The TRUTH about Using a Bidet

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As I mentioned in my post about the ten sustainable swaps I’ve made over the last ten years, the addition of a bidet in our household has been (dare I say it) life changing. As a rural American, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I even learned about a bidet. And, fascinating as they are, for awhile they lived in my head as a fancy toilet that everyone got wrong on all the television shows. 

You know what I’m talking about. Someone accidentally turns the fancy bidet on while a guest in someone else’s house. There’s water everywhere, sheer panic, and A LOT of scary buttons on the wall. 

I actually don’t know when they went from being fancy comedic material to an actual eco-thought. It probably involved the Boyfriend and his thoughts on wanting a bidet. He had travelled to China for school previously and had used bidets there and he could not wait for a world where he could use one everyday. I couldn’t fathom what was so much better about a bidet. So I did months of research, 8 months of research to be exact, from March 2020 until November 2020. Yeees, the news about the COVID-19 pandemic run on toilet paper (in the United States), was the opening the Boyfriend utilized to bring up a bidet again. We thankfully had a ton of toilet paper and never worried about running out in our tiny town. 

In that 8 months of research, I searched everything from the actual bidet sites, to news articles, to blogs and Reddit post. There really isn’t that much information out there about bidet-use, which (I’m not saying this is correct) could be why it is still not super-widely accepted in the United States. Here’s what I found, so you don’t have to spend months looking for the same information 🙂

WHAT IS A BIDET?

I think some modern bidet companies are expanding the definition of what a bidet actually is. With that in mind, let’s define a bidet as a bathroom accessory with the purpose of washing the human nether regions (genitalia, perineum, inner buttocks, and anus). In some regions of the world, it is a separate fixture in the bathroom and you might squat over it to clean down there. 

Now-a-days though bidets can come in a multitude of different varieties that can utilize the plumbing already in your bathroom. You can get a handheld attachment, you can get a toilet seat attachment, a toilet seat with a built-in bidet, or a separate fixture. 

Bidets originated in Europe in the seventeenth century and the original inventor and idea are largely unknown. It is thought to have started in France in the 1600s. Bidet is a French word for “pony” or “small horse” and it might denote the straddling position (similar to how one would straddle a horse while riding it) the user would be in while using it. 

Bidets were first used in the bedroom, alongside chamber pots, for better hygiene after going to the bathroom. With the advancements in indoor plumbing, bidets moved to the bathroom. At this point, they were an additional fixture in the bathroom. You’d have your sink, toilet, and a separate bidet to clean your bottom. The Japanese are credited with taking the American toilet design and integrating a bidet into it to make one bathroom fixture, instead of two.

I can only imagine peeing in a toilet and then, WITH MY WET BOTTOM, sashaying over to the bidet to clean up. How in the hell would I have prevented urine from getting on the floor as I made the transition to bidet???

Ginny Rayne: Thoughts from my Head

World War II is widely thought of the Americans first introduction to the bidet. Apparently bidets were seen in brothels by the Americans and then were associated with the immorality of brothels and sex. The soldiers were in the brothels to see the bidets, right? Engaging in the vast immoralities they were against? It is often this association with the immorality of brothels that is pointed to as the reason bidets are not as popular in the United States. 

However, now they seem to be rising in popularity with Millennials (and other age groups), thanks to the bidet being marketed as a toilet paper alternative, making the bidet more environmentally friendly. 

WHAT WERE MY ANXIETIES?

We all know that I am very research driven. I try to research all sides of a project and/or product   to know all the outcomes and possibilities. So many things go into making a purchase or decision, BUT none of those things were on my mind quite yet. I had entirely separate factors that I was worried about and wanted answers to prior to making a decision to add a bidet/bidet attachment to our bathroom.

So, I went to the only person I knew who had used one previously: the Boyfriend. I guess since I really didn’t know how they worked yet, I wanted to know how my bottom would dry off after being cleaned with the bidet. I mean, I use toilet paper like everyone else after going to the bathroom, but part of that is drying my lady parts after peeing. Trust me (if you’re a guy), you do not want little pee dribbles running down your leg as soon as you stand up—if you’re a lady, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.

Clearly, the Boyfriend did not understand my problem; his response was: “You just sit there until you are dry.”

