Did you underestimate?

[Barbararara]

Just curious how everyone feels their preparations matched up to actual needs. I didn’t put enough thought into how eating habits would change when we are all at home. Or how many cups of coffee dh drinks at work or that I would need so many freezer bags instead of my usual boxes that take up too much space. I didn’t anticipate how much laundry washing I’d have to do - proper hot soapy washes, or that we’d want to shower after every trip out. It never occurred to me that I’d need hand cream, something I’ve barely ever used.

I really miss having a large American fridge freezer. It’s the freezer space thats challenging. More butter, bread/chapati flour, yeast, frozen yoghurt, long life milk, chocolate, Pediasure and coffee beans will be in my list if I had to prepare more. I have a decent supply of peanut butter (1kg tubs) and Hazelnut spreads as I bought them from jan end/feb first week.lot of things discussed here are still in stock at Costco if you haven’t looked at, including peanut butter, laundry liquids, cakes etc.
@ofwarren Hope you are feeling better.

Im extremely limited in what I can store but I wish I’d stocked up on chocolate!

Didn't anticipate my son heading for home at the first opportunity and decimating my wine supply. Or eating all my kit kats.

Our preps seem to be serving us fairly well. I've no flour of any kind and can't find it anywhere. Eggs too. I've done so much baking.

Annoyingly I let a few things run low to do a top up but the spread (and panic buying) happened sooner than I had expected.

Things I need to consider for preps going forward are:
Another freezer
More tinned fruit for pie fillings
More snacks
More nuts
Long life juices
Frozen bread
Kitchen roll (have used so much anti-bac)
Spare rubber gloves
Egg supply (we've talked about having our own chickens for years, if not local supply)
Entertainment - board games etc.

Sticks...for the Kelly Kettle...as in dried in the garage not green wood off the ash saplings.

A neighbour jumped over exes wall and chopped the trees down to the base with bolt cutters so there are lots of branches lying about.

DH, as he finished the last can of tonic downstairs last night, and I remarked that it was the last, was aghast - had I not got more somewhere hidden away?! Luckily, I have 1 tray of 12 in the wardrobe, and ordered 2 more in the shopping coming on Monday - but I had ordered it in a previous shop and it didn't come, so I will be rationing the 12 until I am sure of resupply.

I've just realised my sticks are outdoors and DD said it rained yesterday, forecast includes rain over the weekend. So I must get them in a bucket into the shed....

Thanks Sprayitall will try and register at Costco.
Torthecatlady bought some flour first thing this morning in Lidl, I would try there if you can. Have run out of Kitchen roll (forgot this morning)

@MarshmallowManiac Thanks! They didn't have any yesterday, but maybe I need to get there first thing instead of lunch time.
I'll try again, thank you!

Yes Torthecatlady I find that's best, I usually get to Sainsburys 15 mins b4 it opens and there's just a little queue, but with Lidl I got there 5 mins before and I managed to sneak in unnoticed (and with no queue)

Also regretting not buying another freezer for the shed!

I'm currently ill.
One of symptoms has been a throat like razor blades.
I had two Jubbly style ice pops and DH refilled with juice.

So more freeze pops next time.

I am well stocked for paracetomol. So far I needed them for two days (8 tablets) but I got off lightly. If i'd needed more and all four of us did (I know you shouldn't have prolongued use) then you might need at least 50 tablets (3 days' worth each).

But if your illness worsened or came back (which I've seen on here) then you might need 100 tablets.

Oh, wish I'd found Zinc in stock too.

We've not done too badly actually (thanks in part to all the great tips here). We are still shopping each week as I don't want to run my stash down much (I've got easy to prep food in case of illness and we've been fine so far).
I didn't think of hand cream and we bake more now so we've had to keep topping up on eggs/flour/butter.
Once this blows over we'll be considering whether we should get a chest freezer and generator.

We've been really fortunate where we are that supply issues haven't been too bad and nor has the virus. So we have been still doing weekly shops but there was a week or two where we were able to just go and buy meat/milk/youghrt/fruit & veg and leave everybody else scrambling for toilet paper and tins.
If anything this has taught me to trust my gut and disregard the naysayers and always, always have a decent stash of extra hand sanitiser, soap and toilet paper in the cupboard (patting self on back)

I eat a lot of meat (low/zero carb for health reasons) so prob could have done with more. I am going to buy a second chest freezer and a good breadmaker after this dies down (for kids to kill time making loaves, bagels, pizzas etc)

Wish I got more:-

Toothpaste
Washing up liquid
Curry noodles...These are a lot nicer than I expected.

My wish list for reprepping after this, includes

Wine
Building a rotating can system
Bread maker
Flour, yeast, etc
More wine
Foot operated washing machine (used for camping) in order to wash small loads and save electricity
More wine
Extra rice
Savings in the bank (bloody broke due to a terrible year)
More wine
Extra savoury snacks
Extra freezer
More wine

I didn't realise how important the snacks and treats would be to cheer yourself up.

No, but I am a prepper. Have been for decades.
Always a huge store of food and second chest freezer full of food in he garage.

Skeletoninatutu we’re the same - currently still doing a weekly top up shop to keep us in fresh stuff and preserve the bulk of the stores for if things get worse; but it’s been really nice to just be able to shrug my shoulders if I haven’t been able to find anything; confident I have enough at home to keep us going. I also managed to avoid the scrum of panic buyers in the first week before supermarkets introduced restrictions, and can now go shopping at random times to avoid crowds because I’m not stressing about being down to my last lentil.

Definitely Totally

Definitely Totally 😉 🍷

In challenging times, it’s important to prioritise, MarshmallowManiac 😁

It sure is

I had grossly underestimated how many tins of tomatoes we get through! I thought we barely used them but it turns out we use quite a lot! Also flour.

Toiletries is another one. Shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, tampons and toothpaste.

I didn't realise how much boredom baking would take off! I fancy baking (for no real reason tbh) but only.have 3 lots of flour so want to keeping for when it's vital!

I can only aspire to be as prepared as people on here, but I’m happy to still have 2 weeks worth of food that we haven’t had to touch yet. We have been lucky to have weekly delivery slots which I’ve used to top up in the areas we were low.

Overall, I’d underestimated how much we eat when we are having all 3 meals a day at home, never mind how much we would snack. I also hadn’t banked in my elderly father in law moving in with us temporarily so having another adult to feed.

Right now I am focussing on keeping 14-21 days of food in stock in case we have to completely isolate and can’t get further delivery slots.

I'd underestimated the amount of cooking from scratch we would do, and the amount of food recycling bags we'd get through as a result. I'd also not expected us to get through as many tubes of handcream. Overall though, I don't think we did too badly. We are buying fresh fruit,veg and milk each week and topping up any tinned or dried items from the store. We haven't really taken much from the freezer yet.