Panic Buying Hitting Costco and Big Box Retailers

[Terri9630]

Yes, we learned years ago.
I don't think anyone down here has kept less than a month's worth on hand for years.

You can't do that with beer though.

Sure you can. Buy beer, put it in the pantry and leave it there.

 

[Redhorse]

I like TP. I dont consider it a luxury. I have a lot of it. No I didn't buy it all last week. I just rotate through a larger than normal stock. Like a sensible person that thinks there may be a shortage of something they like in the future. I have taken note of the TP panic buying. Next time I will buy even more of things that make tp necessary as a trade item. Like food. If you have no food tp is not necessary in the first place.

A most excellent idea! We are done with the stores for awhile. We did buy some extra TP, and already had a decent amount stocked up, but compared to what I see in the news, we are amateurs.

I'm glad to probably have enough for many months, because I will be the one stuck washing the poo rags if it came to that. I'd really rather not have that on my chore list. We have plenty other supplies to keep the poo flowing on a healthy schedule. TP is definitely a luxury to me!

 

[CrackbottomLouis]

Yes, we learned years ago.
I don't think anyone down here has kept less than a month's worth on hand for years.

You can't do that with beer though.

You can store grains, hops, yeast and water though. And you can even make your beer in the bucket you store it in.

 

[Redhorse]

You can store grains, hops, yeast and water though. And you can even make your beer in the bucket you store it in.

Got a recipe for that handy? . I wonder if hops are still in good supply

 

[Caribou]

The fixation on TP I find completely baffling.View attachment 36877
You can't eat it, you can't drink it, you certainly can't smoke it.
Send me into the woods with one roll of paper towels, I'll be good for a week.
I just don't get it, except there must a lot of people that that only breathe Facebook.
We practice panic down here yearly.
Water, gasoline, food, beer, yes.
TP? No.

People are trying to avoid the TP diet. We're out of TP? If I eat anything I'm going to have to use WHAT???

 

[Supervisor42]

Sure you can. Buy beer, put it in the pantry and leave it there.

Shirley this lady doesn't drink beer.
Stored in a cooler, maybe 2 months.
In the pantry, two months later it will taste like pond scum.
Don't ask me how I know

You can store grains, hops, yeast and water though. And you can even make your beer in the bucket you store it in.

I have the capability to make beer...if times get really hard.

 

[Meerkat]

Well someone needs to fix the fence because the sheep have gotten out. Went to the store in my small town of about 1k. All but 3 packages of tp were gone. People came from 45 miles away because Waldo world was out and so was Albertsons. Maybe I should open a tp store?

M.S. on radio was and is talking about that now. He was saying how Many billionaires got their start in the Great Depression by supplinh things people needed.
South food chain Piggly Wiggly was one , as was Gallo Wines sold wine for half price $. 50 a gallon 50 cent a gal. is cheap even in depresion..

 

[Terri9630]

Shirley this lady doesn't drink beer.
Stored in a cooler, maybe 2 months.
In the pantry, two months later it will taste like pond scum.
Don't ask me how I knowView attachment 36886

You didn't say it had to taste good! And no, I don't drink and don't call me Shirley!

 

[Meerkat]

Sure you can. Buy beer, put it in the pantry and leave it there.

I know about 10 yr ago I tended a little n-hood bar dinner club here and they were very into checking dates on beers.
I think it is like other things not what it use to be so may be dangerous to drink it out of date. I compost mine if it gets out of date.
I just had a cold one this morning .Usually 6 pack last me for a couple months then gets composted.

 

[Patchouli]

The fixation on TP I find completely baffling.View attachment 36877
You can't eat it, you can't drink it, you certainly can't smoke it.
Send me into the woods with one roll of paper towels, I'll be good for a week.
I just don't get it, except there must a lot of people that that only breathe Facebook.
We practice panic down here yearly.
Water, gasoline, food, beer, yes.
TP? No.

My husband used to say that if people ran out of bread, they could dip stacks of TP in milk and egg and fry it up.

 

[Patchouli]

C'mon guys, it was a joke! We too always thought it was funny that if snow was forecast the bread, milk, and eggs, and toilet paper would sell out quickly.

 

[Supervisor42]

.
I just had a cold one this morning .Usually 6 pack last me for a couple months then gets composted.

You shouldn't drink in the morning.
BTW, a 6-pack usually lasts me ALL afternoon

...then night happens .

 

[Meerkat]

You didn't say it had to taste good! And no, I don't drink and don't call me Shirley!