I had some problems with this response. First, that’s not how it works (if you’re a lady). Second, who has that kind of time when you pee every hour or two when consuming the appropriate amount of water daily??

So, I was right back where I started with not knowing anything. In fact, the only thing I did know was that water sprayed my nether regions to clean them. The other factors I was worried about and wanted answers to before trying to decide which product to purchase:

1. How does everything dry off without the use of toilet paper?
2. How does the use of a bidet effect my septic tank?
3. Is the use of a bidet really more environmentally-friendly? 
4. {For Females} Was there an even greater risk to getting a UTI or Yeast Infection?

HOW DO I DRY MY BOTTOM AFTER USE?

Most of my exposure to advertising regarding bidet use had been as an alternative to toilet paper. So, without drying myself off with toilet paper, it was starting to seem like I would just have to sit there to dry. While this might not seem like a big deal, it kind of was for me. I drink about 100-120 ounces of water a day, sometimes more. Add in my morning latte, my pre/post-work shakes, and sometimes a glass of wine, and my kidneys and bladder do a lot of work. I end up peeing at least every two hours, if not more. 

Time-wise, this adds up. Say it takes about 30-60 seconds to empty my full bladder, 30 seconds to wash my hands, and maybe 15 seconds to dry them. Notwithstanding the intricacies of some of the outfits/belts/pants, It looks like it takes about 2 minutes for me to pee. Two minutes every two hours for the 16 hours I’m awake is over 15 minutes of time in the bathroom just on Number 1 per day, probably more. However, if you’re a female and you’ve ever had the misfortune of being somewhere without toilet paper, then you are familiar with “drip-drying” and you’re acutely aware that dry is really not obtainable. But suppose, for research purposes, I don’t have these pre-conceived notions.

For this experiment, I thought I’d try “drip-drying” for 30 seconds. This is the minimum amount of time that it takes me to pee, so maybe it would take the same amount of time to dry as it did to get wet. Remember, this is before the bidet, so I was drip-drying and then utilizing toilet paper. The wet toilet paper (or lack thereof) would be the result of this experiment. So, I spent 1 whole day, in which I peed 12 times, trying to drip-dry for 30 seconds. The results: my bottom and outsides were mostly dry (as in could live with), but (and maybe it’s just me) there were inner areas that I did not feel had dried at all.

Sooo…the next day I tried 60 seconds of drip-dry time, with mostly similar results—maybe minutely better. Even to drip dry for 30 seconds each time, I would be adding four minutes total (every other hour) to my bathroom routine during the day and I did not feel like the moisture level would be….pleasant for my skin down-there.

But, wanting to go toilet-paper free, this was actually not a hard one to solve; it just took me a while to wrap my head around it. Mainly because the first several articles I read referred to the solution as a family cloth. I don’t know about you, but this did not spark good images in my head. Diving in though, a family cloth is just like a bath towel but entirely dedicated to your nether regions. This made sense as bidets are supposed to clean you better. But 8+ towels a day seems like a LOT of extra laundry. I stumbled across an idea that worked in my brain. 

Since we change our shower towels out once a week, and bidet towels are like shower towels for your intimate areas, we could also change out our “butt-towels” every week; thus, not adding anything significant to our laundry. This solves the dry question, and the subsequent laundry question, but I still didn’t want to share (I don’t share my bath towel). We solved that one with HIS/HERS towel hooks hung right by the toilet. And suddenly, this whole question was resolved!

HOW WILL A BIDET EFFECT MY SEPTIC SYSTEM/TANKS?

I grew up not far from my present house, next to a farm. We had well water and a septic tank. No public sewage/water utilities for us. However, I do remember having soooooo many septic issues. So much so, that I remembered the name of the plumber YEARS later when I bought my own house. I grew up FEARING septic tank issues and literally thought EVERYTHING was bad for them.

My house is also a well water and septic tank house. We had it all checked out when I bought the house and the plumber was like “You’ll never have to do a thing to this system with only two people living here.” And some of my fears were alleviated. But I still made sure to triple check that all of my toilet paper was labelled as septic-safe and was wary of any chemicals. 

