In the days before we went into lockdown back in March, I remember having a feeling of gathering everything in and closing the shutters. We went to the grocery store two days in a row, and I felt like a squirrel in autumn. I went to Target, and there was no hand sanitizer and no hand soap, and I bought laundry detergent and shampoo and toilet paper and ibuprofen and Dayquil/Nyquil, and wondered what else I should bring into our burrow. We picked up one college student and then the other, and as I came up the driveway with the second one, I thought, “There. Now we are tucked in. We can lock the doors and hunker down.”
I am having that gather-in feeling again now. Instead of considering my grocery store’s month-long paper-towel shortage no big deal, I ordered some online—and, when they arrived this morning, I brought them into the house with that squirreling-away-acorns feeling. When I placed another order last night, I got an extra box of cereal, extra cans of fruit, extra peanuts and raisins. Not hoarding, but provisioning: buying the things we will need, and will use. Preparing.
Part of it is that I live in an area that gets a fair amount of snow, and so I am already in the category of person that memes make fun of for wanting to have adequate food in the house before we can’t get out safely for a couple of days, and that is apparently endlessly hilarious, NOT THAT I’M BITTER. And so even in normal times, fall gives me the feeling that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a few extra cans of soup, an extra pack of toilet paper, an extra jar of peanut butter. In pandemic times, and when our school system has reported their first confirmed case of Covid-19, and when we are just over a month from a presidential election in which one candidate is already calling fraud and encouraging his supporters to turn to violence if he doesn’t win, it feels like maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get TWO extra jars of peanut butter, by which I mean ten.
I feel this. I am already a person who tends toward food hoarding even in normal times. If it makes you feel better, the family I work for recently bought enough provisions to stay inside their home for a full MONTH after the election, if needed. Wait why would that make you feel better?! I just meant in the “you’re not alone” sense. ANYWAY.
“You’re not alone” is a very reassuring message in these times.
My theory is that if I want to stress shop I will do the least financial damage if I just stock up on practical things we will eventually use anyway…but also I might just finish Christmas shopping this month. At least for the kids.
I’ve already begun looking for items for our cursed Advent Calendar (WHY ARE THE BOXED SO SMALL)-this is by far the earliest I’ve started on that (CURSED) project.
*BOXES uggh it makes me so angry I can’t type
I feel like you could set Swistle readers loose on this task with dimensions and some basic guidelines on preferences.
I’M GAME
This is the biggest cop-out ever, but what I do for our wooden advent calendar is buy an advent calendar from the previous year and use those things. This year he will have tiny tiny star wars characters from a 2019 advent calendar that I bought 75% off in March (online).
What is the point, you ask? Now is not the time for questions. (I do sometimes put candy in too, so it makes it feel like I customized it).
Oh, and I also have a food hoarder tip! I don’t know what your freezer situation looks like (we have TWO garage freezers in addition to our regular kitchen freezer YES I KNOW we only have 3 people living here I don’t want to talk about it)-a lot of companies that normally sell to school cafeterias are offering deals on bulk food right now (Food Service Direct is one, there are others). They also sell things you can’t get elsewhere, like school pizza and Bosco sticks (a favorite here).
I AM VERY INTERESTED IN THIS TOPIC
Me too! That website is a wormhole that I could poke around in for hours. I don’t have SPACE for 1000 packets of Grey Poupon, but oh, how I want them!
We’re definitely stocking up an additional layer as well.
I have not seen the memes you are referring to, but I *did* always think it was slightly weird, when I lived in an Annual Snow-Based Power Outage Area, that people stocked up on milk. I mean, I guess you can put snow in a cooler box for the milk? But still. Stocking up on fridge things when yes, you can freeze things by putting them outside, but no, your fridge is not working: that seemed weird to me. But I’m also not a big milk person.
