means of releasing untreated effluent into some kind of holding bodies. As Red mentioned, abandoned copper mines in his area.
If the system is gravity fed, that is all the buildings contributing effluent to the system are above the treatment plant, then the system may well continue to work without electricity. However, that depends upon what people are dumping into it. If a lot of non-degradable material is flushed into the system, it will clog and back up. That action is just like if you accidentally flush a piece of clothing down the toilet. The line gets stopped up and somebody has to
roto-root the system to get the blockage out.
If the treatment plant is at the same grade of the contributors to the system, then electric sewage pumps move the mass along the system to the treatment plant.
Tokyo is built on a vast flood plain. There are some hills, but the vast portion of Tokyo is a flat plain. With electricity off — the power plant that was destroyed in the tsunami was Tepco, Tokyo Electric Power Company — sewage could not be pumped after the treatment plants ran out of diesel fuel for their generators. Transportation was interrupted as train tracks had to be check for continuity otherwise the tragedy would be compounded by derailments. Roadways had to be checked for integrity. People in high rise apartment buildings continued to flush. The system backed up. None of that was reported here in this country. Who cares in this country if ten thousand Japanese toilets have backed up into the apartments?
So that is the important part of electricity in the disposal of sewage in any disaster. Usually the treatment plant is at the lowest part of the countryside to allow gravity to shoulder the significant part of movement of the mass. Movement of the mass depends upon large quantities of water being dumped into the system to help move the mass of solids. In an EOTW situation, I expect that folks won’t be dumping large amounts of water from bathing into the sewer system, won’t be washing their cars, using the washing machine, or any other myriad other tasks that dump plain water, whether grey or otherwise into the sewer system to move the mass along.
All in all, our sewer system and effluent treatment plants are one of the marvels of 20th and 21st century living that have changed our lives dramatically. In prior centuries in Europe, raw sewage was dumped from chamber pots directly into the streets to be washed away into rivers when it rained.
I don’t know where you live, but electric toilets that do everything from warming the seat to dispensing deodorant into the air, to washing your nether regions and blow drying them with warm air — I don’t know what all the modern toilets do these days. They have a control panel almost as complicated as the latest cars.
We first ran into them in Japan in 1991. My wife used the toilet and thought she was pressing the flush button. It was the wash button and she was rewarded with a spray of warm water into the air, much to her dismay.
Toto, the Japanese toilet manufacturer is marketing their products in the U.S. and if you go down to a plumbing supply store you can purchase an electric toilet for installation in your home. I don’t know if the big box home supply stores carry them as I haven’t been in the market for a new toilet for some years. Also I would have to have the bathrooms wired for the toilet installation and that would make for more expense than I would want to undertake.
If you travel to Japan, you will find them in major railway stations, up-to-date hotels and many, many private homes. I don’t know how much of an inroad they have made in the States but I would imagine any upper end home built in the last twenty years will have the toilets I have described in at least the master bath. I first wrote “any expensive home” but realized that there is no such thing as an inexpensive home these days.
Hope that you have found this post informative and opened your mind to a problem that is little talked about in any disaster situation, earthquake, flood, EOTW event — about the only disaster that doesn’t impact the sewage system is a wildfire.
Interestingly enough, it is reported locally that one of the wildfires last year did half a million dollars worth of damage to the local landfill. That just totally boggles my mind. Half a million dollars worth of damage to the dump? Aside from the value of the land which would not have been damaged by fire, I can’t imagine a half a million dollars worth of improvements to the dump. The cyclone fencing around the plant should be mostly intact. I am sure the equipment was moved out of the path of the fire. It would have been gross negligence to allow an expensive bulldozer that is operational to be engulfed by flames. So I am sure we will see an increase in our trash bill to pay for the “half million dollars worth of damage to the landfill.”
But, considering that the City of Los Angeles is going to build an apartment house to house the “homeless” that is going to wind up costing just about 3/4 of a million dollars per apartment unit, I guess half a mil for the dump isn’t out of line.
Justme: I haven’t seen a gravity flush in decades that did not, at some point, demand a water pump. Good question, to. niio
Only if you want to spend lots of time plunging and fishing.