I figured that a bidet would be helpful by eliminating toilet paper in my septic tank. I actually thought that toilet paper disintegrated in my tank, but (at least in public sewer systems) it turns into a gross, sludgy mess that can end up clogging sewer pipes and causing a massive mess. And it’s even worse with “flushable” wipes, which the Boyfriend was fond of using. Most flushable wipes either never break down fully or they eventually biodegrade into micro plastics. The more research I did on this question, the more a bidet sounded better for my home sewage system.

IS A BIDET REALLY ECO-FRIENDLY?

These are the questions we must ask ourselves prior to any purchase as we try to live in harmony with the very Earth that give us life. With base-knowledge, I knew that toilet paper was utilizing trees. Most toilet paper manufacturers have been trying to get us to believe they are using sawdust and other tree pulp that would likely not be used, if not for the toilet paper companies being the heroes they are. I’m not quite sure I believe that, at all—it seems like fancy marketing speech similar to “Four out of five dentists prefer…” Maybe the toilet paper companies utilize some of the sawdust/tree pulp, but not entirely. That would mean their business/manufacturing model depends on another industry needing those trees for them to obtain the sawdust/tree pulp.

Call me a skeptic, but that’s not what I’ve learned about capitalism in my lifetime.

Even if they do only use the sawdust/tree pulp, one Scientific American article estimate that Americans, overall, utilize 36.5 BILLION (with a B) rolls of toilet paper a year. In the same article, they noted that the rolls of toilet paper were made from the pulp of 15 MILLION trees and utilized over 400 BILLION gallons of water (exact number quote: 473, 587, 500,000) to manufacture the end product (along with chemicals for bleaching and processing).

There are POPULATIONS around the world in many different COUNTRIES without access to clean drinking water and Americans utilize 400 Billion gallons to wipe our asses? Even without the tree argument, this number astounded me.

But wait, bidets use water to operate. So would I just be trading one water consuming product for another? 

In another article I read, it was noted that on average an American utilizes 28 pounds of toilet paper each year. As each roll weighs approximately 0.5 pounds, this is 56 rolls of toilet paper. Each roll takes an estimated 37 gallons of water to make with the cleaning and processing of the pulp, and the chemical process of bleaching the paper white. Utilizing these number, an average American would utilize 2,072 gallons of water per year with toilet paper use.

On the flip-side, most bidets use about 0.13 gallons of water per use. Let’s put that in my use case of 8+ times per day for 365 days per year. This lead to sub-400 gallons of water/year. And I rounded up to account for the plus times due to my water consumption. 

So it was starting to look like a bidet saved paper/trees and water. The manufacturing electricity, greenhouse gases, and packaging I counted as a wash between toilet paper and bidets. Much isn’t known about the bidet manufacturing process, but I figured it was probably similar to that of making toilet paper with electricity consumption and plastic use (packaging for toilet paper vs potential product for bidet).

WILL USING A BIDET CAUSE A YEAST INFECTION OR UTI?

This was such a tough topic to research. Every article, post, comment was all he-said, she-said. There is no real research to support or disprove any of the things I was reading about online.

All of the back and forth, with no actual answers was beginning to frustrate me—and the Boyfriend because he couldn’t fathom what I was worried about. And quite literally told me that “the spray can be adjusted so there are no contamination issues.”

Most bidets or bidet attachments shoot water from the back of the toilet bowl towards your dairie-aire. I understood how it cleaned my bottom after Number 2. What I didn’t understand was how the “back to front” directed stream wouldn’t cause me an additional urinary tract infections or yeast infections. 

Our entire lives, girls are taught to ALWAYS wipe front to back to prevent any bacteria from getting where it’s not supposed to be. Even with this piece of magical advice and following it to the mother-effing “T”, urinary tract and yeast infections are so common that, for the most part, a doctor visit isn’t required. So, my brain wanted an explanation on how a “back to front” bidet spray would be more sanitary for my urethra and vagina.

First, let’s look into the health benefits. A bidet is marketed as being a cleaner, more sanitary option than toilet paper. The premise is that you wouldn’t wipe bird or dog poop off you (should you step in it or a bird hate you) with just a piece of paper. Most people would say this just smears it around. You would get some water and clean the area. On this level, a bidet made sense to me. Especially noting those little toilet paper pieces that get stuck in between things down there.

