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Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 6:51 pm
by CT-Scott
So I've been out to a few stores in the last week+ and I'm getting concerned that disinfecting wipes, TP, paper towels, etc. are nowhere to be found. I get that people have stocked up on them. But aren't they getting new stock? Based on what I'm seeing, it's not looking so good. We stocked up early on, but within the next couple of weeks our stocks will be getting depleted to the point where I'll be getting concerned, so I want to act now while we're still in OK shape.

I'm thinking that I should call my various grocery stores, etc. to see what they have to say. Maybe they get shipments on specific days and I should plan to be first in line on those days.

Other thoughts?

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
by Maddy
All are available on Amazon, albeit at sky-high prices.

Amazon recently instituted a policy prohibiting its third-party sellers from selling CoVid-related items in short supply at inflated prices--at the risk of having their accounts terminated. I know that because I teach a class on "life skills" to at-risk kids who, among other things, try their hand at online selling.

Go to www.camelcamelcamel.com to find the historical price at which your particular item has sold on Amazon. (You'll need the ASIN number, which is under "Product Details.") Try messaging a seller and reminding him or her of the policy and the price at which the item has historically sold. You wield the ultimate weapon, which is negative feedback, and sellers both know and fear that. If that fails, call Amazon Customer Service and ask them, pursuant to their anti-price gouging policy, to enforce their policy by adjusting the price to the pre-CoVid level. If you whine enough, they'll probably give you a refund for the difference.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:16 pm
by Maddy
Another idea is the hardware store. I was in the local Ace Hardware the other day and was amazed to see an entire aisle devoted to household products virtually untouched. People don't think of that.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:18 pm
by Tortoise
Try shopping first thing in the morning when the store first opens. That's always when they're most fully stocked.

If you have any elderly people or pregnant women in your family nearby, maybe they can pick up some paper products for you during the special elderly/pregnant shopping hours before the store opens to the general public? Less competition.

Also, have you tried Costco? When I checked the Bogleheads TP thread yesterday, I was hearing rumblings about TP starting to not sell out quite as quickly at certain Costco locations.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:22 pm
by CT-Scott
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
All are available on Amazon, albeit at sky-high prices.
I just checked and a simple search for disinfecting/disinfectant wipes turns up name-brand options with the fine print "Available only for hospitals and government agencies directly responding to COVID-19" or no-name brands (can I even trust them?) with extended shipping times.
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:16 pm
Another idea is the hardware store. I was in the local Ace Hardware the other day and was amazed to see an entire aisle devoted to household products virtually untouched. People don't think of that.
Yeah, I thought of that and went to one of my local hardware stores the other day, and they were all out. We're in a fairly well-to-do area, though, so maybe that was a factor.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 8:23 pm
by I Shrugged
One of our kids asked at Walgreens when they got shipments. Then he made sure to get there. Twice he got two 4 packs of tp.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 8:33 pm
by Maddy
A few years back, disinfectant wipes were virtually unknown. A rag with a spray bottle of dilute lysol worked for 1950s housewives, and it still works today.

You can buy cheap hotel washcloths 50 to 500 at a time on eBay for very little money. They make great rags.

Pretend you're a homesteader. It could be fun!

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 9:53 am
by CT-Scott
My wife just informed me that friends of ours have run out of TP. Apparently this friend was ribbing my wife a few weeks ago when my wife started stockpiling some things.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 9:55 am
by Smith1776
Don't worry, guys. With all the money printing going on in the economy, we will soon be using our plentiful paper money in place of TP. O0

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:10 am
by ochotona
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 8:33 pm
A few years back, disinfectant wipes were virtually unknown. A rag with a spray bottle of dilute lysol worked for 1950s housewives, and it still works today.

You can buy cheap hotel washcloths 50 to 500 at a time on eBay for very little money. They make great rags.

Pretend you're a homesteader. It could be fun!
You can wipe your botto with a soft clean rag, and then chuck it into a container with a tight sealed lid, then after a while wash the rags in hot water and bleach, and dry on high heat.

Parents used to wash their own babies' diapers. My mother did this. A baby diaper is a much more disgusting thing than what I'm proposing.

We've gotten terribly wasteful as a society. And the environment pays for it. And our wallets.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:14 am
by Mountaineer
ochotona wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:10 am
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 8:33 pm
A few years back, disinfectant wipes were virtually unknown. A rag with a spray bottle of dilute lysol worked for 1950s housewives, and it still works today.

