For me, it may be that the toilet paper roll needs to have the open end away from the wall. I don’t want to reach under the roll to take a piece! That’s ludicrous!
That or my recent addiction to correcting people when they use “less” when they should use “fewer”
My guess before I look is that ‘further’ is a continuation and ‘farther’ applies only to distance (and maybe time in senses where the past/future is distant)?
Pronunciation-wise, English is a mess anyway so I don’t think it’d bother me in speaking. Lots of people reduce ‘then’ to ‘thən’ and also do the same with ‘than’ making them indistinguishable in conversation (and leading to mixing them up in writing as well).