Perhaps surprisingly, a LOT of corn is grown in FL. We have it coming out our ears (hah). Probably a local problem where you are.
OTH, yesterday was the first disinfecting sani-wipe products I’ve seen since February. And these were industrial products in bulk packs in our local Ace Hardware. Grocery stores & consumer name brand wipes? Fuggeddaboudit.
Freezers.
Like a lot of people, we did as much stocking-up as we could when we could, and realized we could use more freezer space. We actually have a small second freezer in the basement but we wanted MORE.
So back in early April I started trying to find a chest freezer to keep in the garage.
NOBODY had them in stock. Sears. Lowes. Best Buy. Home Depot. Nope, nope, nope. Sears would at least take a pre-order for one.
So I did that. Estimated date of deliver, 7/7. A week after that, they called to set up the delivery date: 7/31 (today).
They were supposed to call last night and let us know their delivery time slot. No call. I called them this morning - and was told the earliest date was 9/1.
So I decided “this can’t still be going on” and started looking online. SAME THING AS APRIL.
There’s a Lowes 25 miles away that claims they have one in stock. Costco claims I can order one to be delivered in 2 weeks. Nothing else of any kind available anywhere.
And the existing second freezer is misbehaving; it’s self-defrosting and there’s a large puddle under it every single day.
So - I’ll get in the car shortly and drive 25 miles to see if that freezer will do, and if so, load it into the car and bring it home.
About 2 months ago I bought a small beer / wine fridge from our local cheap-ass appliances superstore. Traditional US name brand but made in China of course.
Go it home, upacked, plugged in, loaded. Controls light up, buttons work, looks great, but it doesn’t make cold even a smidgen. Ordered a replacement (for delivery this time; schlepping it was a PITA), and dragged the dead one back a couple days later for a no-problems refund. So far, so par for the course in modern Discount Products Made in China land. No sweat.
3 days later they call to schedule the delivery for tomorrow. Great! Tomorrow comes and that morning I get a sheepish call from the delivery guys: “We plugged it in and it doesn’t work. It’s the last one in stock, more are on back-order. We’ll call you when it comes in.” Damn.
I know that store routinely tests TVs before delivery or customer pickup. But pony fridges? C’mon. They must have had a spate of returns like mine.
Anyhow 2 months later there’s no pony fridges coming from China. Yet.
I went to the Lowes I had called. As I walked back to the appliances section, I saw a smaller one (5.1 cubic feet) on display as well as several of them still in cartons. The 8.8 cubic foot they told me they had in stock did not exist.
I drove the quarter mile to a nearby Home Depot. The person I spoke with said "We have exactly one in stock and walked back toward it with me - where we saw another salesperson showing it to another customer; that customer had just announced his intention to buy it. If I’d been 60 seconds earlier it might have been mine.
I drove over to a fast food place to get drive-through food, then pulled into a parking space. While eating, I called another store I’d spotted (not one of the Big Box stores) and asked if they had anything. The fellow told me there was a nationwide shortage of freezers.
Got some lunch, discussed it with the folks at home, who rather reluctantly admitted I was right about the shortages (they were searching the whole time) - so I went back to Lowes and bought one of the smaller freezers. I’m seriously considering going back tomorrow and getting a second one, as our upright freezer is behaving badly (leaving large puddles on the floor with every defrost cycle). If I did that, we’d be trying to put 14 cubic feet of frozen food into 10.2 cubic feet, not 5.1…
Neither place had any uprights. Many other kitchen appliances appeared to be inshort supply; HD had a wall full of dishwashers, most of which said “out of stock”.
It does not appear to be a good time to purchase a major appliance.
Housemate called the local Habitat Re-Store (where we bought a fridge a couple of years back) and the fellow there said they had none, didn’t even really have any fridges. Someone came to donate a freezer one day last week - and another customer bought it off the donor before it even got inside the store.
Major appliances aside (haven’t had to buy one since the washing machine replacement about a year ago) shortages seem to be over, except for random items (often unexpectedly) due to random transportation issues.
But certainly COVID-related supplies are now well-stocked. After an extreme shortage of hand sanitizers, for instance, they are everywhere now, and my closest grocery store now has both kinds of Purell (the clear kind and the green kind) in stock, in regular size pump bottles, little pocket-size bottles, and even miniature micro-bottles. They even have N95 masks, though I don’t much see the point or any practical advantage over the hundreds of single-use surgical masks I already have. Masks are mandatory here in all indoor public spaces, but the increased demand seems to have been met by an increased supply. In fact prices of 50-packs have been dropping due to competition!
I actually scored some disinfectant wipes at Costco today (they’re still limiting quantities, so I was only able to buy one box, but that had 2 80-packs and 2 72-packs, so an ample quantity for my limited use for the things).
Baking friend reports that brewers yeast needs more sugar, takes longer to activate and once activated is rather fragile. Its bred to work best slowly and at temps under 80F.
