I’m sure we are all familiar with that unspoken topic of the wiggle that most toilet seats get over time. It’s a big pet peeve of mine. Every house I have ever lived in all my life has had at least one seat that gets extremely lose. My whole family is annoyed by it, but never really talks about it. My youngest has actually fallen in once as a result. The wiggle on that particular seat was excessive. It was hilarious, but he did not think so at the time. Thus began my quest to make sure that the seat never gets lose again. Tightening the plastic nut down occasionally works, but never permanently. It always jiggles lose again a couple days or weeks down the road. Especially with kids and pets constantly fiddling with it. The practical side of me doesn’t want to deal with it over and over.
I found a kit on Amazon that was supposed to be the kind of fix I was looking for. It was cheap (less than $5) and it was simple. The package was a little rough looking but the pieces were intact so I wasn’t worried. It comes with a handle to hold the plastic nut, a screw driver for the bolt top, and 6 rubber bushings. I have three toilets so its just the right number. The screw driver that comes with this is kind of a joke, but before you throw it away make sure that you take the other bushings out from inside of it! You need those! There are other kits for this purpose too. They look like they would work fine, but they are several times more expensive. I discovered this fix for base houses at the time and it worked so well when we bought our house I saw no reason to spend 4 or 5 times as much money when the cheap fix works great.
Any time I take something apart I always use the opportunity to deep clean because, well boys and toilets. Yuck. I disassembled the toilet seat, scrubbed and disinfected both the seat off of the toilet and the base very thoroughly. This is my oldest son’s bathroom downstairs, so all the boys and any guests use it regularly. It gets VERY dirty. This is the cleanest its been in a while.
Once you get the seat off, you can usually reuse the hardware as long as the nut still tightens well. My hardware is aluminum with a plastic nut. I scrubbed and disinfected that as well.
Once everything is clean, before you put it back together, see if the white rubber bushings fit in the hardware holes in the toilet. Mine do fit nicely inside The hole so the seat hinge fits flush against the porcelain. If the rubber bushings don’t fit all the way in the hole, put them on the underneath side of the holes, narrow side in the hole, so that the nut gets tightened on top of it. You want the seat hinge to be flush against the porcelain for functional reasons. Plus it just looks more polished.
Reinstall the seat hardware through the bushings and tighten them down using the nut holder and a screw driver (or a wrench depending on what the bolt head looks like) making sure that the seat is centered on the bowl. It wont have any play in it and it will stay put because of those bushings.
Now, the only time that the seat will get lose is when you loosen it. I love that this fix is inexpensive and it stays put. I haven’t had a seat fix fail me after 3 years of daily heavy use. I have not lived anywhere longer than 4 years, but I imagine it will stay put as long as the bushing has integrity. If I stay on top of the cleaning, I don’t have to loosen it to get it really clean, but you might want to take it apart every so often for a deep clean behind the nut.
If you were feeling ambitious, you could measure the hole in your toilet, then measure the bolt width and look for plastic bushings that fit the bolt in the hole without being deeper than the porcelain, but you would have to measure it exactly and have no play in it. Rubber doesn’t slide well on the porcelain like plastic would. Also, I can’t account for how much plastic bushings would be. I imagine not very expensive, but good hardware at a store can get pricy sometimes. This kit is much simpler. Besides, can you really put a price on the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that if your 7 year old does fall into the toilet again, it would not be because the seat was too lose?