Ffs why on earth are people stock piling AGAIN 😡

[granadagirl]

Do they not realise that this is going to get to exactly The same situation we were in mo this ago!!
Queuing outside supermarkets
Long queues
Empty shelves
NO online order slots
Less deliveries, running out
hoarding excess

Please don’t let this happen AGAIN, it was
SO stressful
If everyone just does they NORMAL weekly shop, this should NOT happen

I’ve already seen empty and very low stock on shelves

Our local Tesco was a bit like this the other week running low on loo roll but seems to have settled down now.

I’m in a local lockdown area and the supermarkets near me have looked fairly normal the last few times I’ve been in. No busier than usual, plenty of stuff on the shelves.
There’s been a few things on my shopping list I couldn’t get, but it’s been small, non-worrying things like turmeric or a specific brand of teabag / pasta sauce rather than shelves completely bare of all the toilet rolls teabags / pasta sauces like they were in March.

But having said that, I can understand people stocking up a bit more at the minute. I wasn’t hearing much about cases locally over the summer, but now there’s reports of new cases popping up almost daily on my social media.
It’s making me think a lot more about the possibility of my household having to self isolate for a fortnight and then the added possibility of people who might ordinarily be able to drop off groceries (extended family / friends / neighbours) having to self isolate at the same time.

So we’re being more careful about making sure we’ve got 2 weeks worth of non-perishables in at the minute. I guess a lot of people might be feeling like that right now.

I have well stocked cupboards, not in a stockpiling sense, but have adequate supplies of everything so could probably not shop for 3 weeks or so.

I tend to shop every 10 days or so, and make sure that I restock staple goods, but also things that aren't used so often (for example, I've run out of maple syrup this week, its not something I'd have an extra bottle of. Tomato sauce on the other hand...I've usually got two in the store cupboard!)

If circumstances allow (funds, space etc) then it's sensible to have a bit extra in the cupboards.

I've just tidied my kitchen cupboards, I have far too many half bags of pasta, 3 tins of out of date chickpeas (expired 2019 so I assume bought in 2017 with ambitions of making my own hummus).

I will therefore admit to being guilty of accidental stockpiling as I tend to replace stuff when the last packet I am aware of is opened, not realising that there's others buried in the depths of the corner cupboard trapped between the dishwasher and the washing machine or in the wrong cupboard entirely!

We also seem to have a decent stash of tinned sweetcorn I had no idea we had so can cross that off the shopping list!

That's the thing with being well stocked, you also have to be organised or you're just creating waste. My pantry is quite full but it's all food we eat, nothing is in there "just in case" where I've got a few of something, like almond milk, it's rotated so we're always using the oldest and the new one goes at the end. So we use two cartons of UHT almond milk per week, I buy two each week and it rotates, I bought extra a while ago when it was on offer so we've got enough for 4 weeks.

When a bag gets opened, pasta, rice, lentils etc. it's tipped into zip lock bags (that get reused) which are easier to store than a part used bag of something loose and I know that what's currently in use, so we don't have multiple bags open.

For cereal we have containers in the kitchen cupboard, when they're empty they get filled from a new box in the pantry and I put that cereal on my list, so we always have the box on the go in the kitchen and at least one more new box (usually two) in the pantry. I keep it simple but it's organised.

I'm lucky to have space, cost wise I've invested a little here and there by buying things on offer, but now I have a stock I mostly buy a normal weeks shopping, but just rotate it with older items. I have a similar system in the freezer with zip lock bags for things like opened bags of vegetables so we never have two bags of the same thing opened and food gets used up.