Too bad Terri after hrd work " strong drink is good for the belly".

 

[Meerkat]

You shouldn't drink in the morning.
BTW, a 6-pack usually lasts me ALL afternoon View attachment 36894
...then night happens .

Why not? This medicine has made me sick as heck!
Bad thing is the foreign object the ghouls planted in me is permanent the good thing is this virus crapo has penned the dr who did to his house to think about all the people he has screwed up for life! On his web page it says ' his hobbies are traveling ,sports well his travel has come to a stand still and so has his sports.
No damn sense in hurting people for money, no wonder the Bible says " LOVE of money is the root of all evil".
I've drank more beer, 3 beers so far since my surgery 3 weeks ago than I did all year before that. Not all dr.s are bad many are good people its just harder to find them and second opinions are a joke,they are like a club now and " you ain't in it " as G. Carlon would say'.

I got a really good deal on whiskey at WinnDixie last week. I don't like whiskey [ more os a wine ,beer drinker] but it is here if we need it for blood thinner along with aspirin in case we can't get blood thinners from pharmacy. Half price on the name brands.

 

[Swing]

Daughter and I went shopping at a Costco on Friday. One of the things that she got was a case of paper towels. She had recently gotten toilet paper, and other essentials. I read that Saturday by noon that same store was out of toilet paper, paper towels, bottled water, ground beef, and many other items. Evidently Saturday morning was a mad house there from what I have read. Daughter and I talked about going on Saturday, but I try to avoid it on weekends in general. I am so grateful we made a quick trip on Friday. I have been working on filling in the gaps.

I have read some comments from people in Facebook prepper groups that they had just never bothered to prep! I suppose we could have people who have joined us here, who are believers in prepping, but have yet to do little or nothing to prep. I know that technically, this is a homesteading group, not a prepper group, but many of us do consider ourselves preppers.

I think homesteading is the ultimate prepping. They seem to both be self reliant and ready to do without all the modern conveniences.

 

[Meerkat]

I think homesteading is the ultimate prepping. They seem to both be self reliant and ready to do without all the modern conveniences.

Ready or not its good to be prepared for the worse and this place has it all.

 

[Swing]

And at least you guys are not crazy and strong ideas do not have snowflakes masquerading as homesteading types reporting posts. A group I'm in, finding so many snowflakes.

 

[backlash]

The line to get into Costco was really long so we left. It is absolutely insane.
I'm going to self-quarantine for 2 weeks just to stay away from the idiots.

 

[angie_nrs]

What a difference 48 hrs. makes! Where's that panic smilie???

I had to go to town unexpectedly to pick up something and drop something off. I'll just leave it vague since it's a pretty boring story. Suffice it to say, I decided to check things out since I was there and again stock up on sale items. We just got notice this morning that schools will be shutting town for at least a couple of weeks. So, I was quite certain that stores would be packed with folks there trying to buy things since their kids would now be home for a while. If you weren't in the grocery section of WM, you could get whatever you wanted. However, the grocery section was packed. Not a single sheet of TP on the shelves and pretty much every isle was loaded with people. I got just a couple of things and checked out. Thankfully I could use the self checkout b/c I didn't have very much, although this time around I did see heaping full carts.

I went to a drug store and they still had some TP but I didn't buy any b/c it wasn't on sale. I did however, pick up sale priced beer

Another box store was also crazy busy.....again without TP, hand sanitizer, or bleach. This time around, the sale priced soup was in very limited supply.

I hit a Family Dollar on the way home and they had a small amount of the FD brand TP left. They also had bleach and some lysol that I bought for a friend. It wasn't very busy in there, but the cashier said they were earlier.

Aldi also didn't have any TP today, but I did see some heaping carts. Their meat section looked pretty bare.

ALL of the stores I went to had notices on the door that only 2 products would be allowed per person of TP, PT, bleach, hand sanitizer, etc.

All I can say is I'm glad I'm home! All in all people were well behaved today. However, I wonder what it's going to be like when they use up everything they bought today?

 

[Cnsper]

It's official, people have lost their minds. Not a tp roll in site

 

[Caribou]

Range report

Went to town today. Both Costco stores had people lined up ready to checkout all the way to the back of the store this AM. When we got to the one store at 1300 there was zero TP. They had received three trailers loaded with TP yesterday. That is two weeks in a row that I was unable to buy TP or baked beans, otherwise I got it all. When we hit the other Costco at 1100 the parking lot was full and the lot for Toys-R-Us next door was full. It closed about a year ago and still sits empty. Whoever came up with the recipe for a stack of TP dipped in an milk and egg mixture, the employee at Costco appreciated it. There is no way to describe how many people were in Costco. We left the first one immediately because it was so crowded but there was a steady flow coming in. The roads had less traffic than I have ever seen in Anchorage during the day. Everyone was in Costco or another store.

