What will you do to prepare for any future lockdown?

[AwkwardAsAllGetout]

I’m assuming that even when this one is eased, we’ll be locked down again at some point in the next year. I’m wondering what I can do to make that easier and avoid the inevitable second round of panic buying. I was well prepared for this one as I’ve been a long time reader of the prepper threads and could see what was coming, so I had plenty of nappies, toiletries, loo roll and groceries long before we needed them. What I hadn’t anticipated was how much I’d long for some decent outside play equipment for the dc, which seems sold out everywhere. I’d thought ahead to my 2 dcs birthdays in April, and had all presents bought and wrapped, and made sure I had enough for their birthday cakes and party teas. Can’t say the same for the two I’ve got coming up in summer! Will you be preparing early for Christmas? What things are you likely to keep in stock now? I totally underestimated how much my dc would eat with us all being at home all day, so while I have plenty of staples like pasta and flour, my teen could eat super noodles for every meal and the amount of biscuits they’ve eaten is unreal. I think I’m going to keep up our local veg delivery as I’ve been really impressed by that. I think the thing I’m struggling with is how to plan to keep them all occupied over a possible winter lockdown, the weather is gorgeous at the minute which has made the whole thing a lot easier.

Neither long term preppers nor panic buyers caused the problem - it was the fact that most people in the supermarkets everyday during a few weeks bought a few extra things. It takes as little as that to cause supply issues.

If everyone prepped all the time it would be fine!

'Nothing really. I'd just hope people don't panic buy again. I refuse to bulk buy or prep, what ever you want to call it as it's unnecessary as long as others only buy what they need'

This ^

LemonScentedStickyBat not in my area, I witnessed one lady picking up 5 packs of butter...

I will be ensuring I have a good selection of comfy lounging wear And lots of pens and paper in my home office.

If lockdown is in the winter I will need warm clothes so the heating bill doesn’t go through the roof.

A fully stocked first aid kit would be handy, and a selfie stick😂

Food colouring - I quite fancy making rainbow spaghetti and it's great for science experiments with the kids. I bought baking bits, but not enough fun baking bits, so I will buy some hundreds and thousands and little silver ball thingummies as well. Pipe cleaners, PVA glue, embroidery threads and tapestry canvas. A new board game or two. Ink cartridges. Books. Larger warm pyjamas for kids. Christmas pressies is a great idea - I'd be mortified if Santa didn't visit.

Refuse all you like. But I don't have to stress about feeding the family. Hope you don't either. If you manage that with empty shelves at home but magically not needing to go to the shops, good on you.

But most preppers didn’t buy any extra. I haven’t bought any extra in lockdown. I’ve bought what I needed. I still have my stores, only slightly depleted where I had to use stuff I couldn’t get hold of: pasta, tinned tomatoes and the like.

Savings?
When I was a teen I met a woman who would only marry with an engagement ring that cost 3 months her fiancè wage.
I thought she was barmy but she explained that if they can save and plan ahead for their family even before they met, it would give her financial security etc.
Now I think I'm the barmy one. I've never had that level of savings since I met DP.

I know but those are the panic buyers, surely.
When everyone else was running around trying to find loo rolls, we had loads that we'd bought over the past year. We didn't buy any, so the preppers really helped in this scenario.
Prepping makes good sense, panic buying doesn't.
We still have lots left, obviously we've used some over lockdown.
Next time we go out if there's plenty in the shop we'll buy a pack of 8 or even 16. We'll never buy 50 rolls at a time, that's ridiculous.

Move to Sweden.

The only thing I would do is make sure I had Birthday presents covered.

Wouldn’t bother with food stuff as we found that even though some shelves were empty there was other stuff to make a meal with

All those people saying there's no need to stockpile aren't really right. You need food to keep you going through a potential self-isolation.

Of course, Devlesko, if you wanted that many toilet rolls you’d buy a box of 48 from Who Gives A Crap. Like I did in February.
My regular order every few months.

I prepped for Brexit, and have 3 months worth of food in the house - I've been doing my normal weekly shop, rotating as usual. I didn't go to the shops during the bog roll riots because why would I?!

My extended family took the piss out of me endlessly over the Brexit thing, but all of them have said they were jealous of my full cupboards when it was looking bad back in mid March.

Now it's mostly back to normal, they presumably think I'm nuts again. Ah well, I'm going to carry on until Brexit is finalised and we're definitely not 'no deal' exiting.

We didn't prep or panic buy, so far we've managed. Loo roll was looking tight but managed to get some just in time.

I think the supermarket restrictions on entry and distancing could be in place for a year or more, but online delivery will be scaling up in capacity and hopefully improving access to priority slots for the elderly and high risk.

The most you need is a couple of weeks of food.
Prepping for months at a time is not needed.

