What are you folks having a hard time finding in local stores during the pandemic?
I have experienced shortages of toilet paper, flour, water, canned goods, and now lumber. Home Depot and Lowes currently have low or no stock of a lot of lumber. For example I can't buy a 4x4 post off the shelf anywhere in my metro area.
Share your own scarcity struggles to help us get a better picture of what's going on out there
Bread flour specifically has been absent, I was lucky to find some a couple weeks ago and bought two bags. All purpose is in stock. Food preservation equipment is gone for the most part. Things like jars, pressure canners, food saver bags, pickling salt/spices. Home goods seem to be getting ransacked and staying empty. Like it's hard to find plastic totes. My friend, about 30 mins away, is saying there's no bedding material of any kind around them. Vegetable seeds are almost gone here from the garden centers. And a lot of places online are low on stock. Soil, compost, and other things seem to be okay.
Between March and June we were out of a lot of dry goods. You couldn't find ramen anywhere, along with pasta/rice/beans and most canned goods. Luckily that stuff is okay right now. I'm actually waiting for it to start to run out again. Fresh meats were out for a while too but those have also been back. TP and paper towels have been back.
I hate to encourage panic buying but I would probably prepare for everything to get scarce in a month or two. The lesson not learned is that opening everything back up ultimately means nothing. If people start calling out sick and there's a labor shortage, that will lead to a production shortage. Even with automated factories you need people present for repairs, cleaning, and swapping out raw materials. And you can't really rely on people being too scared to shop since everyone just does pickup now. So once there's a hint of another months-long shortage, we're back to where we were in the spring. Only this time we're not doing anything to stop it.
It's not been too bad here in the UK in all honesty. There was a short shortage of bread and loo roll. The second month or so was tough for basic medicine, and almost devoid of any kind of cleaning supplies, and it was impossible to buy flour in local shops and supermarkets.
Some of my neighbours and me bought flour and other baking stuff from a restaurant supplier who had loads in big sacks and portioned it out in bags and just set up a table with it on at the end of the street and an honesty box if people wanted to donate a quid or whatever.
COVIDs been an absolute shit show here in so many ways, but we haven't had too much problem with that sort of thing. If you were somewhere rural a good distance from a supermarket however, that would have been a lot tougher.
Hot peppers, soap, hand sanitiser (until local breweries started producing some), face masks, gloves, basically any sanitation equipment
