I went to my local grocery store just down the street figuring these shortages were just news hype. I don’t care about coronavirus, but I thrive on bottled spring water, and I was little low. But nope, not a bottle in sight, except weird flavored and carbonated types. I passed another aisle that caught my eye because practically the whole of one side was empty shelves. Ah, the toilet paper aisle. It had a sign apologizing for the shortage due to “extreme demand”.
So I drove down to another store that I actually prefer, but is slightly farther away. No problem. They had a whole fresh pallet of spring water from which I took four cases. I didn’t really need toilet paper because I tend to buy it in vast quantities whenever it’s on sale, but their supplies were normal so I got an extra pack of my usual brand just to be safe. So a lot seems to depend on how individual stores manage their inventories. They also had the usual open hot-food bars and salad bars operating as usual.
Back in the 90s-ish we used to have a whole hoard of rubbing alcohol and peroxide. Because a local pharmacy chain for some reason decided that a big sale included bottles of each for something like 10 cents each.
The point with hand sanitizer is that it can be used when soap/water are not available due to lack of running water.
I was at the grocery store the other day. I happened to need something other than TP in the TP aisle and posted a photo of the empty shelves to Facebook.
One friend said “what, is snow predicted?” and I said “clearly not: the bread aisle hadn’t been emptied”.
We didn’t buy TP because as it happens, I get it via Amazon Subscribe and Save, and we have two cases of it already.
If that runs out, I can head down to the nearest pond and catch a couple of Canada geese…
I just talked to a women who told me her mother has corona virus and is quarantined to her home. This would be a big deal if true, as there have been no cases in western PA so far. The woman I was talking with insists that her mom had a positive test, but I haven’t heard mention of it on the local news yet. I’m wondering if my source is confusing exposure with infection. I’m also wondering why this woman is out driving around if she has been exposed via her mom.
My dad just called me, and said he would be around my area grocery-shopping (since the one near my parents house is out of a lot of stuff). When I mentioned toilet paper, he went nuts. “What a spoiled fucking country. How are you going to shit if there’s no food!” - blah blah blah… I was like “Dude, toilet paper doesn’t go bad”, and then I heard the “When I was your age, we wiped our asses with a rock”
I wanted to say “Motherfucker, YOU called ME!”, but I don’t mind the few cans of food I should be expecting soon.
What’s weird is, I was in a nearby shopping center early this morning (Dunkirk, MD) with a Wal-Mart and a Giant Food supermarket.
Now Giant isn’t the priciest grocery chain, but they’re definitely more towards the ‘emphasizing quality rather than price’ end of the spectrum. While WallyWorld is all about the price.
So I went into Wal-Mart, and they were out of paper goods pretty much altogether. No TP, no paper towels, just bare shelves. They did have some boxes of facial tissues left, but even most of those were gone.
At the Giant, which is close enough to the Wal-Mart that it’s easy to park in between and shop at both places without moving your car, there were plenty of paper towels, plenty of TP.
So people were apparently so desperate to get TP that they cleared every last bit of it out of Wal-Mart, but not so desperate that if they didn’t get there in time, they’d walk down to Giant and at least compare prices? (Maybe a couple bucks more for a month’s worth of TP. I mean, seriously.)
If you freeze whole milk or low-fat milk, be aware that freezing will “undo” homogenization. No big deal, just remember to shake the container before dispensing the milk.
When my AF dad was stationed in Alaska (I was maybe 3? So 60+ years ago) my mother said the ONLY milk they could buy at the Commissary was frozen. Long after they left Alaska, Momma regularly froze milk so they would always have a ready supply. I got used to shaking up the milk carton before pouring a glass!
~VOW
My mother used an outhouse when she was a little girl. We’re talking poor farming community here, nothing fancy. My mother used the Sears, Roebuck catalog for TP.
She said, “The corset pages were the softest!”
~VOW
(Who is stll laughing about the rock…)
LOL - no he’s just being difficult. I know they stop at many places, and I ask around what time they’ll be over, and he refuses to give me an answer. Hard-headed, even as a senior citizen… My mom grew up in the city, but dad had to use an outhouse, living in the plains.
But yeah, you gotta use the best available. “When I was your age, we ate one half of the Sears catalog and wiped our ass with the other half!”
I went to the store the other night to, just to see; TP aisle was empty but I did buy something on sale that I wanted. This required me keying in Jenny’s phone # to get the sale price. I realized that I was then holding that finger out like I had just dredged it thru poop until I was able to wash it off. I wish I had hand sanitizer in the car.
Same here; almost no TP but I was amazed at how much bread was left - PB&J sam’ichs can last you awhile. There was lots of milk, too.
Unless you happened to walk in to Giant right after they finished restocking.
Sears catalog? He was lucky to have a Sears catalog, all we could afford a postcard advertising some sale which we had to split between wiping & eating.
I posted a long description of my recent grocery run, to the breaking news thread, but in short, the entire store had basically been emptied out. I didn’t look in the toilet paper aisle but frozen veggies were completely gone.
Probably not; they’d been open only about 20 minutes, and there wasn’t any sign of restocking activity anywhere, just a quiet store first thing in the morning.
It’s always possible that their truck came in during the last hour before closing time the night before.
