A safe space to confess whether you panic bought toilet roll

[Peaceshout]

It’s been several years since the pandemic, lockdown, and those early months when the toilet roll disappeared from the shelves in bulk.

Yet despite it all being bought, I’ve never met anyone who panic bought toilet roll. Instead, most people are critical of the toilet roll panic buying. Someone is lying.

Given the time that’s elapsed, now is the time for the panic buyers of toilet roll to come out, admit it, and tell us whether they still have any left in the shed. No judgment, no criticism, just a safe space to unburden yourselves.

AIBU?

I also wonder how many who scream/ shouted/ ranted at the lack of supermarket slots still use them today.

I have been using the same weekly or bi-weekly slot before, during and after the pandemic and lockdown. I didn't feel lucky, felt fair

I didn't panic buy anything. I was already ready for shortages, as were lot of preppers.

Then we got a load of abuse on here because people were struggling to get what they needed.

If buying a 9 pack instead of the usual 4 pack for 2 of us counts, then sure. I do remember that the little corner shop near work moved all their toilet paper behind the counter with the booze, not sure if they were worried about theft of such a prized item.

Yup! And pasta, Diet Coke and tinned mandarins (Can't remember why mandarins specifically tbh) My working hours were weird and I struggled to get to the supermarket and had resorted to borrowing a few bloody sheets here and there so when there was a ton available in our local corner store, I stockpiled. I honestly have no regrets, shoot me.

I also during second lockdown, stockpiled tampons because in the first I couldn't get any for anything and have the most insanely heavy periods and it was a huge problem, a wonderful MNer ended up posting me some which was wonderful and looking back...insane that that's what we resorted too!

I also remember the foreign products section in the local supermarkets being totally stocked while other shelves were empty, because apparently polish pasta or Portuguese chopped tomatoes were not in such high demand 🤷🏼‍♀️

Baking to avoid going to the shops seems sensible, my mum desperately wanted flour to bake bread and a damn cake but couldn't get any, if I could've got some ofr her I would've...and myself

My boss arrived at my door with a crate of sweetcorn tins from Costco

Them days were crazee days.. park benches wrapped up in police tape an all

We had a Who Gives A Crap delivery in Feb 2020. We shared smug photos on FB.

Nope because I'm a low level prepped. I get my loo rolls from costco by the hundreds ( feels like it anyway!) So never get low.

Why should they still use them today though?

Supermarkets deliver at a loss, they don't want to do it, they do it because the customers that want it would go elsewhere -

I don't think they should do anything, but it was amusing to see people offended to be unable to find slots when they never use deliveries anyway.

The system was in place because people pay for delivery already. Only fair that they still had slots during the lockdown

No, but I panic bought a small freezer which I filled with pizza. My thought was if DH and I were incapacitated DS could survive on marguerites.

Strange times.

Nope I didn’t panic by because I saw all the signs of a pandemic and made sure I had store cupboard supplies from early January. I’d not actually thought about loo roll, but happened to buy a 24 pack not long before lockdown so that saw us through the initial shortage.

I only bought an extra packet, but bought extra pasta, tins, bottles of water (which I never buy) and thought I’d better get some for my parents. Was all stashed in the spare bedroom. My DH said what on earth are you doing 🤣

Six months later I said we’d better use that stuff before it goes out of date.

No need to panic at all!

We went on holiday the February half term just before lockdown and I had an inkling that things were ramping up not long before we went, so yes, I did buy an extra pack of loo rolls and some other essentials (sanitary wear, pasta, tinned tomatoes, paracetamol, throat sweets etc) before we went. I also ordered repeat prescriptions as soon as we could.

By the time we came back a week later I was very pleased that I had as it was more obvious that some sort of restrictions were coming, though I had no idea to what extent.

No. It was quite bizarre seeing so many people running around like headless chickens stocking up on the stuff, thereby creating a problem that isn’t exist in the first place. Never stocked up on anything, never ran out of anything.

Nope but we went into lockdown on my bloody birthday.and guess what i had as a birthday present. Gift wrapped toilet rolls!!!!!!

We would sometimes bake things for neighbours and leave them on their doorsteps.

We would regularly cook for my partner's father and leave his dinner on his doorstep since he lived on his own and we weren't allowed to eat with him.

Nope, I didn’t. Of all the things to panic buy, it wouldn’t be toilet roll.

I did, however, buy a 20 kg sack of potatoes and several emergency butternut squash. We worked our way through the potatoes over 6 months and squash will last a year. I kept them on the shelf in the kitchen and they reassured me that even if we had nothing else I’d have like a week of butternut squash we could eat through while I came up with a plan. Finally ate them maybe a year later.

I was too late to panic buy toilet roll, I clearly remember standing in Tesco staring at rows of empty shelves, not a toilet roll in sight! I did start getting a bit panicky by the time I'd gone to three other shops and not found a solitary roll - eventually found a 4 pack of cream coloured paper in a garage and pounced on it 😄.

Will unashamedly admit I stockpiled baby formula 😬went round several shops and bought 7 or 8 boxes - it was the only thing I was worried about running out of.

It’s also worth noting a lot of the shortages was just people buying what they needed for a week plus having a bit extra in the house in case you had to isolate for 14 days.

I remember reading at the time that 50% of meals people in the UK ate before lockdown were catered outside the home (so bought sandwiches, lunch from school/work canteen, takeaway dinners, breakfast at childcare etc - a packed lunch wouldn’t count as catered outside the home even though eaten outside the home). Plus the average household shopped for groceries 3 times a week. Increasing the meals being produced from your kitchen by half, and then having to shop only once a week really fucked up our supermarket stocking system.

Didn't need to as I had already created a substantial brexit stockpile.

I didn’t for us. There’s only me and DH and I’d bought a large pack a week or so before so we were fairly well stocked. I did get a couple of large packs for my elderly mum though and popped them over to her with a couple of bags of other essentials that she wanted.

What I did get was a little cheap swing bin along with small bin bags and several large packs of baby wipes. I figured if we did run out of toilet roll we could use the wipes and pop in the bin like we do in Greece ( no flushing of paper down the loo there). Never needed that option but it was good to know we had back up.

I didn’t panic buy toilet roll. In the weeks leading up to lockdown, I saw what way the wind was blowing and added a four pack to my weekly shop every week to replace what we used weekly, so the normal extra I carry over Christmas was still there. Before that, I would tend to let the stack run low some weeks and get a 9/18/24 pack when I had a chance rather that buying weekly. But I didn’t increase beyond my normal level, just didn’t let it go to the lower end of normal. I think I got a 9 pack 2 weeks before lockdown as there had been a tummy bug in the house so we’d used more than normal. But my stores were a couple of stacks in the normal spot at the bottom of the airing cupboard - and none anywhere else.

I forgot to add - my panic buying extended to a couple of new games we could play as family in the evenings, and a science kit so DD could still do some practical school work if we were homeschooling. (I did science at Uni so could make it a proper lesson - she was in second year in secondary school).

As it happened, she never used the science stuff as her school were on the ball with distance teaching within the first week and kept a fairly full timetable. DH and I were still working remotely and FT or longer hours. But the games were used a fair bit in the evenings as we were not used to all being home together that much (between long hours ant work for DH and I, and a combination of various sports and evening study in school for DD) and were not interested in just watching tv every night.