The toilet in my kids’ bathroom hasn’t been working properly for several weeks, and it’s been annoying but manageable because there are other bathrooms they can use.  My husband had tried about three weeks ago with a neighbor to fix it (the neighbor had a powerful tool to use for it), but it didn’t help.  I really didn’t want to call a plumber, but wishing a problem like this will resolve itself on its own is foolish, and that toilet can’t be properly cleaned because it drains so slowly when flushed.  So last night I brought it to my husband’s attention again, and he was very gracious about my reminder.  🙂 

His first response was to say that I should call a plumber.  I told him if he wanted to do that, he was welcome to, and however he wanted to resolve it was fine with me.  I know that trying to figure out what the problem was really wasn’t something he wanted to do, after already spending so much time on it.  But I also knew he didn’t want to pay a plumber to do something he probably could figure out – I mean, it was kind of obvious to him that something was stuck there, and it was just an issue of how to get it out.  (We once called a repairman in on erev Pesach a few hours before a three day yom tov began, because the fridge wasn’t cooling at all.  He walked in, pulled the fridge out from the wall, pulled out a turkey bone from the cooling fan behind it, and told us his fee.  $60 for less than five minutes.  I was glad to have it working again and felt it was worth the price, but after seeing how simple the solution was to what seemed like a big problem, my dh was motivated to try to figure out what was going on himself in the future before paying someone else for it.)

He bought some bathroom tools this morning, and together with the kids (they’re active and helpful assistants! – they were having fun working the auger for an hour today) tried it again.  Finally he came downstairs and told me he’d have to take the whole toilet off to get whatever it was out, that it must be something rigid and hard inside, because anything flexible or soft would have come out by then.  So he totally took it out – and thought he found the problem.  Those of you with young children can appreciate how a not so tiny plastic clamp and large plastic screw could not only be thrown in the toilet, but someone would try to flush it down.   Those things were wedged in the pipe, and that’s what he thought was keeping everything from passing through.  He removed them and was very happy to have gotten to the root of the problem, but the toilet still wasn’t flushing properly.  He kept working at it, and found the shower head from their shower wedged in, still assembled in one piece!  (My ds10 when he saw that, said, “Oh, I was wondering why the water flow from the shower was different!”  Why doesn’t anyone mention these things to me when they happen?)  Getting it out wasn’t a small job because it’s round and really stuck in there; it perfectly fits the inside of the pipe.  Actually, it seems that all of the effort to push whatever was in the way through the pipes just further wedged this in!  Once he got it out, everything was as good as new!  (I know that if you don’t have children you can’t imagine how this is possible – the answer is a 17 month old plus a 2 3/4 year old equal these kind of fun situations!)

For those of you wondering, no, my husband isn’t a plumber and he’s learned most of the practical handyman type skills since we bought this house less than three years ago, out of necessity.  Home owners know how there’s always something breaking or needing repair, and it gets very expensive, very quickly, if your only recourse is to call a professional in.  The bigger your family, the more things happen as a result of regular living, and we have a lot of people very actively using our home all day long, every day!  It’s very financially worthwhile to figure out how to do the majority of your home repairs on your own.  We’ve gotten a couple of how-to books, and use the internet to research specific problems and how to fix them. 

You won’t be surprised that I’ll tell you it’s very gratifying to find ways to do something like this, to successfully resolve an issue that would have the vast majority of people dialing the plumber long ago.  My husband has a great sense of accomplishment after finishing this project!  The kids are already happy to see it flushing normally again.  And I’ll be so happy to go into Shabbos with the kids’ bathroom not only working well but properly cleaned.

Avivah