You can buy cheap hotel washcloths 50 to 500 at a time on eBay for very little money. They make great rags.

Pretend you're a homesteader. It could be fun!
You can wipe your botto with a soft clean rag, and then chuck it into a container with a tight sealed lid, then after a while wash the rags in hot water and bleach, and dry on high heat.

Parents used to wash their own babies' diapers. My mother did this. A baby diaper is a much more disgusting thing than what I'm proposing.

We've gotten terribly wasteful as a society. And the environment pays for it. And our wallets.
My wife and I just had this discussion about rags and washcloths and cleaning them not 5 minutes before I read your post! Amazing. We washed/chloroxed our daughter's diapers before we could afford diaper service in the late 1960s. ;D

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:25 am
by bedraggled
Diaper/baby wipes may be more available than TP. We bought them at chain pharmacies. The wipes have been useful for general cleaning but the wipes don't have the advantages of clorox and Lysol wipes. Should you use them as a TP replacement/supplement, DO NOT flush them. From newspaper stories, the wipes can clog your plumbing and the neighborhood plumbing. There have been several "bergs" in the news with the culprit being the wipes.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:26 am
by CT-Scott
I think I'd have to get pretty desperate before I resorted to reusing/cleaning cloth wipes, but I am strongly considering upgrading our toilets to have bidet seats at our next house.

FYI, my wife asked our friends if they needed us to give them some of our TP and it turns out that she's not completely out...they have some crappy (no pun intended) no-name brand they're using for now.

FWIW...The last few times I've been to some local grocery stores they've been completely out of TP and Paper Towels, with the exception of one store yesterday that had a small amount of one of those (I forget which) with a "one per customer" sign above them, and they were a crappy no-name brand. I just called the 3 different major grocery store chains we have locally to inquire more. Each gave me slightly different info, but the general theme was about the same:
- Shipments arrive at night (some stores get daily shipments, one was Mon/Wed/Fri), but they never know if that night's shipment will contain TP or PT.
- When TP or PT does arrive on a particular shipment, it can often be fairly limited
- First hour in the morning is reserved for senior citizens and high-risk individuals

So the best plan seems to be to:
1) Don't wait until you run out - plan ahead
2) When you get to the point where you need to re-add to your supply, call early in the morning to find out if they got some the night before and, if so, race over to the store as early as possible after the "senior hour" is done

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:30 am
by CT-Scott
bedraggled wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:25 am
Diaper/baby wipes may be more available than TP. We bought them at chain pharmacies. The wipes have been useful for general cleaning but the wipes don't have the advantages of clorox and Lysol wipes. Should you use them as a TP replacement/supplement, DO NOT flush them. From newspaper stories, the wipes can clog your plumbing and the neighborhood plumbing. There have been several "bergs" in the news with the culprit being the wipes.
I'm getting kind of personal here, but we're big fans of the Cottonelle Flushable Wipes. As the name implies, they're flushable (I think they recommend no more than 2 per flush). We have a septic tank/field and I was worried about that, but they specifically claim to be septic-safe. I believe our recommended septic pumping is every 3 years, though I may increase that in our next house to every 2 years. Septic systems can be super-expensive to fix/replace should they ever fail.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:22 am
by dualstow
MangoMan wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
I talked to a friend today at lunchtime and he said that he was at the local Walmart this morning (6:30a 'senior hour') and they had ample supply of all of those. The store was limiting purchases to one of each per customer.
You're welcome. O0

Seriously: a bidet attachment is an excellent idea. It has come up in a few past threads. I've been interested in it since pre-Coronial times, but our tank is hidden in the wall so the best we could do would be a portable wand. I wonder if there is a run on bidet attachments as well? I haven't looked because my wife bought a bunch of toilet paper on Amazon in early Feb.

As for disinfectants such as rubbing alcohol: same boat. We have not seen any on the shelf since we bought ours.

Best we can do is stock up when the first wave is over and half of the population doesn't think this bug is coming back in autumn.
Thanks to Libertarian666, we know to buy isopropyl alcohol (stable) and not hydrogen peroxide (unstable).

