True. My kids were very briefly scheduled to go back part time, and stay home part time. We weren’t sure what we were going to do, but I did buy the required school supplies, including tissues. (My kids’ school started in the first week of August, and the in person plan got canceled). I was pretty surprised that, although the number of boxes of tissues was dwindling, there were still Kleenex brand “anti-viral” tissues. It just seemed like something that would sell out faster.
As for coming shortages, I wonder if the TP situation could still have another blip, with the timing localised to places as they reopen. All those places that use the commercial stuff starting to use it again. If the commercial supplies are tight, because some has been diverted to become retail, businesses who run out might send someone down to Costco to pick up some regular stuff. Basically, it seems like there could be some temporary issues as these two supply streams that have now been partly merged have to separate again, and rebalance on the fly as things reopen at different rates.
I don’t get these ‘only stock a one week supply! Maybe one month!’ posts - I usually keep a lot of toilet paper on the shelf in each of three bathrooms (like six rolls including the active one), and refill those stockpiles from the main stash in the washer/dryer closet. I buy toilet paper in the big packs (12 oversized rolls) and usually have one big pack unopened, one other pack that I’m restocking bathrooms from, and I buy a new big pack once I break into the unopened pack. When the actual shortage his I was kind of low to begin with, but the shortage ended before I got low enough to feel the need to do anything but ‘look at the toilet paper aisle while I’m getting groceries’. Similarly with paper towels, I usually just have a roll in most rooms for convenience, then an unopened six pack, plus an ‘in use’ six pack, which also lasts for months.
Trying to only stock a month at a time (much less a week) would be extremely annoying and expensive (since I’d have to buy small packs), and I don’t think that ‘having an extra large pack in the closet’ is some kind of society-destroying hoarding. And only have a week’s worth of stuff around is intensely irresponsible even without COVID related worries - it’s not uncommon for things like hurricanes to disrupt things for a week, so even in my leaner days I would be sure to have enough food around that at any time (including right before grocery day) I’d be able to go a week or two without buying more. (I have a stand alone freezer and good-sized kitchen shelves now so I have more than that, and recently bought a two-week stockpile of ‘just add boiling water’ food to be thorough.)
That’s what I did when I lived in Manhattan, with no storage space. It does seem crazy in a house with a basement. I think rather than disrupt this thread, I’ll start a new one on what I ought to be hoarding these days.
I’m not really sure I buy any of this. I don’t know what the impact to the global corn harvest from this one derecho is expected to be, but agricultural products have always had pretty wide swings in production, and especially for corn, it rarely has a large impact on anything. I think two reasons help explain why: first, corn dries and stores well, so we tend to have large buffers that allow us to adjust slowly (as opposed to, say, fresh orange juice, where all of the sudden, you may only have half your supply because of a frost in Florida, and the price skyrockets.) Second, corn’s products tend to have high substitutability. It’s easy to substitute gasoline for ethanol (it’s the other way around that’s a problem, since many cars are only built to tolerate a blend of 15% ethanol or less.) It’s easy for people to eat less meat, or to eat other meats, or to feed animals other products (more grass and less corn to a smaller herd of cattle, for example.) Maybe more flour tortillas instead of corn. More sugar in place of corn syrup. Et cetera, et cetera. Of course we use corn for a reason - mostly because it’s so cheap - so there may be a small price increase associated with some of these substitutions. But that’s the kind of thing society can adjust to fairly easily. In fact, we do it all the time.
There is nothing wrong with you, or me, or Joe Blow, stocking a month or 3 of anything. Including TP.
What’s disruptive and harmful is for a large fraction of the entire public to suddenly and simultaneously change their policy from “I want to stock two week’s worth” to “I want to stock 3 months worth.” If 100% of consumers do that it compresses 10 weeks’ collective demand into a week. If just 50% do it that’s 5 weeks’ entire national demand compressed into just 1 week.
In a world of just-in-time supply chains, that triggers a bucking bronco of shortages which in turn triggers more hoarding, panic buying, lots of attempts at resale profiteering, etc.
All of those things are bad for society. None of them increase the actual amount of TP actually used & flushed; they just harm the amount available to buy and its distribution in space and time.
I live in hurricane country too. The one thing I don’t do is rush to the store the day before the wind will pick up. That shit was done 6 months ago. A big difference with hurricanes is if my county’s idjits denude the grocery stores, other counties not in the path will still be full of product that can be cross-shipped.
