One of the benefits of the pandemic is that I now buy paper goods in bulk.
I don’t know why I never did it before. Maybe because I live by myself and I never thought that I’d go through that much toilet paper to warrant purchasing 24 rolls at a time. But, when we experienced a national (or was it global?) toilet paper shortage, I kicked myself for only buying six or eight rolls at a time.
I remember walking into Target, Costco, and other major supermarket chains during the spring and summer of 2020 and blinking at the empty shelves. Furniture polish was plentiful but paper goods were gone.
Some 20 months after the pandemic began, my walk-in hallway closet’s upper shelves are stacked with rolls of toilet paper and paper towels, boxes of tissue paper, and non-paper surplus such as freezer bags, dishwasher detergent pacs, and (of course) disinfectant wipes.
I think I’m saving money by buying more at once instead of a little bit at a time. If nothing else, I know that I’m saving gas and mileage by driving to the store less.
Leave it to a pandemic to force me to change my purchasing ways — for the better.
If you were alive that day, then I don’t need to tell you that my eyes were glued to TVs the rest of the morning. Later that day and for the rest of the week, I channel surfed to gain different camera angles and unedited commentaries. Because social media tools didn’t exist in the way they exist today, I was addicted to knowing what was happening as it happened.