I wouldn’t know where we would put 1 weeks shopping let alone 2 weeks or 3 months

Atm we are eating a lot of salads so they have to be bought fresh.
We eat a lot of vegetables and more than a couple of bags of frozen peas or mixed veg and with everything else in there my freezer is full

Move to a house with a garden as soon as we can. Cannot go through another lockdown in a small flat, with no outside space with a 3 year old and new baby again!

I naturally am a prepper whereas DH isn’t at all. We usually manage to compromise on getting two items if they are on offer but then DH always insists we should finish up the second one before getting more whereas I like to have one in use and one in the cupboard. I also tend to buy big bags of things, even if we don’t need it all at once - so a bag of 100 dishwasher tablets instead of 20. Thankfully it meant we had food and things in for the lockdown, which unexpectedly began early for us due to DCs having temperatures. However, it wasn’t food I would have normally chosen and we did struggle to lot to get certain things. At least these past few weeks have taught me to be more creative with meals.

I do believe we will be in a lockdown again at the end of the year, so will make sure Christmas presents (especially stocking fillers for the children) are bought and wrapped early on. I’ll also make sure we do have one thing in use and one in the cupboard from now. Otherwise the only things we didn’t have and would have benefited from were tinned fruit, A4 plain paper, sticks for the vegetables to have as support in the garden, and printer ink.

I'd buy a job lot of hot tubs and sell to the selfish twats with more money than sense.

I want to book a chimney sweep to sort out our chimney. Normally I’d wait until October but I’ll be booking him early this year.

I’ll be topping up batteries, checking fire alarms are working and that I have spare batteries specifically for those, buying spare lightbulbs (we have a ridiculous array of bulb types). I’m going to book a boiler service too and get a plumber to look at a couple of minor (I hope) things I’ve been ignoring.

My bbq has died of old age so I’ll be looking to pick up one in the summer, partly as a back up cooking system if there’s a power cut.

I’m considering going grey, for a lower maintenance look. I’ve never been keen on dye anyway but felt a social pressure to conform.

I’ll be stocking up on stamps, full price ones and some 10c ones. I nearly had a heart attack when I saw that An Post had hiked the price again this March. Thankfully they postponed the rise due to c-19 but it would have meant putting two stamps on a letter otherwise.

I had a lot of non food items stocked up. I tend to bulk buy these when they’re on special offer (which is what shops intend so I don’t think this affects supply in the slightest). I’ve been so grateful not to need tinfoil or toothpaste when I’m trying to keep to Tesco’s 80 items. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to build these up again in the summer. There’s no downside to having extras of things that don’t go off, and will definitely get used up.

Ideally I’d like a shoe size measure. I bought the dc new shoes at the beginning of March, thinking I was really on the ball. But they haven’t worn shoes for more than an hour a day since lockdown so that was a total waste! I imagine that won’t be the case in the winter.

I have socks for the dc in the next size up, I’ll be getting underwear as well. I do this anyway - buy two sets at a time and put one away.

I’m dithering about a bread maker. It’s a lot of money but the convenience of freshly cooked bread could be worth it. But if I do I’d consider bulk buying flour too. I’m just not sure that it’s worth the outlay.

I’ve planted some veg in the garden. I’d like to be more self sufficient. But that’s unrealistic. I will try and buy compost for next year in the autumn if it’s reduced. I want to up my game on vegetable storage too.

I think Christmas is likely to be a very simple affair this year. I’m expecting to order gifts online to be delivered. And I think there will be an increase in people opting out of gift exchanges. I already have crackers, gift wrap and cards, and a few small things put aside so I could cobble together a half decent Christmas in the morning if I had to.

I will be getting extra printer cartridges and paper as these have been important for homeschooling.

I’ve been keeping track of how much we eat/how fast we get through things so I’m a lot clearer now about what a months worth of supplies is.

We will finally get our boiler fixed, the plumber was due to come on the first day of the lockdown and cancelled. It’s limping along, luckily but that can’t last for ever.

So far we have been able to get most things - eg SKY sent a really lovely repair man on Monday and he replaced the very old broken satellite dish - he didn't come in the house and we stood apart. We had a car repair a week before that (and MOT) - the garage with 6 lads working in there looked delighted - they need work to carry on and had the fewest cars I have seen in there ever - they have been going since the 1920s in the same place.

A lot of people are not aware that the law says everyone can work and travel to work and travel at work (unless they could work from home - which most cannot) even if they are not in any kind of essential service. There are also laws that certain shops must close but definitely not garages.

Xenia even if people are still going to work there are far fewer leisure/school run/shopping miles being driven. This means longer service intervals, less damage to repair, far less MOT work. I expect that a lot of two car families are only really using one car at the moment.

DH has suggested buying some huge dumpy bags that we can put on the drive and use like a skip, until such time as we are able to get an actual skip or go to the tip

Hippo bag are still delivering bags and then doing collections I think.