Bathrooms of the World: Dutch toilets and the poop shelf

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The bathrooms of the world are diverse and range from high-tech toilets with warming seats and built-in bidets to communal bathrooms and simple holes in the ground to squat over. Exploring the everyday spaces that we often overlook, including bathrooms and toilets, can provide a fascinating lens through which we learn more about the world and the people in it.

In this post, we will focus on Dutch toilets and the poop shelf!

What is the poop shelf?

For the unprepared American traveler, encountering the poop shelf for the first time can be a tad perplexing. Americans are used to water-filled toilet bowls so when, uh, waste falls in the toilet, it plops and remains in the water.

Our first experience with the poop shelf

Upon arriving at our very first home exchange in den Haag, one of the first things I did was use the bathroom. That’s when I noticed something odd about the toilets in the house: instead of a bowl full of water, they contained a shelf.

Now you may think, “What’s the big deal?” and upon first glance, there is no big deal. Until you use it.

What your body expels into the toilet lands squarely on the shelf, which is vastly different from American toilets, where your waste plops into the water below you. Now as you can see from this image, there is very little water in the Dutch toilet. And you’d have to be sitting quite forward on the toilet seat in order to aim properly, which indicates that the intent is for the waste to land on the shelf.

After the first couple uses, this became utterly baffling. What the hell was the point of it?! Why would you not want some odor-disguising water instead of allowing things to land on an open-air shelf?!

Well, we can thank the Germans.

The history of the poop shelf

To fully appreciate the unique design of the poop shelf, one must delve into the history of European sanitation practices. The concept of the poop shelf is deeply rooted in a cultural inclination towards personal health awareness. Historical records suggest that this design emerged in the early 20th century, at a time when intestinal worms were a common affliction, gaining prominence in countries like Germany, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

The purpose of the shelf is inspection and self-monitoring. It seems that Europeans embraced the concept of examining their excrements as a means of gauging their well-being. Contemporary health practices recommend that you do the same thing because what comes out of your body can tell you a whole lot about what’s happening inside it. When your poop has sunken to the bottom of the water bowl, it’s hard to tell what’s going on. So the poop shelf lets you more easily look at the consistency, shape, color, and any potential irregularities before flushing. (Then I guess you hope and pray that the rush of water cleans the shelf, otherwise, that’s what the brush is for.)

Besides self-examination, there are other benefits to the “flat flush toilet”, which is the proper name for the style of toilet that has a poop shelf. There is absolutely no risk of splashing (which I didn’t realize was an actual concern) and stool samples can be more easily collected (though that is probably not something we’re all doing on a regular basis). The poop shelf is less common today, though apparently this style is still primarily used in hospitals and nursing homes, for obvious reasons.

When I asked my husband how he was able to pee in the shelf toilet without splashing himself, I received a grunt. He furrowed his eyebrows, clearly annoyed. I got the impression that he may have been in the splash zone a few times before he learned to aim for the small water-filled hole.

The poop shelf is less common today, though Europeans can still opt for a “flat flush toilet”, and since medical professionals insist we should all be taking more time to look at (and even, ug, smell) our poop, the poop shelf makes practical sense.

Other notes about Dutch toilets and bathrooms

The majority of the toilets we encountered while out and about in the Hague did NOT have the inspection shelf. From what I understand, this is an older design no longer necessary in most first-world countries, and most of the Dutch toilets we used had a regular water-filled bowl.

The peculiar thing about their design, however, rests in the flush mechanism. American toilets typically have a handle or two buttons on top of the tank to flush. What we saw in the Netherlands was either the pulley system or toilets with GIANT buttons in the walls above them. Why? Why are they separate from the toilets? How would you go about installing or replacing a toilet in your own home without calling a plumber? It just seems more complicated!

Another interesting thing to note about the water closets we encountered in the Netherlands (because the toilets are all separate from the bathrooms), is that there is not a ventilation system or fan in any of them! To add to the unique experience, the (teeny tiny child-sized) sinks only have a cold water tap, so we tended to wash our hands in the kitchen with warm water.

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Bathrooms of the world

Jeez, Ashley, why in the world are you writing a whole post about POOP and the infamous POOP SHELF in some European toilets?

I blame my grandmother. She not only instilled a deep sense of wanderlust in me, she was also intrigued by toilets of the world. I think the subject made her laugh. Why else would she have written an entire travel memoir about a wide range of bathroom experiences?

For those who follow this blog or my Instagram, you know that I love taking photos of the ordinary, the mundane, the little details of a place that might normally go unnoticed and most definitely would not be included in a travel magazine. Things like textured walls, misspelled signs, local feral cats, gas stations, street signs, and yes, toilets. My dad, obviously influenced by his mother’s habits, continues my grandmother’s tradition to this day and will randomly send me photos of toilets from his travels.

So I invite you to do the same thing and comment with your photos of toilets from around the world. What’s your favorite or least favorite toilet design? Any funny European toilet stories? I want to hear your toilet tales!