Stockpiling, hoarding or restocking?

If you’ve been keeping up with the latest news, you may have heard about some parts of Asia finding it difficult to purchase home staples like rice and toilet paper. You may have also heard that countries recently such as the USA, New Zealand and here in Australia were sent into a scare after being advised that they should “slowly” start stocking up on at least 2 weeks worth of food in preparation for the Coronavirus outbreak. I can assure you that “slowly” has sent parts of Australia into a frantic scare and paranoia with shelves emptying out and staff at the supermarket are having a hard time restocking which has also left people thinking supply has become scarce. While it’s true that hand sanitisers and masks were first things flying off the shelves and leaving the supermarket shelves empty for a couple of weeks, it’s not so much true with other products as for now.

While it’s true that shelves are emptying out really quickly, it did send my family and I into a bit of a panic. There are certain things that Mum likes to stock up on such as toilet paper, tuna, nut bars and pasta. My family can be big eaters so it’s always been normal for Mum to stock up extras as they do get consumed or used up quickly especially when we are a family of 5 with frequent visitors especially on the weekends.

Since moving out, I tend to prep out a week’s menu and buy only what I need for for our meals. I grew up in a family where if we wasted food as kids, we had that talk from the parents to sit and think about the less fortunate kids in the world. This is still hammered into me and I would honestly feel bad if I can’t finish my meal or throw food away. Hubby has started to have the same mindset as I do after spending all these years with me.

As mentioned in my previous post, we have started packing in preparation to move into our new home. We have been trying for a couple of weeks to finish up the food in the fridge as we don’t want it to go to waste during the move when the fridge is disconnected. The weather in Sydney is still very warm and we don’t want the food to spoil and go to waste.

Currently our fridge is at this state:

It is emptying out the way we wanted with a few things which will be fine by end of the week. This was all in preparation for our move. Unfortunately the frenzy people are in have made us rethink all this as we kept thinking of what if there’s an epidemic tomorrow? Or even before we move? Seeing photos on our social media shared by friends and on the news of empty shelves got us worried. All these tallied up and sent us straight to the shops.

We got to the shops at 11:30pm, only 30 minutes before the supermarket was about to close. We quickly went through isles to purchase again, our week’s worth of dinner and lunch plus a few dry, canned and long shelf life foods like pasta, oats, jelly, spam, bottled water and some hygiene and cleaning products. We managed to get two packs of toilet paper as that was left on the shelf. We didn’t clear out the shelves just so you know. We worked out that what we bought was what we needed for the week and enough to get us through if we really couldn’t go to the shops for 2 weeks. Hubby somehow managed to calculate that there was enough toilet paper for 16 weeks between the two of us 😂 I don’t know how he worked that out....

We visited the supermarket pretty late at night so there weren’t a lot of people and the staff were working on replenishing empty shelves. It wasn’t all empty as seen on the news so I guess it depends on when you visit. We got most of the things we wanted and needed so it worked out well.

Back to the car and the frustration kicks in on how ridiculous this shopping was. Our original plan was to move houses as lightly as possible and to start the kitchen freshly afterwards. We have only recently cleaned the car out as well for other items during the move! It can’t be helped I guess with so many things happening at the same time. The timing of us moving houses and the Coronavirus just happened to clash.

(Being a last minute decision, I did not have my shopping bags handy so we just stuffed everything into the back of the car. )

At the end of the day I look back on the things we have bought and I’m wondering what it’s considered as. Did we just end up restocking our fridge and pantry or are we considered to be stockpiling or hoarding? There are things purchased that we really needed soon as we were running out or don’t have and some things purchased for future use. Hmmm...