Helpful household hint

[flarenut]

If your toilet is clogged (as for example by a 5-year-old using way, way too much toilet paper) and the plunger and the snake have already failed, you might want to consider enclosing the head of a toilet brush in a sturdy plastic bag (say, a 1-quart freezer ziplock, filling the bag partially with water, and then sealing the end of the bag tightly around the handle with a rubber band.  The resulting balloonlike thingy makes a much better seal against the interior of the waste channel than does a plunger, and a few dozen back-and-forth pressure/suction cycles might just loosen the obstruction.

If I had come up with this idea first thing on being awakened this morning, the day would have been much more pleasant.