They never tell you this, but the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are making plumbers rich all over LA. When they aren’t shopping Rodeo Drive and flushing cash on fashion, they’re flushing trash and bashing someone else for it. It’s easy to hold someone else accountable for a clogged toilet, but the wives’ common plumbing problems are wonders to contemplate next time you’re on the loo.

1. Makeup and Hair in the Shower and Sink
Nobody should be surprised by this one. Most people figure it out early on: Don’t wash trimmings and makeup down the drain. The wives probably think it either doesn’t apply to them, or it’s just amusing to call up the same plumber every time to rectify a situation Drano could’ve handled.

2. Trash in the Disposal
Just because it’s called the disposal doesn’t mean it can dispose just anything. This also doesn’t mean it’s capable of discerning human appendages from actual garbage – not that we see a difference in the housewives’ case. But when you begin to wonder what the InSinkErator transmogrifies food scraps into, you might be tempted to utilize it as a self-emptying trash can. Don’t worry, they can afford the sink repair bill.

3. “[Housewife] is so full of it I bet she never uses the crapper.”
Every once in awhile, a wife – Brandi or Vanderpump, I expect – loses her grip and flushes things like other housewives’ envy-inspiring picture frames, magazines, jewelry and dresses down the toilet, leading to sewage backups and infectious drainage backflow, which can (hopefully) lead to a norovirus epidemic within the house. Look, even the toilets can’t take all their crap.

4. Leaky Faucets
It’s not like the wives have an objection to letting $80 go down the drain every month on a luxury like drippy faucets. They might say that it helps maintain tension for the set, and adds rhythm to the catfights that ensue. Forget the faucet repair; they’re onto something, and they’re getting their money’s worth.

5. Using the Toilet Tank as a Wine Cooler
And they wonder why the tank doesn’t refill sometimes, or why the flush occasionally doesn’t work, or the reason for that little chain heaped at the bottom of the tank when, well, it looks like it should be connected to something. Someone should tell them the float ball isn’t a bottle-securing device, the ballcock assembly isn’t an adjuster for securing said bottles, and the outlet valve is not, in fact, a holding chamber for miniatures. They’d probably know by now that the trip lever isn’t a medieval weighing scale if the chain weren’t always breaking off, and the water inlet valve doesn’t really affect the tank’s water temperature.

There’s a theory that the real cause of the housewives’ conflicts is their plumbing issues. They went to the gym to learn self-defense for this. The jealousy, catfights and verbal abuse all funnel down to everything related to their waterworks – including the kitchen sink. Take a page from their book, and don’t let your plumbing complications complicate you.