To clean or not to clean

Okay, so I'm thinking right now about the awkward situation where you're in a bathroom not your own and you really feel the need to clean the toilet but there's no brush in sight and no bowl cleaner either. 

Now, I'm not talking about needing to clean the seat before I sit on it - I'm talking about when I walk into the bathroom of a person I really love who just obviously has too much stress in his or her life to clean the bathroom and there's a gross ring in the toilet. Or worse, when I walk in and use a nice clean toilet and leave a little behind in the bowl. (Not on the seat, that's easy to wipe off.)

Sucks, doesn't it?

I'm also not talking about this party I went to where there were wadded-up paper towels in a mound overflowing out of the trash can and it smelled like pot and looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the people before these people moved in. I think those people deserve to live in their squalor. 

Okay - but in the situation where the bowl's just kind of gross and I would get gratification out of cleaning it, I guess the host might figure it out and be hurt that I was disgusted by their toilet enough to clean it. So I'd have to come up with something like, "Mrs. Jones, I left a mess in your toilet so I hope you don't mind I used some of your cleaning supplies to take care of it."  And if that's the truth, then even better. But if the bowl was clean and you made a mess, you can clean it without saying anything. Just make sure to get the brush sudsy so it can stay clean-ish afterwards. 

But what if there isn't a brush and some cleaner? Gasp!  You can hope your host will blame it on her brother or some other guest (unless she lives alone and you were the only guest). Or decide you don't care what your host thinks of your intestines. But let's face it, you care. 

You could ask for supplies in either situation using the excuse that you took a big dump and need to clean up. But I would only suggest that if it's true. Because if it's not, you need practice learning to let things go. Unless the toilet may somehow be growing something that is likely to mutate into a public safety hazard. 

This is such a problem. To clean or not to clean, to ask or not to ask, to explain or not to explain. 

But here's one thing you definitely should never do: be an I-only-urinate/defecate-at-home snob. Many valuable life experiences happen in the bathrooms of other people, other places, other countries.