I began giggling the other day when I read several social media posts about which stores had toilet paper available. My giggle was soon overtaken by my stress, and I found myself belly laughing at the thought of people choosing toilet paper as their most dire need.
I mean, when I think of the world ending, toilet paper doesn’t even cross my mind, to be completely honest, but, yet, toilet paper seized our country’s attention for at least a week. And why?
It’s easy to understand, the hoarding, I mean. I completely get the thought process behind it, which is probably why I bought so many of those little hollow chocolate bunnies in the seasonal aisle the other day. I mean, if I am going to be shut in my home for weeks or months then I want some chocolate shut in with me.
Wait a minute! I think I may have just hit on something!
“If I am going to be shut in my home for weeks or months …”
We don’t know how long this is going to go on, do we? Not only that, but we didn’t have any preparation for it. This pandemic didn’t come with a 10-day outlook from a meteorologist. There wasn’t any time to wrap our heads around it. I was thinking about it this morning and can’t even remember when I first paid attention to COVID-19. It seems like I knew on Friday, March 13th, that schools were closed indefinitely and then it’s as if the panic was immediate.
Panic Began When Schools Closed
People were rushing to the stores to stock up on the essentials, which included toilet paper, without taking the time to really think about what was going on and what was going to happen. I remember our trip to the grocery stores that first weekend (and I used “stores” because every store was out of everything, forcing us to stay out in public even longer as we searched from store to store for what we needed). The amount of food and bottled water and paper products being purchased was unbelievable! We were quite alarmed by it all, and you would have thought that we were about to be ordered to our house or be put under arrest.
It was if people thought that if they didn’t buy enough stuff to last for months that they wouldn’t be allowed back out of their homes to get it.
The thing about panic buying – “hoarding” if you will – is that it causes a trickle-down of shortage and problems for others. Let’s stick with the toilet paper theme. I go to three stores and can’t find any Charmin to squeeze so when I find some at store number four, I am more apt to take two or three times more than I need because my brain is focused on the fear factor, and it’s even more alarmed because shelves are bare.
I’m trying to be a little lighthearted here, but the fact is that hoarding, especially when done out of fear and panic, puts people in bad positions when people who don’t have the privilege of buying what they want when they want. I, for one, can’t afford to buy two-month’s-worth of toilet paper and food at one time. If you think being stuck in the middle of a pandemic is bad, try being stuck in a pandemic with no money.
But there are other things, too. Take, for instance, the moms on WIC. You are only permitted to buy certain items on WIC, including types of baby formula, so when the shelves are empty, you’re screwed. You can’t walk into a store with WIC and walk out with anything you want because there are strict guidelines to your purchasing, so if what you’re allowed to buy is gone then you’re out of luck. I know we’ve all seen the blue and white “WIC” labels on shelves in the grocery stores. So, hoarding negatively affects Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) who are in need of food and formula.
Prepping or Hoarding?
There’s a definite difference between preparing and hoarding. Preparing, or stockpiling, is done over time with conscious thought, and it’s usually done knowing that you will have supplies to share with others. Intent has a lot to do with the difference. Preparing would be more like rotating the goods in your pantry and donating to local feeding programs while hoarding would be shoving it all into the pantry and keeping it all to yourself.
Hoarding in a crisis situation causes a new crisis situation. I saw this morning that several people here in my city were posting about the hoarders who bought all of the cleaning supplies since the pandemic began. There was a lot of flash flooding here last night, and today people can’t find the cleaning supplies they need to clean up their homes after the flood because – you guessed it – the COVID-19 panic has emptied the shelves.
And, even though I get why people are freaking out in the midst of the national emergency, I have to ask you to take a deep breath and stop hoarding. Stockpiling and preparing is fine and understandable as well, but we have to take a pause and realize that we can still go to the store when we run out of things. If we prepare for two weeks at a time then there will be enough for everyone, and believe me, no one wants to hear the cries of a mother of an infant who doesn’t know what to do because she can’t find any formula at the store and her baby can’t survive without it.
Take a breath. We’ll get through this. Toilet paper doesn’t save lives.
Stay well.
Onward,
Amy Jo
