Stocking up for the fall/winter

[Tradd]

How is everyone doing with keeping stuff stocked at home? I only do Amazon Fresh delivery now. It’s rare I go into a grocery store unless it’s for something quick or to visit the pharmacy for my allergy meds. I’ve got a good bit of paper goods, canned goods, toiletries, and laundry detergent, etc.

[Teacher Terry]

Luckily I am not seeing any shortages. I only grocery shop every 2-3 weeks and now with my son gone things last a long time.

[rosarugosa]

I'm seeing occasional holes in inventory, but usually only for a few weeks for any particular item. If I didn't have the ability to buy things online, cat food would probably be a pretty big issue, but we are currently well stocked.

[happystuff]

I guess we are doing okay. I did notice starting to run low on tp (at least what I consider "low" - lol). Everything else is doing okay, so far.

[Tiam]

There's certainly a hysterical element crowd out there. But I notice Walmart gets the most scared supply chain posts.

[Tradd]

Doing my annual winter stock up via Amazon. Cases of Progresso (chicken noodle) and Chunky (veggie) soups. So much cheaper than my usual local chain grocery store. Miracle Whip, tuna pouches, dill pickle relish, and small plastic bottles of OJ. Cheerios. Good whole wheat crackers. All cheaper than locally.

I’m good on toiletries and paper goods.

I like the quarts of UHT shelf stable milk from Dollar Tree. Pretty much the only thing I buy there. Found out you can buy cases of 12 online with free delivery to the store. $1.25 a quart. Since it’s just me, this means there is no waste.

Shopping this way means I just go to the grocery store for fresh stuff, yogurt, cheese, eggs, bagels, bread, and lunchmeat. I’d order my bagels via Amazon if I could! But you can only get them via Amazon Fresh. I buy apples for my fruit as they will last for a few weeks in the fridge. I can often go three weeks between hitting the local grocery if I stock up enough.

[frugal-one]

With all the government turmoil lately I feel the need to stock up on groceries and to have extra cash on hand.

[Rogar]

The garden was decent enough this year to freeze a few containers of sauce for pastas and and whole tomatoes for soups. I am in the Rancho Gordo Bean club and get a delivery of heirloom dried beans every few months. I have a few pounds that have accumulated and will be good to cook in the cold months.

I buy firewood for my wood stove fireplace insert every year. I can get something they call "city mix", which is hardwood from city trees trimmed or removed by a tree trimming company. It seems like a decent use of a resource, but I've taken some guesses on energy savings and the wood cost is pretty much a wash for utility savings. It's nice esthetics, though. I only use it on the coldest of days. Radiant heat feels more warming that hot air heat, or so it seems.

A have an Ego electric lawnmower and then last year picked up one of their snowblowers when a surgery prohibited shoveling. So I have three of their large batteries that just happened to be compatible with one of the Ego power stations. They give a few hours of AC power as an emergency power source. I usually loss power a couple or few times in the winter for a few hours or even a day or two and could run a router/modem for a couple of days or the fan on the wood stove for a few hours or some other light short term uses. Not a huge expense and a tempting consideration.

[Tradd]

With all the government turmoil lately I feel the need to stock up on groceries and to have extra cash on hand.

I agree with you. I need to pick up some cold remedies. I got my flu/covid vaccines today. I’m working on paying down debt, as aggressively as possible, although I need to sock away more cash.

[Tradd]

I’ve been having a few car battery issues (now solved), but I got one of the car starter batteries just in case. I also got one of the Jackery battery generators last year. I will use it to charge my phone in a power outage (can recharge it about 35 times). It was the 300 model and I paid about $300. I also got a better emergency radio with the NOAA weather alerts. Well reviewed in the NYT Wirecutter review section.

I made sure to get two favorite fantasy trilogies in paperback, just to have something hard copy to read (I do nearly all ebooks).