One does not just "buy a bidet" to solve that problem...

Between plumbing and installation alone it's a very expensive solution to what should (under normal circumstances) be a simple purchase.

Just use a towel or water, or whatever. This American obsession with toilet paper is very strange. I lived in Africa for two years and guess what they do there? They dip their hands in some water and wipe their butt with their hands. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this, but like, people need to get a grip and realize how many "essentials" aren't really essential at all.

You could use a portable bidet or a peri bottle. I'm very sure you could DIY a peri bottle out of some household items, to be honest, and it shouldn't be hard or expensive.

"plumbing"? "installation"?

It's connecting two screw fittings, and then installing toilet seat (two bolts + nuts). If it's a particularly fancy model you may have to plug it in.

This is about as complicated as replacing a furnace air filter, and takes about as long. If you get someone to do it for you, you're paying for them to drive to your house, not the actual time installing it (which is trivial).

Until you posted this, I thought they required a hot water supply line, and power for other features.

A cold water only bidet would save on bathroom tissue and coffee...

If it needs hot water you can always split off of the sink that is undoubtedly next to it.

But most bidets that do warm water do not use a hot supply, because it takes too long to heat up. Most use a tank or tankless in the seat, and just need a normal 120v plug.

I imagine he's referring to the type you can buy on Amazon and attach to your toilet seat.

This viral video of women fighting over it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1nEnOmC6IQ

Funny thing: our apartment maintenance crews are working overtime unclogging toilets because people have run out of TP and didn’t realize you shouldn’t flush paper towels and baby wipes down the toilet. Bidets aren’t a thing here, I have no idea how I would even install it, it’s not like there is an extra waterline coming out of the toilet.

The bidets are for a normal home toilet that has a waterline coming out of the wall below the tank and a flex connection/pipe that goes up to the tank for fill.

You shutoff your water, disconnect the toilet fill line, add the bidet connection in-between with a T connection, and hook your toilet back up. They share the same supply line.

And it's very cold water depending on your geographic region and time of the year. Not sure I'd want to try it in Alberta during the winter.

If you have water coming to tank you have the capabilities to split it already fir either portable bidet or hand bidet aka small shower head.

I've heard it's because it's the most visible item, as opposed to a pack of beans, for example.

You can also ration your intake of food when it starts to become more scarce. People do this every day due to income constraints during non-Coronavirus times.

It's a little harder to ration your bowel movements. It can be done, but it's a lot less beneficial than forced fasting.

on the bright side, forced fasting has the effect of rationing your bowel movements, so win-win :)

It’s just panic. The best I can think is there was a TP panic during the Nixon years.

Last I heard, bidets were OOS as well...