I've worked retail, and spent many a night doing floor moves at The Gap and such, but I could not handling stocking at Target. There's just too much, and my OCD tendencies would have me hauling out the ruler to straighten rows on shelves. I salute you, but I also hope you'll stop moving stuff around soon. My routine of circling the Target clockwise to be reminded of anything I forgot on my list has been completely thrown off by all the floor moves.

The ol' double-whammy. Just watch and see. In less than 6 months they will raise the prices of these same shrunken items.

Squeeze Bottle w/ Water + Baby Wipes + TP (used to dry) = Clean Arse...

Use more water people.

© Message brought to you by the Anti-Tractor Smear Corporation.

I've also found that Quilted Northern gets thinner the further you get into a roll. It starts out well enough but by midway, it's on the same level as a store brand.

cut down on the bran man.....

After giving it my best shot, I follow Consumer Reports and just buy the pallet of TP at Costco.

Kroger's version of Scott is pretty good too.

@Bigfoot-Angus: Yes. I tried Quilted Northern after a year or two of using Costco. It's gotten worst. It "pills" too much. I now stick to the Costco quilted stuff.

My gosh, you must be backed up! A little fiber would go a long way in helping you out.

On the subject of shrink ray, I noticed that our brand of (ridiculously expensive) cat chow has lost about five pounds to the bag while the price remains steady. Seems we gained eye-catching bag design and lost a few week's worth of chow.

You might have say...1 product changing sizes. If the product gets taller you have to change all the shelves which depending on whats in the aisle could take hours because everything has to come down and then be cleaned and put back up.

Last year was the worst ever because products in every area of the store were changing so damn often it was insane.

The worst part is the customers. Not cause I hate customers but because they get really upset with us when we clear an aisle of product to update it. More often than not its not even Targets fault, its because all the new packages are always so different we need to start from scratch. So we piss off the people shopping and in turn they yell at us and tell us we are dumb for moving things around. Makes for a fun day!

@Colonel Jack O'Neill: You've obviously never used the sandpaper classified as "bathroom tissue" used in various rest stops and gas station bathrooms. You can't paint them all the with same.....er, well...you get it.

This would upset me if it was a brand that I took into consideration, because it would invalidate my assumption of similar utility among brands (the reduced width is clearly detrimental to some applications of toilet paper use).

It will probably cause me to change brands; I'm a creature of habit rather than a loyalist, and it's foolish for me to spend the same money on less product.

/is willing to crawl underneath

@summerbee: I do too, has come in very handy teaching dear Hubby and Son how to find the truly lowest cost items

Sounds like a sham if you ask me.

Yup! Because everyone I know buys toilet paper made from redwoods rather than toilet paper made from forests specifically planted to make toilet paper trees.

$200 a year? Pretty sure you can buy a bidet for less than that!

(Next post: Use a watering jug)

This might actually work better for me - the bigger rolls get stuck in our roller until they're about 1/4 of the way used. The wife has started putting the TP on top of the sink instead of on the roll, which causes me to knock it off into the damn toilet, wasting a roll! :(

This kind of stuff just isn't publicized.

"unscented bathroom tissue"... do they still make scented toilet paper?

@TCinIowa: You get a heart.

I use my cell phone calculator.

And I rarely use the inch on each side.

Perhaps we should offer kudos to Northern for saving 15% more trees with their "greensized" toilet paper?

@bohemian: A lot of times they have a unit price listed, too...I check that when I'm feeling lazy, although some stuff doesn't have it. Tricky.

I don't see the big deal. I would argue that my ass-wiping experience will be unaffected by this shrinkage. However, a commensurate price increase if they left the roll the old size would be more noticed.

In reality, I like Charmin Freshwipes, so I don't really care :)

@AllanG54:

Any observer would tell you if TP were sized-adjusted for the number of assholes in the world and the amount of $h!t then a single roll would be the size of an oil drum by now.

i really don't buy toilet paper that often.

i prefer to go @ work.

however, i won't not go @ home just to save on TP.

i just get satisfaction knowing i am getting paid to use the restroom.

@yasth: See, I'm smart-phoneless & doing math on my phone is painful. I usually a fan of the price-per-unit label on the shelf tags, but I've found instances where it's been wrong.

Dammit - I wasn't crazy, I just didn't have the older larger size to compare it too. I doubt this is big enough to get any points from the wife, but sometimes even a small victory is important. (see honey I was right - next time don't question my sizing skills) ;o)~

@Michael Belisle: Your stores display cost per sq.ft? Those in my area do per roll and per 100 sheets.

I was hoping for a post like this to assure I wasn't going crazy.

@summerbee:

Since cell phones have calcs now, I'm never w/o one!

(I like doing it my head though - it's fun!)

@prag: They must have never seen "Supersize Me"!

You think that's bad. The folks at Scott Tissue still scream "1000 sheets" on their package, but as "sheets" is not a standard value like gallon, they can play fast and loose with the size of each sheet. A couple of years ago they did the sneaky thing and shrunk the length of a sheet, so you don't notice it as much as you would if they had shrunk the width. The height (width) is still the 4.5 inches, but the length went from 4.0 inches to 3.7 inches.

Actually I just do it in my head.

@bellecat: It is a huge waste of time. At Target we have someone whose job it is to rearrange product and shelving, sometimes to do the Grocery Shrink Ray.

I always try to calculate the cost per square foot based on the fine print that's on the bottom of the package. But, uh, am I the only one who brings a calculator to the grocery store?