The caste system as applied to paper products

Why is it that you never see a roll of toilet paper outside a bathroom? Except in our kitchen, I mean?

To me, a toilet-paper roll is nothing more than the little brother of the paper-towel roll: Smaller, thinner, less muscular, ill suited to heavy lifting, but just right for the occasional small job, when all you need is a thin layer of something disposable between your fingers and an icky substance. It’s less of a drain on the environment, and cheaper, too: We buy the 1,000-sheet rolls when they go on sale for fifty cents each, which comes out to 1/20th of a cent per sheet. (I don’t know how much paper towels cost per sheet, because we rarely buy them, preferring to sponge up bigger messes with cloth towels. But I’m guessing it’s a heck of a lot more than that.)

There’s only one problem: Perception. As in other people’s. No matter how I feel about the usefulness of toilet paper outside the bathroom, I can’t get past feeling funny about leaving the roll sitting atop the microwave when company comes over. That’s why I made this handy decorative toilet paper holder, kind of like a Kleenex-box cover, except I made mine from the top and bottom segments of an oatmeal canister, cutting an X in the lid for dispensing.