The bidet is also thought to be therapeutic for damaged skin—think hemorrhoids, rashes, ulcers, cysts, shaving accidents. And oddly enough, this made sense to me without any research. Working in the medical field for the last fourteen years, I can vouch for this benefit. Sitz baths are recommended for pregnant patients, those recovering from vaginal births, hemorrhoids, bartholin’s cysts. Basically a sitz bath is a warm (not hot) bath for your perianal area. In most instances, it can be done in a pan designed for the sitz bath instead of you having to actually fill tub and sit in the water, but that works too. The warmth of the water promotes blood flow, which promotes healing. The water itself is a gentle lubricant that helps clean the area and provide some necessary lubrication to the healing areas.

On this level, I could 100% understand why bidets were thought to be beneficial in populations that have to deal with the irritation, discomfort, and/or burning that comes with a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome, Chron’s/Ulcerative Colitis, Anal Fissures, and Anal Itching.

BUT no real-life person was talking about Yeast Infections and UTIs. Both of which can be caused and/or initiated by the introduction of new bacteria to the vaginal system. This question plagued me for at least two months at the end of my research marathon.

After all of this research, I came across one Reddit user who posted her own experiments and experiences in using her bidet. She tracked water consumed, electricity consumed (including washing/drying her bidet towels), paper saved—all of it. And SHE talked about how adding a bidet helped solve her recurring UTI problem. This one post, after all of my research, caused me to say “What the heck, I’ll try it.”

OUR BIDET and EXPERIENCES AFTER 1 YEAR

After all of that research, we went with a Tushy Bidet attachment. The reasons were simple in nature:

1. The attachment connects to our existing toilet and plumbing. No professional needed for install. And everything came in the box (except for the tools needed like a wrench)
2. The cost. As something I wasn’t super sure about yet, the $119 price tag was not too hefty (seriously, so bidet products can run $1000s).
3. The 60-Day Risk Free Return period. I told you, I wasn’t sold yet. I was willing to give it a month and a half to see how it was and if I got a single UTI/Yeast Infection, bye-bye Tushy.

We got the TUSHY Spa—the Boyfriend wanted the warm water option for his bottom. The classic does the same thing (bidet-wise), without warm water and is slightly cheaper because of it. I installed the attachment in under an hour, and the Boyfriend double-checked to confirm no leaks. We hung up our HIS/HER towel holders (I’m not kidding, we wrote his/hers on it to ELIMINATE any/all confusion) and began our experiment.

Well, the Boyfriend didn’t know we were experimenting! We’ve now owned of TUSHY Spa (I think it’s version 2.0) for a year. I will never go back and honestly hate using the bathroom anywhere else. Toilet paper is soooo scratchy (yes, even the softest ones) and they are right, I do feel immensely cleaner using the bidet over toilet paper.

And I’m super happy to report, not one single UTI or Yeast Infection in the last year. I do make sure to wash the back and THEN the front, to make sure any/all bacteria that may have migrated is washed away from the delicate places. And I make sure to dry “front-to-back.”

I don’t use the warming function, though the Boyfriend might. Honestly, this a) takes too much time to warm up and b) the warm water would probably mess with my vaginal flora (good bacteria). 

I got an email from TUSHY last week too. They let me know it had been a year since we received our bidet and indicated how many trees we’d saved on average by eliminating toilet paper. Overall, this has been one of my favorite sustainable purchases. Even with the shipping from Asia where it is produced and it being a plastic product, those are both acceptable to me from this purchase. The shipping is a one-time instance and the plastic product is not a single-use product. In fact, we’ve already used it a year and still counting 🙂

Let me know what your next sustainable purchase is!

PS: extra details you MIGHT not need to know are below. SERIOUSLY, you can stop reading here.

PPS: I do find that post-coital clean up is much easier. And seemingly more sanitary. Backstory: for the last several years, I’ve been suffering from bartholin’s cysts almost every time I have sex. Basically the cysts are caused similar to how acne is and if skin/oils/etc. clogs the bartholin duct, it becomes extremely painful for me. The bidet has definitely helped with this issue. I don’t know if it the cleaning up portion with the water removing everything or if it’s the NOT using toilet paper, but I can contribute the lower recurrence rate to the use of the bidet (mainly because I’ve tried EVERYTHING before the bidet and seriously nothing was helping).