I am pugnaciously parsimonious but I have more than met my match. On fast road trips, I stay at the famed Motel 5 chain where they not only don’t leave the light on, they may not even supply the bulb. This trip, I stayed at the Motel 4.5.
Toilet paper squares used to be, well, the shape they were named for. The Motel 4.5 found squares with the perforation at about the 60 percent mark. Each piece was the standard four and one-half inches wide but it was just two and three-quarters inches long.
That thousand sheet roll didn’t cost any less, though.
Back during the alleged *Oil Embargo* of the 70’s, where gasoline got scarce and then went from .39 a gallon to 1.00 a gallon in about 45 days, toilet paper got in short supply down here in the southland. No one ever explained why the supply of TP was affected by the scarcity of oil, but rows and rows of it disappeared from grocers’ shelves.
Restaurants and service stations were likewise stricken — particularly when citizens wearing long coats in the summer months would enter their restrooms and steal as many rolls as they could stuff.
I traveled a lot during that time; and it was not uncommon to find myself sitting upon a mens room convenience and staring in panic — after the fact — at an empty toilet paper dispenser. And more than once I resorted to duck walking to a partially open restroom door and shouting for someone in attendance to come fulfill the establishment’s hygienic requirements.
When TP finally became plentiful, the first rolls to appear had the texture of newsprint. Shortly after that came the first *institutional* toilet paper rolls showed up that matched the narrow margins you describe.
I learned a lesson from that, and I will not get caught short again. I don’t know about your household, but the Poleczech attic is stuffed with rolls and rolls of stuff so soft it will attract bears.
— George