I clogged up my toilet this evening. I am fairly certain this happened because I tried to flush too much toilet paper down the toilet at once. I had a particularly messy poop earlier in the day and I really should have flushed less TP down the drain.
Anyways, I went to pee around 7pm this evening and as I flushed, I watched in horror as the water did not go down and instead just started to rise in the bowl. It was just a swirl of toilet water and backed up toilet paper. I didn’t panic at first because the water stopped before it overflowed the bowl and I had a plunger under the sink.
Things took a turn when I attempted to use the plunger over the hole at the bottom of the bowl. As I pressed down, the plunger tore apart. I guess I compressed the rubber part too much and it tore a hole. The plunger was now useless because it had a hole in it and it wouldn’t seal against the porcelain.
It was at this point I sorta had a minor panic because it was now nearing 7:30pm and I needed to figure this out before stores closed and more importantly before I needed to pee or poop again. I luckily live across the street from one of the best dollar stores I’ve ever seen in my entire life. This place has everything and over the course of many years, I’ve probably spent hundreds of dollars there on household items, bits of hardware, and small tools. The only thing they kinda suck at is selling grocery items, like chips, chocolate, and candy but I can get that elsewhere.
Anyways, I hurried downstairs and I made my way to their plumbing stuff. They had lots of plungers in stock and the ones they had were actually better than the one I broke. They also had two different kinds of “snakes”, that you can use to clear out blockages in drains and toilets. These were cheap but I didn’t want to have to come back to get these just in case the plunger didn’t work.
All told, I was probably back in my apartment with the new plumbing tools in less than half an hour. At this point, I could sorta feel the need to pee again. I tried the new plunger first and while I could feel I was making a good seal, it didn’t seem like I was moving the blockage. I then tried inserting the longer and more effective looking drain snake. It was kinda tough to get it to around the bends in the toilet and at some point, I could push it any further. I then pulled it back out but at least to me, it didn’t seem to pull anything with it. I tried snaking it back down and pulling it out again twice. The water was still very high in the bowl and wasn’t draining, so I went back to the plunger.
After two more attempts with the plunger, I heard a gurgle and the water immediately started to drain really quickly, down to the normal level it usually is. I breathed a sigh of relief as I was getting worried that I might have to poop into a plastic bag for the evening.
I’ve peed several times now and flushed without incident all evening but I’m still a little concerned about the toilet. Funnily enough, after all that worry about needing to poop, I didn’t actually poop this evening.
Let’s see if I clog this thing up tomorrow.