Burning Question: Up Or Down?
This next query was suggested by one of our lovely readers (thanks KK!) and we can’t wait to get your firestorm of feedback. What’s the toilet seat situation at your house? Must it always be left down (or else!)? Is there a rule about the whole shebang (toilet seat and toilet seat cover) always remaining in the lowered position? Is there a “if company’s coming” rule in place? Or is it a “who cares” sort of thing?
Anyone have a man bathroom that has no rules at all? Are there toilet seat related mishaps you’d like to share? Dish the toilet seat dirt.
Image courtesy of Country Living.
Leave a comment
If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
We have to leave the lid down. It skeeves me out to see the inside of the toilet bowl staring up at you – I don’t care how clean it is! I think my obsession with keeping the lid down started when I was a kid. We got a cat and my mom was afraid it would fall into the toilet and drown, so she insisted on keeping the lid down. Ever since then, I have to have the lid down. My husband is pretty good at doing that, but whenever company comes over and leaves the lid up, it drives me nuts!
Funny enough, I grew up leaving the seat cover up.When I met my fiance, he’d been raised to keep it down and actually had to train ME to do the same! Now I can’t imagine having it any other way but down, all the time.
down. always down! I live in a house with 2 bathrooms. My 4 year old claims that the downstairs bathroom is the “Man’s Bathroom” for him and daddy to use. :) We are in the end stage of potty training with him and he was instructed from the get go that the lids always go down. I think it looks less like a public restroom that way. Plus, my pug likes to sit on top of the closed lid when we are in the bathroom getting ready and she once jumped on to the toilet to find the lid had been inadvertently left open! We had to fish her out and I assure you, she was NOT amused by the situation!
We are fortunate to have 3 bathrooms. One is mine, one is his and one is the guest bathroom. Toilet seat DOWN in the guest bathroom. Also I do not like seat covers, I think they are tacky!
In my bathroom, toilet seat stays down and the lid stays closed. Hubby has commandeered the adjacent guest bathroom and it is occasionally left up.
The toilet lid is one of my personal neuroses – aerosolized poo germs with every flush – so I compulsively put down toilet lids when I see them up… My other compulsion is to return stray toothbrushes to their holders in the medicine cabinet – hiding them from the afore-mentioned aerosol. It’s not contentious since I am slightly embarrassed that my obsession with aerosolized toilet germs does not also compel me to scrub toilets more frequently.
We don’t have any rule here, but it normally stays all down or at least with the seat cover down. And I’m more than ok with that!
The sink in that picture looks almost exactly like my sink!
There’s an unspoken rule in my house, though it isn’t always followed. Seat down, lid up. The top of the lid is scratched and I keep forgetting to buy a new one, plus it’s cheapo plastic, so it looks better in the up position.
I almost fell in last night.
Having a dog and cat who both like to play in standing water, we have a CONSTANT rule that the seat and lid must always be down. I also read something once that said if you flush with the lid open, it can send a fine spray of water VERY, VERY far in the bathroom, which disgusts me. So the lid must be down BEFORE you flush! What a great Saturday morning discussion!
At our house the toilet seat and the toilet seat cover must stay down. The reason? A 16 month old who loves to splash around in the water.
the whole shebang has to stay down, because it makes me nauseous to see the inside of a toilet. we have 3 bathrooms and all of them remain with the lid closed. it’s up to me, however, to ensure this happens because the HTB always leaves the whole thing up. *gag*
The lid of our toilet has to be down. We have a small bathroom and the times it has been left open something always falls in! Not to mention that it just doesn’t look right if it is left open!
Never had a rule until the cat decided she likes drinking out of the toilet. Now it’s always lid down!
I couldn’t care less if its up down, open closed, whatever. Although I guess if I were in a big hurry and it was closed that would be one more step for me and would probably tick me off.
We don’t have a rule, but I do tend to prefer to keep both the seat and the lid down. My husband is usually pretty good about keeping the seat down, at least, so on the occasions he doesn’t, I don’t care.
Is this your bathroom? I love the small vase of flowers on the sink. That would be a perfect place to use one of Camille’s lamp cover vases.
It wasn’t a said rule at our house, but hubby picked up that I want the toilet seat down at all times. The lid stays down when company comes over, until they use it and at that point, it’s the last thing I worry about. The other night hubby forgot to put the toilet seat down and on one of my many trips to the bathroom through the night (I’m 7 months pregnant), I sat down and that extra couple inches hurt. It wouldn’t have been so bad but I was half asleep. I TRY to keep the lid down too, but the whole pregnancy/bladder thing doesn’t make that all the functional right now – there’s just too many trips! lol
Lid down at all times. Growing up my family had a dog that loved drinking from the toilet (we kept it chemical free for her). A few years back I heard about the aerosolized thing and there was no going back. Once I told my husband about the flying poo, he happily adopted the lid down before flushing rule and we also now keep our toothbrushes (and everything else possible) in the medicine cabinet.
I actually never understood the whole ‘seat down – seat up’ debate they would raise in tv sitcoms as it always seemed natural and hygienic to leave the LID down when the toilet is not in use.
Of course I have pets so i keep the lid down – (no toilet water breath for my dogs please!) but it is common sense – what if when it was open and something fell in? gross!
Both the seat and the lid is down at all times. Before I lived with my husband I left the lid open but he is such a neat freak that he likes everything down all the time and I decided I wasn’t going to argue with that especially since it was his idea! Also we have two pups who have never tried to drink out it but we don’t want to give them the opportunity to figure out that it is possible.
