frozen pipes - Stuff Parents Need

Have you ever purchased a product that is eco-friendly or made a particular change to your home that was a good move for the environment? And have you ever felt REALLY smug about it? I’ll admit it, I’ve done a few things over the past few years that have made me feel quite impressed with myself. Today’s story is about a time when my feelings of superiority got the best of me and taught me a lesson.

When we got Hattie back in 2005 (she was a rescue from a shelter, which of course, made me feel smug and awesome), we didn’t know anything about cat litter. The shelter where we got her recommended a particular brand of litter that was VERY eco-friendly. In fact, it was so safe for the environment that you could flush it down the toilet! Sure, it cost a bit more than the stuff found in most stores, but just think of the benefits to the environment! Also, how wonderful would it be to just flush your litter instead of having to stink up your trash cans with it! We were sold. And we were better than everyone who bought Johnny Cat, for sure.

As we carried on with our eco-fabulous lives, we started taking full advantage of the wonderful, flushable litter. And it was great, it really was. Hattie’s litter box was kept pretty clean and our house didn’t smell like a litter box.

And then, it happened. The toilet that we used to flush her litter got stopped up. No big deal…it happens, right? We didn’t see the possible connection to the litter, at first. It’s just an old toilet with old pipes and blockages are just an occasional issue that everyone has to deal with. So we got our our plunger (Why on earth would we use something like Drain-o? Remember, we are eco-hipsters!). And the plunger did absolutely nothing.

Then we used some eco-friendly products to try to unclean it. Still, nothing. In a moment of desperation, we reached for the horrible chemical de-clogging agents (Shh! Our dirty little secret!). And still, nothing. Uh-oh.

So we reluctantly called a plumber. When he came out and got to work, he asked us what in the world we had been pouring down the toilet. We told him about our fabulous litter and he just laughed and laughed, and said it was a HORRIBLE idea to flush that stuff, because it had basically given us something worse even than frozen pipes. The fabulous “flushable” litter, you see, turned into something similar to cement in the pipes (it was made of wood, so it couldn’t really be cement-like, but you get the idea). It was a beast for him to get it unclogged, and it certainly set us back a pretty penny.

So we ditched that stuff like a bad habit and sought out different solutions. We certainly felt like idiots for believing that it was actually a good idea to flush litter down the toilet. Eco-friendly or not, toilets just aren’t designed to handle that kind of stuff! We did find some eco-friendly alternatives, but the truth is, it all smelled awful! Oh well, so much for being superior to everyone else on the cat litter front!

Have you ever been schooled when your head got a little bit big about something? Do tell!

Disclosure: I am participating in a blogger campaign for Bucks2Blog about frozen pipes
and was compensated. All thoughts, opinions and embarrassing stories expressed here are strictly my own.