Baking friend is the only person I know who uses her oven warming drawer for food instead of storage. She says to NOT use to raise the bread because it will make the yeast go bloowie (is so a word, she said it) all over the place and make a big gluey mess.
Thanks for the follow-up!
Yeast was gone, but only for a month or so.
Still rare to see in Upper Canuckistan: basic thermometers, weightlifting equipment, no added sugar chocolate pudding (no idea why, different diets?). I’m guessing it’s harder to get things to upgrade a backyard when going on vacation is challenging?
What I did see today in Wal-Mart was that most items were available, but their shelves weren’t fully stocked.
I did note the Scott toilet paper 20-pack says “lasts 20 weeks.” Obviously YMMV, but I suspect it was put there to discourage hoarding.
Another vote for appliances, or at least refrigerators. Home Depot, Best Buy, and Lowe’s had nothing. I was able to get one from a local small place though.
Also rubbing alcohol, that has been the most consistently absent item I’ve noticed.
I don’t know if this counts but I went to Best Buy and it was … strange. The shelves were not as full as normal and there was a reduced number of store employees. I needed a relatively simple item but couldn’t find it. I asked a store employee who pointed to the other side of the store. When I got there another employee told me I had to go to the front of the store and cue up to their concierge system in order to answer my question. There were people waiting in line for this so I utilized the waiting time to go next door to Wal Mart. Their electronics person found the product in 5 seconds. He also rang up the purchase saving me time in their checkout lines. We had a nice conversation about the difficulties of wearing a mask all day and he got my sympathies and a hearty thank you. I wandered the store checking out other items to purchase in the near future.
The odd thing is I was probably within pointing distance of the product at Best Buy. I saw a really expensive version of what I needed high up on a shelf but nothing practical for what I wanted. Surely they had a variety of these. It’s an electronics store. In their defense the employee was nice enough to take the time to explain the concierge process. Also, being cooped up at home I probably needed the exercise walking back and forth for looking for help.
So, a shortage of people and common sense.
I actually got a gallon of isopropyl from Amazon, under their scientific supplies section. 90% or more, I think.
I went grocery shopping yesterday, the first time in probably a month. This was at an Albertson’s in Roseburg, Oregon. We’re pretty rural but we are on I-5 and are the county seat so most county residents shop in here. This store is probably the most well-stocked of all grocery stores in town. I had a fat list, so here’s what I noticed:
The Campbell’s condensed soup was very hit-or-miss. We subscribe to the “Lutheran Glue” school of culinary execution: in a pinch, condensed “cream of-whatever” soups make a adequate roux substitute for casseroles and such. My supermarket was bare of most condensed soups, although there were plenty of both Campbell and Progresso heat-and-eat soups. I managed to get some generic brand cream of chicken.
Same here, and has been the case since March. A local department store has packages (looks like the soft sided packets of baby wipes) of “alcohol sanitizing wipes,” which I did not pick up or even look at too closely. However, they’re in the cleaning isle next to a bunch of other off-brand cleaners. Since Covid I have seen actual Lysol exactly once and only once, probably two weeks ago, in my grocery store. Right before Covid we had purchased something like 4 gallons of Pine-Sol at Costco, and still have close to two gallons left. I also picked up some disinfectant concentrate from a beauty supply place online back in April or May when I was worried about running out of cleansers, and I still have those in the garage unopened.
We have plenty of that. I had to double check that it was actually for sanitizing, as some say right on the bottle that it isn’t for disinfecting surfaces – which makes me wonder just what the hell it is for?? Anyway, I picked up a gallon several weeks ago and still have plenty left, and it’s well-stocked in the stores.
We have plenty of that too. The store that had the alcohol-based sanitizing wipes also has racks and racks… and racks… and racks… of quart jugs of 90% alcohol. I picked up a pint of rubbing alcohol (70% IIRC) ~6 weeks ago from my pharmacy, and they had both the pints of rubbing alcohol and the boxes of alcohol pads in stock, although there were limiting them to one per customer.
We’re fully stocked for all of baking stuff: flour, sugar, yeast, baking soda and powder… all good. I managed to pick up half a dozen of those little strips of yeast packets right about the time lockdowns were implemented, and since I don’t bake much I’m still set.
See above. I’ve only seen it once, now all I can find is generic or brands I’ve never heard of. We prefer Pine-Sol, but even that I can’t find in the original scent. Only the weird purple stuff. I’m glad we still have a supply.
Garlic is plentiful here, as is all other produce. We live in a very robust produce-growing part of the country, though, which may have something to do with it.
My store had plenty of bacon, but what it didn’t have was other pork products: I couldn’t get pork chops, or a pork roast, or even ground sausage unless I went with Jimmy Dean’s frozen stuff. I did find some chorizo, which I picked up.
Hamburger was plentiful, and cheap: $2.99 / lb for the extra lean. I stocked up, although with two teenagers at home with decidedly midwestern culinary tastes the 10lbs will practically disappear.
Looking over my list from yesterday, here’s what I couldn’t find:
Boxed pasta dinners à la Pasta Roni or Farmhouse Pasta. My wife likes those as a quick lunch, and the shelves were completely bare.
