What Not To Flush - 9 Things To Stop Flushing Now

Your home water system can be sneaky. One minute, everything is fine and running smoothly, and the next, the toilet is backed up and overflowing, often with little warning or apparent cause. The problems build up unseen in the pipes until, at last, they make themselves known in potentially destructive ways.

If your plumbing system gets backed up, you may have to drop everything and handle the situation immediately. Repairing these issues can be an expensive hassle for homeowners and renters alike. This process typically involves calling a plumber and finding someone who can handle the problem quickly. The average cost for a professional’s time can climb quickly to hundreds of dollars.

Luckily, you can avoid this frustration if you know a few basic rules about your plumbing. One of the most important things you need to know about your home’s water system is what goes down the toilet and what never should.

1. Cat Litter

Intuitively, it may make sense to flush cat litter down the toilet. After all, it’s biological waste, similar to human waste, right? However, when you think about what you’re actually flushing when you scoop out the cat litter, it’s clear that it should never go near your toilet.

Those clumps of buried treasure your feline friends leave behind for you to sift through are actually hidden in clay and sand. Even litter that claims to be flushable can harm your home. These elements quickly build up in your pipes and can cause long term problems.

While you may be able to get the waste down the toilet a few times, this habit can only cause problems. It’s better to scoop the litter into a bag and take it to the trash instead.

2. Floss

This is another culprit that seems harmless at first. It’s smaller than toilet paper, after all. Unlike toilet paper, dental floss is not biodegradable. Instead of breaking down in your plumbing system, it stays in your pipes.

Sometimes, floss can wrap around other problem debris in the pipes and create massive clogs. Depending on where the clog occurs and what kind of damage it causes, this could cost you serious money. Just toss the floss in the trash and avoid the potential problem.

3. Feminine Hygiene Products

Handling feminine hygiene products is not actually very hygienic, so it’s easy to see why someone would want to flush tampons and pads rather than toss them in the garbage. However, doing so can clog your pipes and your sewage system, costing you money.

What makes these products useful for hygiene is precisely what makes them bad for flushing. They are layers of paper products and other highly absorbent materials, made to stay together incredibly well when wet in order to absorb moisture. In fact, they expand in water. Thus, they clog home plumbing systems and cause long lasting issues.

4. Paper Towels

True to their descriptive name, paper towels are made to absorb water. They are designed to hold form when wet. Therefore, they cause blockages when you flush them down the toilet. Throw the paper towels in the trash, the recycling bin, or consider switching to more eco-friendly reusable towels.

5. Food

No matter how soft or small the food may be, don’t send it down the toilet.

When you put food down the disposal in your kitchen, it goes through a process that grinds it up to small pieces so that it can more safely pass through your pipes. However, if you flush food down the toilet, it stays exactly the same size as it was in your kitchen. There’s no guarantee it will disintegrate once it makes it to the small, narrow connections of your plumbing system pipes. Even cooking grease or other liquid gel products can stick to the lining of the pipes and coagulate, and with enough buildup, it will create a clog.

If it’s compostable, you can toss it in your compost pile. Otherwise, put it in the trash. It’s not worth the risk to flush it.

6. Pills

If you have old medicine in your home, flushing the expired pills is a bad idea. You have probably seen that dramatic scene in a movie or show where a drug abuser starts their journey to recovery by flushing pills down the toilet. While this makes for great television, that doesn’t mean it’s a safe option in your own home.  

Doing so could harm local wildlife, and even other people, by introducing it back into local waterways through lapses like sewer leaks. The average urban water reclamation process has not yet been upgraded to purify water of all chemical contaminants, so there are risks. Instead, find local medicine disposal programs, such as a pharmacy or clinic, that take back unused and expired prescriptions.

7. Plastic and Latex Products

Plastic and latex are everywhere these days. However, it should never go down your toilet. These types of products are not biodegradable. That means that if you flush it down the toilet, it could lodge in the pipes, collect debris, and wreak havoc in your house.

This rule goes for small, seemingly harmless plastics as well. Straws, balloons, bandages, Q-tips, and other disposable household products should stay away from the toilet. Throw them away in the trash to be handled at the local landfill.

8. Gum

If you were inclined, you could chew gum for hours on end. It may lose flavor, but it wouldn’t break down in your saliva. Naturally, this means it won’t break down in your pipes either.

Instead, gum sticks around and hardens, blocking other product that shouldn’t be in your home plumbing system. It may collect hair, floss, and other junk until it becomes a clog that backs everything up.

9. Hair

Fishing hair from your tub, sink or shower is a uniquely gag-worthy chore. However, flushing it down the toilet can make it much worse. Yes, it is biological, and it comes from humans, but it acts in the same way as floss. It tangles up with other things in your pipes to clog the lines. It may be gross to toss hair in the trash, but it’s a lot cheaper than calling a plumber to reel it out of your toilet.

If you or your family has been flushing any of these items, it is time for a rule change. There are many things that should never go down your toilet. Toilets are only made to handle human waste and toilet paper, and anything else could create chaos in your home plumbing. A good policy to adopt, in the interests of protecting your plumbing, is “When in doubt, leave it out.” The toilet isn’t a trash can.