The world doesn’t need to know when you’re taking a shit. Sure, it’s a normal bodily function that nobody need be ashamed of—but sometimes you just want to poop without announcing it to everyone via sounds and smells. Here’s how to do that.
Plan ahead for privacy
If you have a sense of when and where you might need to go, you can plan ahead to be able to do it when fewer people are around. In an office, school, or other large building, there may be a lesser-used bathroom around the corner or on a different floor. While everyone else uses the closer, more obvious bathroom, you can have your own private pooping kingdom just down the hall.
Also consider timing: if you grab a coffee on your way to work and always need to go as soon as you get there, consider rearranging your schedule so that you have coffee or breakfast before leaving home. Hot liquids make us want to poop (it doesn’t even have to be coffee) so you can use a drink to dial in your timing.
Mask the sound
If the bathroom has a fan, turn it on. (This helps the sound and the smell). Running water can also provide auditory cover, so if you’re sharing a hotel room or hiding from a roommate, consider a pre-shower poop while you wait for the water to warm up.
There are even white noise gadgets designed to cover bathroom sounds, like the Faux Fan, which is a tiny speaker that makes fan noises. Personally, I’d think it’s weirder to hear a fan sound coming from one stall of a public bathroom than to hear pooping noises, but hey, you do whatever will help you relax. Instead of carrying around a poop-masking fan gadget, may I suggest pulling up one of those youtube videos of 10 hours of fan sounds and just playing it from your phone?
Hide the smell
Even if nobody notices you’re pooping while you’re pooping, that telltale smell tends to give it away. Fortunately, you have options.
An air freshener or a spritz of a scented product—like perfume—can go a long way. Some folks swear by sudsing up extra scented hand soap in the sink when they wash their hands. And if there is a fan, don’t forget to leave it running even after you step out of the bathroom.
But there’s more. Even the most critical reviews of Poo-pourri, which you drip into the toilet before you drop one into the toilet, acknowledge that it does something. The consensus seems to be that there will be less poo smell in the air overall, but whatever smell does escape will mix with the citrusy or ginger-y scent of the product. (This is, admittedly, an issue with any fragrance-oriented solution.)
How can you prevent the smell from getting into the air in the first place? Enter the courtesy flush. You simply flush the toilet the instant you hear a plop. This may mean flushing two or three times in total (you’ll also want to flush your toilet paper, of course), but it’s a good strategy when being proactive about smells.
And check the toilet bowl before you leave. Some toilets don’t flush as well as others, and you don’t want to assume that a flush or two disposed of all the evidence. After all, if you leave a log behind, the next person will know exactly what you did in there.