In any serious disaster, tidal surges, floods, earthquakes or the end of the world, your plumbing both ingoing and outgoing is going to fail. Your incoming plumbing will fail first. Unless you live down the hill from a natural water supply, very shortly after the flow of electricity to the water pumps fails, so will your incoming water supply.
If you are lucky enough to have an in-ground septic system, you will be able to continue to flush but you will need to supply the water manually to flush. If you have a septic system, you should know by now that you can’t just throw everything down the drain as you do with a commercial sewage treatment system. So what will you do? What will you do? I like that line by Karl Malden.
You will do as they do in many third world countries. You will put the item that you used to clean up in a paper bag and once a day burn the paper bag and its contents. If you have run out of paper bags, perhaps a can with a lid that you can take outdoors and dump the contents into your burn pit.
In days of yore (like when I was a kid) we burned whatever garbage Henry Jankowski didn’t pick up for his pig farm. And you dasn’t put anything in the garbage that his pigs couldn’t eat. If you did, the garbage was dumped out wherever you left the can for him to pick up. Everything else was burned in the incinerator in the back yard. Every once in a while, non-burnable stuff was picked out of the incinerator to be given to the junk man who came around periodically and picked up anything that could be sold for scrap. That included cans, bottles, jar caps (they were all metal in those days) newspaper, old clothes, furniture.
Stuff that didn’t burn (old tires for example) that neither Henry nor the junk man took went to the town dumpsite where we used to go to shoot rats with a pellet gun or a .22.
We never had to burn toilet paper because our septic tank never overflowed as my parents were very particular about what went in the toilet or down the drain and were quite strict with the three boys also. Some neighbors had to have their septic tanks pumped fairly regularly because they were less than scrupulous about what went down the drain.
To further amplify, your governmental/private sewer system will back up too. When it backs up depends upon several factors. First, how close you are to the sewer plant. Next, how many people are throwing stuff they shouldn’t throw in the toilet or sink and probably last, how big the trunk lines are that run down the street and whether the failure is due to flooding. If it is due to flooding, you are going to get backed up a lot sooner than in just a plain ordinary end of the world event.
There are a couple of things that can keep the sewer system from backing up. In this town sewage eventually ends up in either the riverbed that runs past the sewage plant or in the ocean from either the river where the supposedly treated effluent is dumped or straight into the ocean via the old system that dumped the sewage straight into the ocean without treating.
Yeah, that’s how big cities close to rivers or the ocean used to get rid of their sewage. That’s why a river in Ohio caught fire some decades ago. After that interesting event, there was a move started to clean up the river.
There is another way you can help keep sewage from backing up into your house and that is with an anti back flow valve placed in the line from your house to the street. You should discuss that with a qualified plumber. It’s not cheap.
Won’t help a whole lot if the sewers are impacted by flood and your house is flooded by effluent from some body of water but it will help in other situations.
Again, when the flow of electricity stops to the sewage treatment plant, the flow will stop unless they just allow the raw sewage to flow into whatever area the effluent is discharged presently, bypassing any treatment facility. That creates a whole ‘nother problem but at least, unless you live in proximity to the treatment plant it will be out of your neighborhood. It also depends upon whether the workers at the plant can do it and do it. If they can’t get to work or feel they shouldn’t do it without authorization from some higher up, it won’t get done.
Bottom line: Don’t throw the leaves in the toilet.
After the giant earthquake and tsunami in Japan many stores were closed because there weren’t any deliveries being made. Folks who had not stored toilet paper soon ran out. This was especially true in the huge apartment houses that exist. They are very small and there is not a lot of storage room in them, so most folks didn’t have an extra supply on hand. The sewer system was quickly plugged up with newspapers and magazines that were used in lieu of toilet paper. Even as far away as Tokyo, that was a significant problem.
The Japanese government now strongly encourages folks to store a supply of toilet paper. The sales tax was raised last year and my wife’s relatives spent extra money on toilet paper before the tax increase to stock away for when the next disruptive event occurs. They live within the fallout area if Fuji erupts and then there is alway the possibility of flooding from typhoons or transportation problems caused by earthquakes.
