My husband is probably the cheapest man you’ll ever meet.
He clips coupons, rarely eats out, buys everything on sale and constantly tries to get stuff for free. All that I can live with, and sometimes even appreciate.
But there’s one thing he does that I absolutely refuse to tolerate.
He insists on waiting until he has urinated into the toilet three times before he flushes it.
At first, I chalked it up to laziness. I’d seen that kind of thing before, disgusting as it is, from growing up with brothers. Then I asked him one day why he kept doing it, and he explained that it was to save money by not using so much water with flushing. That, by only flushing every third pee, he could cut down on the water bill by about 8 percent. (Where he got that percentage, I’ll probably never know.)
After he informed me of the reason he does such a weird thing, I explained to him just how unsanitary it is. I did some research online and printed information for him. Ultimately, he agreed that it was not a wise approach to saving money and that he would need to stop.
To reward his willingness to see things my way, I decided I need to devise a way to compromise. So we installed a toilet tank water saver, which makes him happy because he’s saving Dead Presidents and me happy because I’m not dead from diseases formed by toxic standing water in my bathroom.
Of course things could have always been worse. Through the ordeal, I kept telling myself, “At least it’s every third PEE!”
– Rosemary, San Jose CA
