It would be almost impossible for me to run out of toilet paper. My wife makes it for a living. Meet or exceed a production goal, pick up a couple cases of product. Accident free month, pick up a couple cases of product etc. Sometimes these are seconds, product that wasn’t quite up to the customer standards, usually the sheets perforations are not complete and they don’t tear off cleanly. But lately the customers, like Costco, have been calling for even the seconds, they need product.
We haven’t bought a roll of TP or paper towels for about 15 years. I don’t know how much that is worth but it must be a substantial sum. I recently asked her to quit giving it away to our friends in case Covid-20 is zombies.
I voted “No, not I nor anyone I know has actually run out of TP”, but I do have a Facebook friend (HS classmate) who posted back on March 28th that she was “down to her last two rolls” amid a TP desert in North Carolina.
Her post immediately garnered a few responses from friends who are presumably in her area, offering her some of their “stash” (“we are not hoarders, just regulars at BJ’s!” one felt obliged to specify), and she has not mentioned this in past two weeks, so I think it’s safe to say things worked out for her in the end.
Friend of mine said on Facebook that he was down to a roll, seemed pretty anxious, asked if someone could give him some. I said sure. He replied it was just a “friend check,” he didn’t really need any.
It actually not only makes perfect sense, it’s happened before: a nationwide run on TP that caused bare shelves, resulting in panic buying as soon as any new ones hit the shelves, resulting in bare shelves, lather rinse repeat. And not even with the impetus of everybody suddenly needing to stay at home a lot more for the foreseeable future, instead of using whatever bathroom one might have used during the day at work or something.
As our friend-of-the-Straight-Dope Snopes notes, Carson was only making a joking (sarcastic) reference to something a Wisconsin senator had said, but a lot more people watched Carson back then than read press releases from the senator of a wood processing state whose constitutents had complained about a shortage of wood pulp.
We got down to 2 rolls for a family of four. I was starting to shop industrial rolls that go into public stalls. I still might, just in case. I was able to get some from my parents, who had 2 bales for reasons completely unrelated to the pandemic. They just like to have a lot on hand.
Life would be interesting right about now if that hadn’t come through.
When Wuhan was shutdown, I realized China, Inc was going down so we stocked up on the necessities with a 6 month supply next trip to the stores. We got a Costco megapack then that we haven’t opened yet as we had about that much in the cupboard already. Should have invested in yeast though. Didn’t think of it. Always more than a few packs of TP on the grocery shelves whenever I bother to pay attention.
Same. Eventually, I went on Amazon supply & save, so toilet paper magically shows up at my home at regular intervals. So far, it’s kept showing up. Hopefully, it will continue to do so.
Even before the virus hit I kept about 45 jumbo rolls in reserve, and I don’t think I use even one full roll a week. I haven’t bothered to even look for more toilet paper yet. P.S., when this is finally all over and people realize they have huge stockpiles of t.p., I bet sales will drop through the floor and prices will plummet.
I think I’ve mentioned before that we buy in bulk, so we had JUST acquired about two months worth when the lockdown happened, and on top of that, we had a six-pack plus two rolls of special TP with Trump’s face on it. We bought some for the Purim party, to have some for a prize, and stock the bathroom with it during the party, and that was left.
And when I was at the store recently, because we needed a few things you can’t get from Fresh, because they are out of like, everything, plus, they don’t sell beer, and DH wanted some, I decided that since the store happened to have TP in stock, I’d pick up some. The store actually had a sign up that customers were limited to 3 12-packs per. I just bought one.
3 people, plus the neighbors we are co-isolating with being here for a few hours in the evening, are going through 4-5 rolls a week. Which is not that much. I thought it would be a roll a day. If we were three women, it probably would be.
No, there is no shortage of toilet roll, at least not here. It’s panic buying, mainly by the needy middle class, that creates the illusion of a shortage.
In a similar vein in the late 70s - someone, somewhere announced that there was a shortage of sugar, that everyone went out and bought shitloads of the stuff, so then there was a shortage.
This poll is kind of pointless if it doesn’t take into consideration how much toilet paper a person uses. I guess some people use a lot. That’s the only explanation for why this is even an issue. I use less than one roll a month, so I don’t understand what the big deal is.
But even for people who use more, there was no reason to freak out like we were in a zombie apocalypse. All that did was disrupt the supply chain. Then even more people started acting like it were a zombie apocalypse.
I was down to maybe ten rolls in the house in early March so I bought a megapack of Charmin at Costco (45 rolls) like I normally do. It’s just me and I have over 50 rolls so I’m fine for a while. I don’t use that much and I poop at work sometimes. I am good for a long time.
I just heard a podcast about this - the issue isn’t that we’re using more toilet paper, it’s that we’re using it all at home.
10 weeks ago, a third (or more) of your TP use was away from home (at work, at school, at a restaurant or bar, a quick stop at a store, at the gym…etc.) now it’s all at home. All. And so while you used to only use X rolls/week, you’re now using (at least) 1.5X or 2X. Your household is just going through TP faster - and so is everyone else’s. It’s a real issue. It’s just a weird one. (It’s probably hitting other things where the commercial market is separate from the residential one, just not at the rate of TP)
We went for awhile with it on our shopping list but w/o successful purchase, but never actually ran out, and then acquired some. I don’t use it myself (see poll option #4 above).