A couple of years ago we updated our master bathroom which, among other things, included replacing the hand-painted toilet and sink. (The original owners had hand painted flowers on the cabinet doors and carried the theme onto the sink and toilet.) While I appreciated the effort and love that had gone into the painting, the overall effect just screamed “SEVENTIES!” So, we put the old sink and toilet in the basement to deal with later, as one does. By the time later actually rolled around, we had added a second toilet to the collection as we had replaced the plastic toilet in our travel trailer with a ceramic one.

The day eventually rolled around when Kenn asked The Question: “What should I do with those old toilets? Sit them out by the road?” My answer was a resounding NO! I refuse to be those people that have a toilet (or in this case, two toilets) sitting in their yard. Admittedly, at our last house, someone might have picked them up but I still wouldn’t have put toilets in the yard. Our current neighborhood is a little nicer and in all the years we’ve lived here, I haven’t seen a single free-range toilet in search of a new home. Toilets also seem to fall under the definition of “household debris” that the city won’t pick up. So, we left the toilets in the basement to ignore a while longer.

Kenn is the one who ultimately came up with the solution to our excess toilet situation: Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore. He had helped his brother find a “gently used” replacement sink for his office at a ReStore so, hey, maybe they would take our old bathroom fixtures. We loaded up the truck and drove to our local ReStore where there were a few raised eyebrows at the flowers, but they took everything. Whoo hoo! (Thank you Habitat for Humanity!)

Fast forward to this year when we are updating our guest bath. One of the first things to go was the hideous green toilet with its even more hideous wooden toilet seat.🤢 (At least the green tub/shower unit can be hidden behind the shower curtains.)

One weekend we went full Beverly Hillbillies, loaded the toilet in the bed of the truck, and headed out to run errands. The toilet accompanied us to the recycle center, Goodwill, the grocery store, and finally to the ReStore where we learned that even “gently used” has its limits. The green toilet was so bad that the good folks at the ReStore refused to take it!😂 So, we took ourselves out to a late lunch – still with a toilet in the truck bed – then went home to regroup.

My suggestion for dealing with the green monster was to take a sledge hammer to it and dump the pieces in the city trashcan for pickup. (The old “there’s more than one way to skin a cat” method.) Once again, it was Kenn to the rescue. We both have part-time jobs at a local agricultural center which happens to have a convenient dumpster. The next time I worked, I drove straight to the dumpster and called Kenn who came and helped me offload the toilet into the (also green) dumpster. Less than an hour later, the dumpster was emptied and the Great Green Toilet Saga was concluded. Sweet, sweet success!

So, tell me dear readers, how would you dispose of a toilet?