COVID is like the whole damn country facing the same hurricane the same day and panicking simultaneously. There’s no “unaffected area” from which to ship extra product.
Bottom line: It’s not how much back-stock you (any you) have/has; it’s how quickly you change how much back-stock you have.
Which is why I think it’s responsible for people to slowly and deliberately increase their backstock, being mindful of not stripping the shelves of anything. Because the more people do that now, slowly and over the next couple of months, the less problematic it will be when we do have some disruption in the fall.
For the first time in the three weeks(that I have been looking , cause that’s when I ran out) I finally found an all purpose spray cleaner. It’s Fantastik, which is at the very least my third choice behind Lysol and 409. I don’t really care about 99.99999999999999% germicidal, but I need something better than cheap white vinegar for greasy stove shit.
Agreed. I really developed a major resentment for the shelf-clearing hoarder locust who sweep all of an item into their carts, leaving none for anyone else. Taking a few more than immediate use to build reserves while the shelves are stocket, leaving plenty for other shoppers, is definitely the best course. (Says the woman who by doing this accidentally accumulated a probably two-year supply of hand sanitizer and Lysol.)
It is quite likely that there will be far more empty shelves from hoarding than supply chain disruptions. Just as there was in the spring.
A little information is dangerous, and the Internet has guaranteed that many people have many little informations.
I live in the USA, am in my 50s. I have never in my life experienced true want or scarcity. I expect this is true of most everyone that is posting in this thread.
To me, this thread and the other similar thread comes across as someone masquerading as a big game hunter, popping for trophies on a fenced in game farm. A bunch of people who wish they lived in more interesting times.
Yes, this thread and the other one, in my view, are about getting through another lockdown period with as little disruption and hassle as possible, and also not wanting to cause unnecessary problems. It isn’t about preventing starvation. No one is saying food in general will be scarce.
Will there be, at any given time, in a location I can access easily, one of the few brands of cat food my cats will all eat before they’re on the brink of starvation? That’s a different question.
(And one of the cats is 17 and fading, with an intermittent and uncertain appetite. Telling her to eat what’s there or go hungry could easily tip her over the edge weeks or months or maybe even a year sooner than necessary.)
These times are way more than interesting enough for me.
My cats are also a consideration for me as I’m getting some just-in-case supplies to have on hand. I can make do with what food I have but they are a bit more particular and it’s not easy to reason with them. I bought a 16 pound bag of food for them yesterday to keep in stock as I continue to buy their weekly 3.5 pound bag. I’ve been getting a jug of litter every week this summer so I can keep a few months’ worth on hand. I bought a 6 month supply of their flea meds a few weeks ago. It will all be used eventually and it, at the least, gives me a sense of control over something.
I buy my cat’s kibble in 20-lb bags for better unit pricing, then store it in a plastic bin. This has been working fine throughout my adult life. She now has two extra bags stashed in a closet, along with two 32-ct boxes of her preferred canned food (she gets 1/4 can a day, kibble is free-feed) and about 6 14-lb jugs of litter. She already had plenty of flea gunk on hand, so she’s covered for probably the next year.
"Will there be, at any given time, in a location I can access easily, one of the few brands of cat food my cats will all eat before they’re on the brink of starvation? That’s a different question.
(And one of the cats is 17 and fading, with an intermittent and uncertain appetite. Telling her to eat what’s there or go hungry could easily tip her over the edge weeks or months or maybe even a year sooner than necessary.)"
thorny_locust - I want to thank you for that part of your comment. I am sick to fucking death of people telling me that if my cats are hungry enough, they’ll eat what I put down. NO, they won’t, and I am almost certainly making a trip to the vet if they don’t. My old man suffers kidney disease, and won’t eat the special kidney diet, so I am happy just to see him eating his favorite, and yes, he will turn up his old pink nose at food he doesn’t deem worthy of him.
I bought a 16 pound bag of food for them yesterday to keep in stock as I continue to buy their weekly 3.5 pound bag. I’ve been getting a jug of litter every week this summer so I can keep a few months’ worth on hand. I bought a 6 month supply of their flea meds a few weeks ago. It will all be used eventually and it, at the least, gives me a sense of control over something.