Fred Meyer had one row, both sides, with absolutely zero inventory. We got everything on the list for Freddie's. Mostly we stopped in to pick up M&M's at $0.25/bag. Mom has a sweet tooth so we got her a ton. She needs the weight and she eats well otherwise so I feel good about loading he up with candy.

Yesterday the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was diagnosed and today everyone is out becoming preppers. It turns out to be a foreign national that came in on an air freight run, became ill on the way and self quarantined till he could get medical attention. Everywhere I went people appeared to be behaving. It was an amazing trip and I'm glad I went.

 

[kd4ulw]

Here was my trip to Sam’s Club just before they closed tonight.

 

[angie_nrs]

Hope these folks have lots of freezer space.

 

[CrackbottomLouis]

Got a recipe for that handy? . I wonder if hops are still in good supply

It's not hard. People always used to keep a bucket of small beer going in the closet. Just as a way to purify water. Good for b vitamins too. I've always been more into distilling but making beer isnt really different than making your mash if using grains. I'd look up a good pilsner recipe. Really just let your oats and barley sit in water and yeast until its done fermenting.

Here is one using malt...
https://learn.eartheasy.com/guides/simplest-homemade-beer/

 

[Weedygarden]

Got a recipe for that handy? . I wonder if hops are still in good supply

I believe that once you plant hops, they come back year after year. It might be a good year for planting some.

 

[Double R]

Our stores have daily lines waiting to get in that are longer than Black Friday lines by a long shot. It’s ridiculous. Shelves are empty at all of them. I’m so glad we stocked up when this broke out in China originally. Didn’t need much to stock up but did get a bit of extra sanitizing stuff.
In CA it was a given to me if it reached here which was also a given in my opinion that it would cause a panic.
Practically no one in this state thinks ahead or preps. The panic at the stores even now shows that to still be true.

 

[angie_nrs]

I am wondering what NYC and LA will be like in a few days if the stores don't get restocked.

Of coarse, now that the panic is out of the bag, it's going to be way more difficult to calm it back down.

 

[zannej]

Walmart is about the only store around that sells toilet paper and they are apparently out (according to my friend- who found out when he was on his last roll). Samsclub used to have a 28-roll pack but now they are only 24-roll packs and it's more expensive per roll (over a $1 per roll). We got a pack last time & still had some left over from before. Gave several rolls to my friend. His fiance needs to stop using toilet paper as paper towels bc they go through it fast.
Checked samsclub & saw they are now out-of-stock on the tp.

Went to Walmart and saw they were out of hamburger meat. I'm hoping they restock soon so I can grab some. I also hope my brother won't eat all the damn chicken again.

 

[Sentry18]

Interesting to note that our Walmart received a number of trucks full of food and other items today. So they called and asked for a couple officers to standby as they unloaded for fear that the panicked and fear stricken would decide to get at the food. Apparently a few people were ejected or arrested yesterday during the frenzy and it was much worse in larger cities than it was here.

People don't seem to understand that there is a supply chain. Food and TP doesn't just magically appear at the store, manifesting directly on the shelf. Many of those empty shelves had things stocked back on them during the overnight from the back room, the back room need to replenished from the contents of trucks, those trucks get filled from distribution hubs, those hubs get restocked from manufacturers and warehouses, etc., etc., and son on. Patience is not only a virtue, it's also part of rational thought. Yes, eventually if the entire process breaks down we won't be able to go back to a store, but we are nowhere even close that happening.

Besides, those of who who live well below our means and have emergency funds available will continue to be able to purchase goods. Those who panic purchased TONS of stuff this weekend are also probably out of cash and very low on credit. Plus a lot of them just got sent home from work, some paid, some not.

 

[Weedygarden]

Interesting to note that our Walmart received a number of trucks full of food and other items today. So they called and asked for a couple officers to standby as they unloaded for fear that the panicked and fear stricken would decide to get at the food. Apparently a few people were ejected or arrested yesterday during the frenzy and it was much worse in larger cities than it was here.

I would expect that there will be more of this, but hopefully not. We did not hear about this event in your area on national news, so maybe there have been other such events and they are not being reported, so as not to create more scenarios like this. Copycats seem to lack thinking through these things and jump on the drama bandwagons.