(but making sure you have enough food and toilet paper to last through 1. a really nasty flu or 2. a decently-sized snowstorm: this is just smart, really? And in Pandemic Year, that’s extended a fair bit by COVID lasting longer than your average flu and also the random shortages. And in Election Oh Hey He Actually Told White Supremacist Militia to “Stand By” and in a slightly more purple city within a red state, it… makes even more sense. We’re trying to 1. not go nuts, 2. buy mostly only things that either we will eat before they hit expiration date or that we can donate to the food pantry in early February, 3. not miss gaps [like “oh, we have a dozen cans of sterno for power outages and… no matches, oops” or similar things and this is really obnoxious, hard, and unpleasant to think through], and 4. not go nuts in general [it is hard, thus not going nuts is on the list twice].)
But there has been that satisfied-squirrel feeling in previous years, when we have reached the Enough For Blizzard/Flu Season level. I am not very optimistic about feeling that this year, but maybe?
I am right there with you. RIGHT THERE.
Just so you know, here’s my stocking-up list:
Extra tp, extra boxes of tissues (PLUS more actual hankerchiefs), another large pack of tea towels (I don’t know why? I guess because we’ve been washing them every three or four days?), more canned fruit (and I’m using up the expiring canned fruit in upside-down cakes), more snacking foods and ingredients to make snacking foods.
I bought 30 pounds of dried beans/split peas/lentils. THIRTY POUNDS. But that’s because Target had their store brand for super cheap, and free delivery for over $30 something dollars. So we’re making and freezing a lot of soup. A LOT OF SOUP. And chicken broth for future soup. Which is also very hunkering downish.
I read EVERY WORD with GREAT INTEREST. I bought a lot of tissues and hankies at the beginning, and we still have some of those, but I may have gotten complacent about how many we have; I need to check. I have bought rather a lot of beans and rice—and also seasonings, because if it comes down to eating beans and rice, I will be glad to have spices. The mention of soup is reminding me to buy the 15-bean soup mix I love: delicious AND comes with a seasoning packet!
I think if I had a lot of children I too would want to be sure I am Prepared. I don’t have children and live in Texas so it is not a concern for me at all. But I am still with you!
I know how you feel. My parents and grandparents stocked up for winter with a freezer and cellar shelves stocked full of vegetables and fruit. I did the same when my children were little as we also had a garden. It felt wonderful! You have a herd of growing children and young men at home who must regularly eat you out of house and home. In your case,I might be tempted to order cases of soup, Ramen noodles, peanut butter and frozen chicken pot pies.
Adding chicken pot pies to my costco list. what a lovely & comforting idea to have in the freezer!
It is very reassuring to hear I am not the only one thinking this way. In before times, I had one “pantry” closet (with 2 shelves). Now, to accommodate my growing anxiety, I’ve expanded my pantry to another closet (with 3 shelves). That’s 5 shelves of groceries for 1 person! And still I worry.
At my old job that was requiring me to work in the office (despite the fact that my job could be done entirely from home, the office was officially closed, and the county shelter in place order required that I be home), even in these pandemic times I would make regular trips to the store (not as regular before, but still probably weekly, and this is outside of my husband’s grocery shopping), to check out The State of Affairs, as well as to MAINTAIN the stockpiles I had built up. What good is my extra pack of toilet paper going to do me if I use it and then we have no extra packs? I want to MAINTAIN the existence of an extra pack.
Now I have a truly remote job, and I never leave my house, and I don’t need to leave my house, but it makes me feel like I am not able to casually buy a bottle of tylenol, and it’s very anxiety-producing. I feel our STORES are dwindling, and just as they’re really NEEDED too.
OH! Jenny! Old blog reader here that’s super happy to see your comment, even though… ugh. Yes. Dwindling.
I remember just as things were starting to go South and it was becoming clear that things were changing, I said to a baby group that I’d heard that Covid was our generation’s war. Everyone scoffed at me but I’m not so sure they’d scoff now.
Should we meet back here in 8 – 10 months to remind each other to check expiration dates?
I was 35 when I moved into a family home that my grandparents built and lived in. I always say that no one has ever moved out of here, they just die and leave their stuff behind. When I cleared out a cupboard in the basement I found jars of home canned items. Food that my grandmother had canned. She died 5 years before I was born. Why yes, it was just as delightful as your imagination suspects!