Unlike our government bodies the Japanese are taking disaster preparedness very seriously. Here in the PDRK once a year the emergency services get together for what is billed as an emergency training session. From my view it is just an excuse to get together to eat donuts, drink coffee and shoot the breeze. It doesn’t involve the civilian population at all.
In Japan, towns that the government has decided are at risk from tsunami or flooding practice evacuation. For earthquakes, the neighborhood volunteer groups practice urban rescue. The Japanese depend on the civilian population who are physically able to assist government employees in rescue situations. It isn’t like the CERT training that is provided here in SoCal. There may be some towns that are more active, but in this town the last time we had any CERT training sessions was right after the Northridge earthquake more than 20 years ago. Those of us who took the training might be a bit rusty this long after the training.
Chuck – to this day, it still isn’t known exactly why the Cayahoga river caught fire, but it almost certainly was due to the heavy industry along the river banks dumping non-organic chemical waste. Human waste by itself would not have caused the river to burn, just stink to high heaven.
Kurm: I’m certainly not an organic chemist. In fact, I was probably about two weeks from being invited to drop the class when the end of the semester intervened and I thankfully escaped to a less demanding class like 16th century High German.
That said, organic stuff will degenerate into methane gas. There are lots of superstitious tales about swamp fire and ghosts in swamp lands. For the less superstitious, it is methane gas that has somehow become ignited. Long before we were driving electric cars in fact, it was so long ago Mike Wallace was a young man, Sixty Minutes ran a segment on an English pig farmer who ran his Hillman Minx — does anyone remember those— on methane gas that he captured from a silo where he digested pig manure. In fact, the city next to us is using captured methane gas from their sewage treatment facility to deliver part of the energy used in treating the sewage. A very practical green effort that I heartily endorse over solar panels out in the desert between Barstow and Las Vegas where there are few people to use the electricity the panels are supposedly generating.
So, yes, a turd all by itself floating down the river would hardly ignite, but with enough stuff packed down with solid detritus disposed of in the river, it doesn’t take a tremendous stretch of the imagination to think that human waste just might have generated enough methane gas, ignited by a carelessly tossed cigarette to ignite all the other combustible inorganic chemicals in the river.
And to think when the first white men reached the banks of the Cayahoga the Indians were drinking from it without ill effect.
Good advice on storing toilet paper. We try to keep one case (24-pack) per person on hand. while quakes here are rare, they do happen. The last severe one destroyed Tombstone in 1887.The fault starts along the upper Yaqui (Rio Bavispe) in Sonora.That goes off every 90 years, but Cochise Co only got rattled that time.It didn’t effect us to the northwest of them.
No burning for us. An outhouse or pit, or methane digester. A dusting of wood ashes over the pit pretty much sterilizes everything and kills bugs. A neighbor with a couple of rotties is digging a trench for the wastes and some trash. It doesn’t have to be deep, the dog wastes will keep coyotes out of it, and stray dogs. As he needs it, more is dug along the fence, and the dirt used to cover the wastes. No valley fever that way, no flies, and his wife will use it for flower 🙂 I did this in Penna and it works. Here, just add water 🙂
Arizona’s take on human wastes is bury it, do not burn. Arizona, even cities, are encouraging the use of composting toilets to save water. were we to install one, it can cost up to 6,000 (for a family of 4) but it costs a minimum of 70 bucks a month for the sewer. Water is another company. Urine can be added to gray water, which can be legally used on lawns and so on. niio
Thank you. Very informative.
In Austria, we have mandatory service for all +18 year old males. You have a choice to either go do a military training or do a civil service program (which is a few months longer than the I think 1 year military training). I think these are good programs which actually make sense (esp. to people who otherwise wouldn’t get hands-on experience).
It was that way here, the military draft, and, I think, we were better off for it as teenagers. At one time, most states had laws all young men had to belong to a militia.
My father had a lot of respect for Austrian troops. At the end of World War Two, his brother fought alongside of them to drive back the Russians. In fact, Dad must have been so impressed, he bought home a war bride from Austria 🙂 niio, walk in beauty
Excellent Remedies for a potentially sticky and sore subject. Thank You Elle Meager
No problem at all! In my life there’s a plant for everything, from medicinal to toilet paper!
