Having a few runners in the family, we can sometimes wind up with a clogged toilet. It seems to happen more frequently now that we have our own house than it did when we were in the apartment, but that is probably a function of the toilet being pink. I’m not really sure though.

Tonight, I could not get the toilet unclogged. Normally, I just take the plunger to it, and in 5 minutes to a half hour I will usually have everything working normally. Plungers are very easy tools to use. You cover the hold at the bottom of the tank with the bottom of the plunger, and then you just push it in and let it pop back out until you unclog it or until the water level in your toilet gets so low that that it does not create a seal around the plunger. In that case, you can dump more water in or try flushing to see whether it will work or not (and fill your bowl up with water to try some more if it did not work.)

Tonight, that just was not enough. A trip to Home Depot and we now have a toilet auger. Basically, it a plastic tube shaped so that you can get the cable up into your sewage line. You just push the cable through the tube and rotate the handle to dislodge whatever is clogging up the works. Then you carefully pull it back out and everything works the way it is supposed to. Just be careful not to scratch your toilet bowl.