Those of you who have only kept a few days to a week of household cleaning products, water, and food in their homes have learned that you can’t do that. You always need to be prepared for an emergency.
Our supermarkets, warehouse stores, and even Super Walmart only keep on average a 3 days supply in their stores. You saw what happened when people who had no stockpile went to the stores. They stripped everything. Many items have never really recovered. As soon as toilet paper or other necessities are put back on the shelves, they disappear again. It has caused the stores to put limits on items. It also has caused prices to go up because the demand is so high.
So those people who had a stockpile to last you for months were all set. Those people who didn’t went into panic mode.
I know there are people who will say that they make so little that they can’t afford to stockpile. But anyone can spend $1.00 to $5.00 or more if you have it to stock up each week. Buy a few extra cans of things. Buy 2 or 3 bags of frozen veggies. After a number of months doing this, you will have a stockpile started.
If you are paid working from home, you are not losing any money unless there is a chance that you will end up being furloughed after a while. So really think about spending the money the government is sending you to build a stockpile so that if this happens again or any emergency does, you will not be caught unprepared again.
Even my sons have made fun of my stockpile over the years but guess who had to run out and buy food. Yup, one of them. Because they only bought a week’s worth of food, toilet paper etc. at a time. He couldn’t believe that he couldn’t find chicken or pork anywhere. Guess who was laughing then!
This virus will eventually go away. I pray that will be sooner rather than later. However there is a good possibility that it will come back in the Fall or Winter. Get your stockpiles built so that you will be prepared!
I know some will say they are worried about doing that because they don’t want to waste food. If you spend the time to rotate(last in put in the back; pull your items from the front), you won’t waste anything. Arrange your freezers so that you are using the oldest first. I rarely find anything expired and even if I did, I realize that sell or best buy dates don’t mean much. Many things keep for a very long time.
That said, I found gaps in my stockpile. Things that I never thought about. So take the time while you are sitting home now to make a plan of what you need to get and where your gaps are. An example for us was Distilled Water. Hubby sleeps with a C Pap machine. I had just purchased 2 gallons of it when he opened that last gallon he had. That was just before the shelves got stripped. I never even gave a thought to buying more than that.
Well what happened is people, who found that the regular water had been depleted, purchased all the distilled water knowing they could drink it. It has been hard to find ever since. My sister told me her BIL couldn’t find it anywhere. People with these machines need distilled water. You can’t put anything else in them.
I looked online quite a few places and couldn’t find it in stock. However, when I placed my Walmart pickup order, they had it, limit 2. I got those 2 because I can’t have Hubby run out and I don’t know how long this epidemic will last. You can bet that I will buy more than two when this is over.
I had many other gaps too. I will run out of Lysol wipes, paper towels, dish liquid and dishwasher tabs soon. I need to stock up on more frozen veggies. They can take the place of having to buy fresh every week or two. Many other items come to mind. The one thing that I had plenty of was meat.
I pretty much know how much of things I use weekly and you most likely do too. So lets say you know that you use spaghetti sauce once a week. You want to stockpile for 6 months. So you would build your stockpile by buying 26 jars when you see a great sale or if you make homemade, buy the canned tomato and paste amount that you need. You can do this for every product you use. When you stockpile on sales, you don’t have to pay the price increases when something happens like this again.
I already have my list ready and will spend the money to fill in my gaps for the next time so that I don’t ever have to leave our home.
So did you have gaps that you know you have to fill for the next time? Share with us what you ran short of.