We only have one bathroom in our bungalow but the rule is ALWAYS down! My mother-in-law trained my husband at a young age so I never had to say anything about it. My husband’s rule is that we must always put a fresh, full roll of TP up before company and I am happy to go along with it:)
Just like many of the above commenters, the seat AND lid are always down at our house, mainly because of the cats and the dog.
Seat and cover down! It just looks better. I’m glad my husband feels the same way.
In our house, always down. Even our 4 year old son closes it.
For years it didnt matter in my house and then i got a cat who loved to jump on top of it…he was blind so if it was up..it was messy to say the least.So all my guests knew the lid was up all the time.Here’s how the story goes..Mom comes over, has to use bathroom so bad she runs to my guest bathroom (doesnt bother to turn on lights)sits down and pee’s ALL over the toilet LID…yea..crazy..I know.
I still tease her about how someone could do that…from now on I yell “CHECK THE LID” when she goes to the bathroom at my house..
No question the most disgusting thing in the world is flushing the toilet with the lid up – it’s been mentioned several times above about the “toilet spray” and when I read that years ago that was it for me. Lid down, flush, then wash your hands! Fortunately my husband agrees with me!
Here’s the deal: NO ONE wants to look down into the bowl of a toilet no matter how clean it is. I can’t imagine an argument for keeping it up. I mean, who leaves their kitchen cabinets open or closet doors open? Same idea, right?
Both down. The seat: because my husband is a gentleman. The lid: because I read an article once about particles being thrown into the air (and onto anything in the bathroom…my toothbrush, for example) when the toilet is flushed. Talk about gross! So we keep it down.
I’m so glad to know I’m not the only one who must have the lid down! It just looks so much nicer and is more sanitary (see above). Happily, it took very little training for my dear hubby to catch on.
If I could somehow find a way to get my husband to remember to put the seat down, life would be sublime.
I am totally anal retentive when it comes to this and the boys in the house know it. I can’t stand walking into the bathroom and seeing the inside of my toilet bowl. Thankfully my boyfriend agrees with me and puts the lids down after use.
When I had my old house for sale the lid was always down because it just looked neater when people came through. Developing the habit was one less thing to do when the agent called.
I liked the neat appearance so much that I carried the practice into my new place. Guests, of course, get to leave it as they will without comment.
Seat down. My husband doesn’t mind just sitting down, usually, although he jokes that he is Schmidt from that movie About Schmidt (not because I squelched his manliness, though!). But the cover itself? Rarely down.
I too get yucked out by looking in toilets. No matter how clean they are, they are never clean enough.
We keep the whole thing closed, cover & all. Otherwise we find muddy kitty paw-marks all over the seat! :)
This is a constant discussion between my husband and me. He NEVER puts the seat back down, despite my very logical argument that we both need it down and only he needs it up, so he should put it down when he’s done.
Neither of us care about the lid being down. The world is crawling with poo germs and nothing is going to change that. I attribute the fact that I haven’t been sick in 3 years to my lack of germaphobia. I wash my hands with regular soap and water (no antibacterial stuff), and that’s it.
My toothbrush is much safer with the lid down.
Like charmaine, my husband is the one that trained me to keep the lid down. Funny that I never have to worry about the husband-wife fight about the toilet seat. If anything, I get in trouble!
We leave the seat and LID down on all the toilets, because we have young kids and pets, who think it is a punch bowl that refills itself when you drink from it!! :)
I don’t care about the lid, but the seat must be down. Falling in during the night= no fun at all.
My husband talked me into seat and cover down 23 years ago, and our sons have learned to do that too. As my hubby puts it, what’s the cover for if you’re supposed to leave it up? You might as well buy those seats that are put on commercial toilets with no lid! And yuck, who would do that??
Both lids down! I’ve always felt that way, but when my husband left one lid up and the cat fell in, it sealed the deal.
Lid down because we use those big bleach pills in the reservoir tank and our doggy would drink bleach water from the bowl very happily!
At this point in our lifes we are seat and cover down at all times, otherwise my toddler would be playing in the toilet bowl constantly. Prior to having our daughter it was seat down always and cover whenever we thought about it or when guests were coming over. I personally like it better with the seat and seat cover down, it just looks better.
Kari, we may have been separated at birth…I’m right there with you on that stuff floating through the air! Down and down and no seat covers to collect any fun stuff on it either.
I used to have a strict seat-down, lid-down policy, until my middle daughter started potty training. Now, it’s seat down, (since we’re a house full o’girls) and lid-up, since the time allowed for lid liftage can make or break successful pottying for a 3 year old.
Definitely both down! Who wants toilet germs flying out when you flush! Plus it looks disgusting. My major pet peeve is looking at pictures of beautiful homes and renovations and seeing the inside of their toilet. Ewww! Yuck! Just ruins it.
Huh… we have no such rules. Sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down. Never the cover though- it’s always up. I guess I’ve not thought about it. In the big scheme of life- I’m sure it is irrevelant.
DOWN! In fact, the lid has to be down before we even FLUSH IT! I took microbiology as an elective in college and learned that airborne toilet germs can spread up to 10 feet away from the toilet by just flushing alone. The toilet lid must be down at all times and I’m afraid my OCD is here to stay. :)
We have a dog who loves to let his chew toys soak in the toilet, so the lid must stay down in our home. (Unfortunately he’s learned to raise the lid himself, but we’re working on that…)
The toilet seat must always be down!
I brush my teeth in the bathroom and my toothbrush sits in the bathroom!
I dont want the toilet water to splash out and have germs near my brushes!
Both down. ALWAYS down!!!! Don’t remember making a rule, everyone (including the kids) just knew.
In our home, seat and lid are always left down. And it’s my husband that initiated this rule! We can totally tell when other people have been over and used the bathroom because they usually down put the lid down. -e