Hi, first time poster here. We are a household of two; our first child is due around Valentine's Day. Both of us struggle at the moment with mental health issues; DW has bipolar type 2 (making her vulnerable to depression) plus OCD and anxiety. Fortunately we live in the Nottingham area which has extremely good perinatal services on the NHS for mothers and children with mental health issues. I'm suffering with depression; I got made redundant for the third time in 3 years back in mid May (I was head of supply chain for a medium sized company). I've only just accepted my health issues so have had a first GP appointment but am keen to try to recover in time for the birth.
Being into supply chain, warehousing comes naturally to me (including at the home level) as does figuring out what might be a problem; we got lucky for Covid19 in March because we did our panic shopping 3 weeks before the rest of the country did because I'd seen reports of panic buying happening in Asia.
Disclaimer, we have a heck of a lot of available storage space and because we rent we have two fridges and freezers and are taking full advantage. DW is veggie but I'm not.
The UK's wheat harvest (as several have pointed out) has been the worst for 40 years. In a normal year the UK imports about 15% of its grain requirements for flour; much of that 15% is bread flour that comes in from Canada in grain form (rather than flour) because the UK has sufficient milling facilities. The remainder is primarily made up of softer French grains (for French style bread such as baguettes) and German grain is imported usually to balance off any shortcomings in the UK harvest. If interested, the national association for British and Irish Millers (NABIM) has more on the topic here: www.nabim.org.uk/imports-and-exports. I did the maths on our bread consumption (we like wholemeal seeded loaves) and ordered a bunch of white strong bread flour plus wholemeal strong bread flour plus yeast from dove farms via Amazon (way cheaper than going direct to them) plus mixed seeds in bulk from forest whole foods (4 working days later and I'm still waiting for that to arrive). Note that the shelf life of flour can be extended if you're lucky enough to have fridge - or even better freezer - space, Google for more info on that. I think yeast can be too.
In terms of non food items, we have stocked up on freezer bags, baking paper and foil and I will experiment with beeswax in lieu of cling film (on environmental grounds rather thanf brown stuff hitting the fan grounds). Beeswax is super easy to make and a fun easy project to involve children in; get some fat quarters (fabric) from a haberdashery, Hobbycraft is ideal, order in some food grade beeswax pellets, a quick bake to melt the pellets into the fabric and bobs your uncle. There are lots of DIY how to videos available plus info on how to take care of them, no need to overpay and buy premade beeswax fabric. Matches, a second hot water bottle are on the list as are candles in case of power failures which I read is a possibility.
Other things in the non food section include a few light bulbs, several large bottles of fairy liquid, several tubes of toothpaste (don't buy the expensive Colgate, the cheap stuff is the same thing, see www.hovedentalclinic.co.uk/blog/whats-the-best-toothpaste/ if you're not convinced). I too noticed a shortage of dish sponges and green scratchy cloths so they're on the buying list. We got married just under two years ago and DW went heavy on fairy light decoration so we still have several dozen AA Duracell batteries for torches. Hand soap is rapidly piling up as is shampoo, shower gel and cleaning products, dishwasher tablets, dishwasher salt, dishwasher rinsing liquid, Brillo pads, laundry detergent and of course loo rolls. I also tossed in two bottles of Mr muscle drain unblocker liquid. DW also has enough pregnacare pills to last the remainder of the pregnancy. I've also ordered three tubes of body shop hemp hand cream. It's absolutely amazing for fixing painfully cracked dry hands; winter is a problem for both of us for that anyway without increased hand washing.
Christmas presents; in a normal year I'd be at least halfway through by now because I hate shopping in December but prepping for our baby's arrival and endless searching for a job plus brexit prepping has left Christmas on the back burner but at least we stocked up on Christmas cards and wrapping paper for silly prices last January.
Car - MOTs got extended due to Covid19 but that extension ends at the beginning of October. End result, there'll be double the usual demand on garages (delayed April MOT plus normal October MOT) and that'll last for the next six months. Our main car is due for a MOT early October and so is already booked in before it dawns on many people they need to do something and there's no space left. In terms of car prep we have two 5 litres of screenwash plus deicer.
Dog prep; Fido is wading his way through his monthly jumbo sized box of Wainwright's; an Amazon monthly subscription turned out to be the cheapest solution for us but he'll get 4 boxes of it. On a side note, if you have a dog and are interested, www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/the-dog-food-directory is a real eye opener about the true quality of the food you give them. So many major brands are such rubbish it's alarming. We will also heavily load up on all his treats.
Main courses for humans: a lot of dried pasta (wholemeal), wholemeal rice, several packets of soup broth mix (good for bulking out stews and soups), oohh just realised haven't got any pearl barley, ten boxes of passata, 3 large bottles of tomato ketchup (DW practically inhales it), just over 50 cans of chopped tomatoes, about 20 cans of chickpeas, 20 cans of sweetcorn (DW loves the stuff), about 100 cans covering every kind of bean you can think of, various canned veg (although potatoes are only for frying up for breakfasts or to hide in curries, ditto the peas for curries only). We are getting a second can opener just in case. There's also various dried herbs and spices to make things tasty. If you can go hit an Asian store for herbs and spices as they're usually far cheaper than the mainstream supermarket chains.
Comfort: Two tubs of quality Street and two of celebrations (be careful with best before date, ours only last until end of Jan 21), popcorn kernels (easy to cook, good comfort food), 4.5 kg of self raising flour and the same of plain flour to cover cakes and biscuits plus 9kg of granulated sugar (a quick whiz in any kind of smoothie maker can convert it into caster sugar and a bit more whizzing makes it into icing sugar). 8kg of unsalted butter are in the freezer for baking (they will keep for months) as are several packs of instant pastry, we have 4 months worth of lidl fake Lurpak also in the freezer and slowly but surely the freezer is filling up with an awful lot of grated mozzarella, red Leicester and cheddar (the texture when defrosted can put off some but we will use them for the likes of cheese toasties, pasta bakes and cauliflower cheese soup). The remaining space in the freezer will be for spinach (lots of iron) and frozen berries (we like them on cereal / granola).
Not in the freezer: oat milk. We love the stuff but the texture goes all kinds of wrong and you need to restrain it and I haven't got time for that. That sits on the shelf life. Be careful, Oatly whilst much nicer than Alpro or supermarket versions doesn't last as long so check the BBE dates. Talking of oat milk I've also got two tins of Aldi hot chocolate powder (so much nicer than the green and blacks posh version). Also talking of drinks, I'm building up a stash of alcohol for me - there are several bottles of wine for DW post birth if she's allowed them with breast feeding (haven't got that far in our parenting books).
Everything edible or drinkable has been labelled with month and year BBE dates using standard white sticky labels to make it quickly obvious what is or isn't going out of date. I'm pondering whether to get some newborn sized nappies or not just in case. We were thinking of going down the reusable ones route.