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:56 pm
by Maddy
Here's a thought: aliexpress.com--the wholesale supplier of every fly-by-night online seller. Here's an example-- 50 rolls of toilet paper for $98. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000823 ... hweb201603_
You'll be set for a while.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:08 pm
by Tortoise
dualstow wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:22 am
Best we can do is stock up when the first wave is over and half of the population doesn't think this bug is coming back in autumn.
Shoot me now.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:01 pm
by Maddy
That was only the first listing I saw. I presume that shipping times vary greatly depending on where the item is coming from. And if some predictions bear out, we've only begun to see the fallout of supply chain disruptions. Anyway, it's a resource.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:10 pm
by WiseOne
i got an Amazon Basics non-electric bidet seat earlier in the year, and it's been a total lifesaver. Highly recommended and took me about an hour to install. I'll tell anyone who is interested in a PM how I ended up with an extra one, which anyone here is welcome to - first come first served. Elongated seat and requires a toilet with a standard tank. Also understand that it's COLD WATER.

With the bidet, my toilet paper usage is low enough that even though I didn't score any during the Great TP Run, I'm good for at least a month. Last weekend though, I found some at a small local grocery. So maybe try small, out of the way places with a limited customer base?

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:27 pm
by dualstow
OP, i forget to mention that a lot of distilleries are making sanitizer instead of booze.
A crime, i know, but you’ll be able to turn normal wipes into sanitizing ones, if necessary.
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
...
Go to www.camelcamelcamel.com to find the historical price at which your particular item has sold on Amazon. (You'll need the ASIN number, which is under "Product Details.")
...
I’m a big fan of that site. They have been so helpful with getting a good deal at Amazon.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:31 pm
by I Shrugged
My wife ordered toilet paper on Amazon today. It says Amazon brand, Presto. Tonight it is out of stock.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:35 pm
by Kriegsspiel
dualstow wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:27 pm
OP, i forget to mention that a lot of distilleries are making sanitizer instead of booze.
A crime, i know, but you’ll be able to turn normal wipes into sanitizing ones, if necessary.
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
...
Go to www.camelcamelcamel.com to find the historical price at which your particular item has sold on Amazon. (You'll need the ASIN number, which is under "Product Details.")
...
I’m a big fan of that site. They have been so helpful with getting a good deal at Amazon.
Skip the middle man and take a page from those kids on spring break. Pour a shot of liquor down your butt crack.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:15 pm
by vnatale
dualstow wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:27 pm
OP, i forget to mention that a lot of distilleries are making sanitizer instead of booze.
A crime, i know, but you’ll be able to turn normal wipes into sanitizing ones, if necessary.
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
...
Go to www.camelcamelcamel.com to find the historical price at which your particular item has sold on Amazon. (You'll need the ASIN number, which is under "Product Details.")
...
I’m a big fan of that site. They have been so helpful with getting a good deal at Amazon.
I was told tonight that a few small alcohol makers in our area have now turned to making sanitizer.

Vinny

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:22 pm
by Kriegsspiel
vnatale wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:15 pm
dualstow wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:27 pm
OP, i forget to mention that a lot of distilleries are making sanitizer instead of booze.
A crime, i know, but you’ll be able to turn normal wipes into sanitizing ones, if necessary.
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
...
Go to www.camelcamelcamel.com to find the historical price at which your particular item has sold on Amazon. (You'll need the ASIN number, which is under "Product Details.")
...
I’m a big fan of that site. They have been so helpful with getting a good deal at Amazon.
I was told tonight that a few small alcohol makers in our area have now turned to making sanitizer.

Vinny
Disgusting. With such an alcohol shortage throughout the country, this is incredibly irresponsible. Hopefully they are commanded by the government to manufacture liquor before something awful happens.

Re: Suggestions for finding disinfecting wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.?

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:39 pm
by vnatale
Kriegsspiel wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:22 pm
vnatale wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 11:15 pm
dualstow wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 10:27 pm
OP, i forget to mention that a lot of distilleries are making sanitizer instead of booze.
A crime, i know, but you’ll be able to turn normal wipes into sanitizing ones, if necessary.
Maddy wrote:
Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:13 pm
...
Go to www.camelcamelcamel.com to find the historical price at which your particular item has sold on Amazon. (You'll need the ASIN number, which is under "Product Details.")
...
I’m a big fan of that site. They have been so helpful with getting a good deal at Amazon.
I was told tonight that a few small alcohol makers in our area have now turned to making sanitizer.

Vinny
Disgusting. With such an alcohol shortage throughout the country, this is incredibly irresponsible. Hopefully they are commanded by the government to manufacture liquor before something awful happens.
We are getting Prime Time of you tonight!!!

Vinny