If a couple of folks have an urgent need and the product is here, small, and safe to send, I’d do it.
Eg, my online WF says they have the plain couscous. Over summer, I did need to buy the flavored and ignore the packet.
Lol, I don’t understand the run on alfalfa sprouts. I love them on a sandwich. Half the time WF is just plain out of them. No other sprouts do it and they don’t keep long enough to buy two. My other markets don’t carry them.
About shortages: time/manpower. Two friends waiting since spring for their contractor to come do projects. One’s basically just repainting everything in her kitchen- including cabinets. Still, a good $$ project. You’d think, a filler project for the guys. And she’s a regular client of this team.
In my neighborhood, the contractors are out on Sundays, too.
If you are a book lover, buy your books as soon as you see them. It will be extremely hard to get more stock in around the holidays, as most books are printed in China and the demand is crazy high right now.
I have also noticed that while Target and the grocery stores are now carrying lots of new disinfecting wipes and sprays, none of my usual products (Tilex Bathroom cleaner, purple Windex, etc) are available. I guess those companies put all their effort into producing the disinfectant products.
RiceARoni? That’s a new one. Because it’s a shelf staple or is it just a popular item I didn’t know about. (I mean I KNOW it, but not that it is popular)
Agree on pumpkin, porch swings, even cleaners like Method that are not bleach based.
We had to buy a new lazyboy chair (H MUST have a recliner/rocker and his died one night). We got very lucky because I’m super picky about these and it just so happened that the one that was acceptable for me in the color I wanted was sitting in a warehouse in Columbus so we were able to grab it and have it shipped a couple hours north. Otherwise the salesperson said we might have to wait 6 months.
Allow plenty of time for prescription refills. It took three weeks for one of mine to come into the pharmacy. Luckily I had plenty.
Our supply chain here looks pretty good. The cleaning supplies can be intermittent. But we have been able to get Clorox and Lysol wipes, alcohol, bleach, paper goods of all kinds, hand sanitizer (there is so much of it around here that it’s often on sale), and most foods.
The only thing I totally haven’t seen is Purell brand hand sanitizer. I suspect that is going straight to places like hospitals.
My missing Rice-a-roni flavor is Mexican. Sometimes there is Spanish, and usually all the other flavors, but I have to search for Mexican.
I think the hit or miss things are weird. The store will have store brand pineapple but not Dole, or Dole but not rings. Campbell’s soup is often ‘you can have tomato but no chicken noodle’. It’s just strange to see empty spots in the grocery store.
The fabric store is usually bursting with fabric, stacked to the ceiling. Now it looks like it’s been robbed. Where they used to have many sports team fabrics, now they might have the local teams and maybe one other. For Halloween fabric, they used to have an entire aisle but now only have 2-3 shelves and it will probably be gone this week. Much of the supplies (pins, needles, sewing machines, lights) come from China and there isn’t much on the shelves. My daughter tried to buy a machine in Florida and they were sold out.
TP now comes in HUGE packages, and most of the rolls are 3x or 4x. I actually like the bigger rolls, but paying $16 for a package stings a little. No wipes, no
As I understand it, companies are focused on producing the products they can make the most of in the fastest time and the cheapest because turnover at the grocery stores is still pretty brisk. So the products that take longer to make, are more complicated, use ingredients that are harder to source, etc. etc. are being pushed out in the production schedule.
Rice-A-Roni isn’t hard to come by, just certain flavors haven’t been available, not even online.
Air purifiers are apparently getting somewhat hard to find, with some models sold out and retailers limiting purchases for others. I noticed this when I went online to get replacement filters for the two we have (I was able to get the filters no problem).
@oldfort thanks for sharing that link - but I wasn’t interested in RiceARoni, I was just surprised that it is a popular item!!! Hopefully someone else can use the link.
King Syrup has been on our list for a long time without success anywhere. It’s H’s favorite. Fortunately no one else cares for it so he’s had some, but he’s on his last bit now.
Purina One (blue bag) Salmon flavor cat food. Our cat has not been thrilled with any of the others I’ve had to buy.
A fridge for the house we’re listing for sale. It needs a specific size. Unfortunately, the contractor redoing it got rid of one in there that would have worked until a new one came in. He wasn’t supposed to, but there are no do-overs. If we had wanted new shutters for the house, those were on a two month back order too. We declined.
Any recycled paper TP and napkins/paper towels. We used to buy/love Full Circle, or before that Marcal, but 7th Generation would have been ok too. Nothing - nada - zip. Seems a shame to use fresh/new paper for that purpose. We’ve tried the new bamboo eco versions. They aren’t anywhere close to the quality we want.
Progresso’s Macaroni & Bean soup - though I found two cans of it (and bought them) at the store this past week, so maybe that one is finally back. I read that Progresso had discontinued 40 flavors of its soup when the pandemic hit. Guessing that was one of them.
There might be other things, but those are what has come to mind right now.
I was also thrilled to find Progresso Macaroni and Bean again! Not only was it not available since March, but the price of the soups was twice what I was used to paying (a dollar or less per can, on frequent sale). So when it showed up on two local stores about 2 weeks ago, and it was on a good sale, we stocked up. (I had been using a copycat recipe during the canned soup drought, and will probably keep).
I can’t find rubbing alcohol or Knorr’s vegetarian bullion cubes anywhere. The thing I miss the most is Caffeine Free Pepsi (not diet), the only soft drink I like to treat myself to occasionally. I read several weeks ago this was due to an aluminum shortage which affected some sodas and beers.
I feel especially bad for a good friend who finally got plans together for a bathroom reno, having taken her time to make just the right coordinated selection of styles and colors. Work was scheduled to begin in March…and of course didn’t happen. When it became possible to restart in late August, all but one of her selections was either permanently unavailable or back ordered for as much as a year. She had to settle for second or third choices, and wasn’t even able get all of the fixtures in the same version of brushed nickel.
Patio furniture can take a long time to get. In April we ordered a polywood table (made from recycled plastics) and that came in late July. Then wanted more pieces and would have had to wait until late October so we will try again next year.
I had trouble finding PAM for awhile. It was out at both Kroger and Sam’s. We are redoing our bathroom. We had trouble finding a tile that had a bull nose tile. Many of them are no longer made as a bull nose.
Paper towels were completely missing from my local grocery store recently. The aisle was filled with toilet paper!
A friend in lumber told me that the wholesale price of 2x4s went up as high as 4 1/2 times the pre-March price. They said it’s coming back down now, but won’t be as low as it was for a long time.
They also said that toilet paper would be an issue again in the coming months. Just what we need.