Stouffer’s and Marie Calendar’s frozen dinner and the like. They had lots of frozen pizzas and some Hungry-man and Banquet (yuck), but not much Stouffer’s. We like the big lasagnas and mac n cheeses for easy dinners (protip: cook them on the charcoal grill with a chunk or two of fruit wood on the coals. Mmmmm…) but they were out.
Reading through the thread, a few other things:
Toilet paper, which like everywhere else was famously MIA for probably 6 or 8 weeks, is back. I managed to score a 36-roll package a month or so ago so haven’t been looking too close when I’ve had to go shopping, but the isles are back to being mostly well-stocked. The prices, however, seem to be notably higher than pre-Covid by several dollars per package.
Bicycle shops are bare, which I cannot even wrap my head around. I took my son in for a new helmet a couple weeks ago and the bike shop – this is a dedicated independent bicycle sales and repair shop, not the sporting goods section of Blue Discount Garbage store – had exactly one bike for sale. I didn’t bother asking why.
My SIL and her husband live in Tacoma and just bought a new laundry set. I’m not sure how much hunting around they did, but knowing them they went to Home Depot, found the shiniest and brightest model on the floor, and forked over the money. Anyway, there was little wait for the delivery – a few days at most. This was a couple weeks ago.
Conversely, my nephew and his wife were looking for a freezer a few weeks ago and could not find a new one, anywhere. We have Home Depot, Lowes, Costco, plus several independent appliance stores. All were bare or had ridiculous wait times. They ended up finding a used one on Craigslist and calling it good enough.
Hand sanitizer is available, but all are brands I’ve never heard of. I have not seen Purel or Germ-X on the shelves since before Covid. The generic stuff all smells horrible to me, so I am extremely grateful that 1) I had two unopened and most of a third 8oz bottles of Purel in the cabinet when Covid hit, and 2) I’m still trying to avoid excessive forays into public spaces so don’t have to use it much.
I haven’t been able to find Crystal Light lemonade is about a month, at multiple stores. Also, sauvignon blanc has been in short supply.
Only thing I’ve ever used bleach for is laundry.
We haven’t used bleach in laundry since our kids were in diapers. It makes me wonder though, if the active ingredient (chlorine?) is too low to have any microbial effects, how can it be useful in laundry? Does it still “whiten” clothes at such diluted amounts?
Regardless, I looked over the bottles of bleach that were available until I found one that was clearly labeled for antibacterial use. It happened to be a Kroger brand, FWIW.
Back in May, I had a telemedicine visit with my doctor. The day before, a nurse called to get what vitals I could provide. Weight was easy. BP, we have a monitor. Temp: whoops, the forehead thermometer I had was completely dead even with a new battery. So I decided to try to get one at CVS. The staffer there didn’t laugh in my face but I suspect was tempted.
Amazon had some but they were marked up. I tried WalMart.com and found the same basic digital thermometer for 1/3 the price an Amazon seller wanted - so I bought 3 of them. An hour later they had none (pretty sure I got the last 3 they had).
My in-laws have been getting groceries delivered at our urging. They live in south Florida, and are elderly and high risk. Their shopper was not finding any TP at all so in desperation they ordered some from China. Which, to my surprise, did eventually arrive (I had reason to believe the website was a scam) but not for nearly 3 months.
Again, I went to WalMart.com and found some Charmin Extra Strong. 2 large packages, since that got me free shipping. That got there the second Saturday in May. MIL said it was the best Mother’s Day gift she’d ever gotten - they were on their last 2 rolls. I later found a case of a different brand at Amazon and shipped that to them, so they’re set for a while. I don’t think they’ve tried to order TP via the delivery service since then so we don’t know if that’s settled down - i assume so.
Weirdly, Amazon has things available for Subscribe and Save that you can’t find when ordering regular stuff. The Charmin Extra Soft that we had a subscription for (one case every 2 months) doesn’t show up when searching the usual way. As it happened though, we were able to edit our exists subscription to change it to monthly - and aside from the first month, where it was a couple weeks late, it’s arrived like clockwork - to the point where we now have 4 full cases of the stuff (and another arriving in a couple days).
Price gouging seems to be settling down:
The bidet toilet seat I wanted has now dropped 10 bucks. We actually got it for 60 dollars, it’s now 50.
The tumbling composter we suddenly Had To Have, list price about 120 dollars, was available for considerably more than that, at the peak. I did find one on eBay for not much more than list. It’s now back down to about 90 dollars on Amazon - consistent with the pricing before the insanity.
Haven’t been able to find 12 packs of Sugar Free Red Bull anywhere in the area, and many places don’t even have smaller packs. Went to Orlando this weekend and the Publix there didn’t have any 12 packs and I was desperate so I got 5 4-packs which was more than half of what was on the shelf. That’s not hoarding because it will last me only slightly more than a week.
I went to the supermarket today and they said they can’t take cash because of the coin shortage. Only debit or credit cards accepted.