If you grow corn, don’t forget the stripped corncobs! Yes, they do work, and are not scratchy. Let them dry, stockpile them in boxes. No, you can’t flush them (which won’t be an issue in a survival situation!), but they do compost.
I remember finding a large apple box full of corncobs in the storage room of the old poultry barn when I was a kid… My dad clued me in.
Wow Rhonda, I never thought of corncobs! Tried Comfrey once and I recommend you never, ever try that, but corncobs… Food for thought!
If you grow corn, don’t forget stripped corncobs! Let them dry and stockpile in boxes or bags. Surprisingly, not scratchy. No, of course they won’t flush (not an issue in a survival situation!) but they certainly compost.
I remember, as a kid, finding a large apple box full of cobs in the storage room of the old poultry barn. My dad clued me in as to why they’d been kept!
Great suggestions.
Any fresh or dried leaves did it for me and my brothers when we were out in the woods all day as kids
Hi, thanks for this important info. I’ll start looking for the plants in the wild, and on how to acquire and grow them. ?
Okay, a perpetual source of toilet paper. Awesome!! Please dont squeeze the muellin
A sergeant told a kid in Basic that was making a fool of himself (talking back), “I’ll wipe your a** with a cactus pad.”
Before Dad put in a French drain, we used the outhouse and redneck toilet paper. A box was always in the outhouse and on occasion, we had a visitor who didn’t know how to apply it right. Maybe they were masochists from Kali, who knows?! Hold the corncob in both hands, gently twist and rub will all the tiny razor blades are gone. You’re left with a soft, velvety scrubber. Apply as needed, drop into the pit where it absorbs many times its weight in liquids, decays fast and keeps the reek down. Don’t y’all have too much now, hear? niio
Can the leafs be harvested and stored? This article is all well and good during the summer months but what about winter?
Hey Davo, you can! “You can dry the Mullein leaves to ensure that you have a survival toilet paper source during the winter months. The leaves will not be fuzzy or velvety soft like they are when freshly picked, but they are still surprisingly absorbent and get the job done nicely.”
Elle: You need to dampen the leaves and let them wait a while. We used corncobs when we couldn’t afford toilet paper (that, of course, was in Penna). If using a cob, make sure you work off the tiny razor blades 🙂 And, nope, they do not flush. In fact, piled in a ravine and held in place by wire, they’ll get wet and swell up enough to stop a flood. In an outhouse or pit, they rot fast and leave almost nothing behind in bulk.Shucks can be used, too, but are a little rough. niio
Surely. They may be a bit scratchier than when freshly picked, but certainly better than a broken piece of pottery or just a plain stick. Speaking of which using a stick in a public jakes because paper was far too expensive to use for the purposes to which we put it today, led to the frequent cry in the dark about picking up the mooky end of the stick leading to the well know expression, “He sure got the shitty end of the stick.”
I can’t imagine using a broken piece of pottery. Our forefathers had a lot tougher hide than I. I have read though that broken pieces of pottery were used to cleanse oneself in earlier times. Ugghhh. And I thought the t.p. in the C-rations was rough.
The old joke in Mexico is, they make toilet paper during slack times in the sandpaper plant.
Can you provide any sources of where to buy seeds of these three plants to grow? Thanks.
Baker’s rare seeds. Any sustainable seed company should have them in the herbal section. Google mullein seeds and plants niio
I don’t remember which one of these survival sites has a simple recipe to make toilet paper. Finally I can get rid of all those gas and electric bills, because it is made from old papers.old bills, newspaper, pages from books, magazines, etc.
uncle: regular paper has to be crumpled and worked hard to make it soft enough to fall apart in the sewer. Even then, if using a toilet, people advise flushing with a bucket of water. Always be careful or you’ll wish you owned a roto-rooter 🙂 niio
I looked up Mullein on different sites and came across a site giving advice on how to smoke it. Interestingly, there are several mixes of various herbs (not pot) that include Mullein. A couple of people said that they used it to quit smoking tobacco, mixing it with oregano or mint. If anyone does smoke cigarettes, it would be a good thing to quit pretty soon if they don’t want to be noticed. The smell of cigarettes carries quite a distance.