Meanwhile, I am also stocking up as if I am cooking for a crowd. It’s just me. Sigh
I’m starting to get that March 11 feeling all over again. Glad I’m not alone in noticing a subtle shift in the force.
Oh yay! I had actually been considering asking you to post about this very issue, Swistle, and now, look!, you have done so.
Um, yes. I can imagine any number of scenarios, not all of them bad, where it might be useful to have hunkering-down handy. Suppose, for example, that in 2021 the federal leadership in the U.S. decided we need to have a “hard” lockdown for quite some time to reduce the spread of the pandemic. That — I am envisioning it resulting from various other changes I am hoping for, ahem — is something I’d be very much in favor of. But I’d also want to be well provisioned before it arose. So.
I have not been systematic about this so far, but of all the stuff we eat that comes in cans, I am trying to have an extra Costco-sized set of it, stashed. So, for example, ~8 cans each of green beans, peas, corn, diced tomatoes, black beans, peaches (this is for a household of 4, 2 of whom are me and my mom and, being middle-aged/elderly women, we can subsist on, well, pretty much nothing. It’s one of our two superpowers, invisibility of course being the other). Now! Obviously I need to stock up on some dried goods (rice, beans) and other things, but still, it’s a start. I’ve also been stashing cans of various forms of chicken soup (rice, noodles), because it can’t hurt, and hey! what if we got sick …
So. Yes. Provisioning. Good to know I’m not alone.
I find it interesting that preparing early for blizzards is something that is mocked. I live in central Florida, and we mock the people who *don’t* prepare for hurricane season and then panic buy when a storm forms. And since we are in peak hurricane season, I’m ready to hunker down.
I used to read a blogger who was living on her own in Chile. She wrote about the joys of going to the market for fresh produce every couple of days and not keeping much in her apartment. At the time I had two little kids. The warm feeling I had about having a huge bale of TP in my basement was such a contrast to her outlook. I know the satisfying feeling of a full larder.
In September we finished the 10# bag of rice bought in March. Time to get a new one.
Oh how I want to provision /stock up and I have but being a vegetarian means trying to figure out all the fresh produce we will use before it becomes a pile of sad brown sludie at the bottom of the produce drawer. Canned greens are not for us and I have a limited amount of freezer space, 2.1 cf ? Tell me urban dwellers, how do you do it? I tried the delivery services for fresh groceries but supply was spotty and my stores sent some odd substitutions . should I get a freezer? Then upright or chest? Aaack I want to prepare!
Family of 5, living downtown speaking. For stocking up times, freezer space must be used scrupulously: no ice packs, no ice cubes, no ice cream, no convenience foods in air-filled boxes. If things are bad, you will be home anyway so don’t need convenience foods. Do fill the freezer with “planned-overs,” which pack well and can be a way of using up piles of produce before they spoil. Some planned-overs do well in the fridge too, e.g., homemade soups and stews and apple-sauce in thermally-sealed mason jars, even if you don’t go the full nine yards with sterile canning. We also caved and got a second-hand small fridge (a little smaller than a dishwasher, say) since we go through a LOT of milk and two weeks-worth of milk took up a lot of the fridge.
I would honestly also revisit the “not for you” assessment for canned vegetables and other canned items. Mainly because we have done that with a number of things, and it isn’t the end of the world. There have been times since all this began when a weird shortage at the grocery store has prompted a substitution with something I wouldn’t normally use. Or when the grocery store picker picked the produce I wanted, but but they picked things that were too far on the going-bad side of the equation to use. (Mold has been a frequent issue.) I’ve been leaning on canned or dried goods as substitutes in sauces, casseroles, and soups, and the results have been fine. If you can get fresh, that’s wonderful… but if you can’t, it’s good to have shelf-stable back-ups.
(And I would also say yes to an additional freezer if you can get one. We looked in August for one we could put in our garage, and discovered that in our area, the ones with the size/quality/price we wanted were mostly on backorder until February. )