Picked up some tins of tuna for our emergency food stash last night. Going to just get a few extras of non-perishables over the next few weeks plus some extras of the stuff we normally buy but go through quickly like flour etc. Electricity and water supplies unlikely to be affected much in this situation so I’ll focus on the food and maybe some basic medications like Panadol. Also extra cat food!
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I have what feels like a dumb question. What does quarantine actually look like? I mean can they really just be like “Ok no leaving your house for anyone starting NOW” with no notice?
For some reason that part of the coronavirus stuff is tripping me up. I have been picking up extra nonperishables at each trip, but perishables I just can’t store a lot of. I have a tiny freezer. But I guess in the event of some kind of quarantine announcement people would make a run on the stores for things.
I’m getting overwhelmed by it but trying not to. Apparently as a hospital employee with EMS training he would be required to be at the hospital so I’d be by myself with Bobbin which is less than ideal. So the realistic logistics of that are scary to me and leaves me with a lot of unknowns.
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Bought dried elderberries to replenish my supply today. Need to stock up on dog and cat food cans. Otherwise we’re good.
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Do you have friends/family/neighbors that you can talk to now? Something like “If he gets called in I’ll be on my own solo-parenting for who knows how long. I will need help with cooking/getting down time/[other concrete requests], do you think you could help me out with that if/when the time comes?” Sort of choosing who you’d be quarantined with rather than ignoring it.
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Definitely not ignoring it, especially since we’re talking about it now and trying to figure out what the specifics of his responsibilities would be if he gets called to the hospital.
Family is 2+ hours away so I guess it depends on how much notice and the specifics of quarantine if I could travel to them/them traveling to me. Our close friends all travel for work weekly so that’s hit or miss if they’d even be here if something happened.
My plan currently is to just keep things reasonably stocked so that me, bobbin, and the dog can hang out for as long as we need to.
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For me there’s the question of not only if there were a quarantine, but just if we get sick. The flu season this year has been awful in addition to the risk of coronavirus.
I’m going to pick up everything we’d need to be comfortable when sick since we usually just depend on one of us being able to go pick stuff up (like extra tissues and cough drops and medication). I’m getting a bit of a bigger non-perishable buffer, particularly in foods/drinks we like to have on hand when not feeling good, and also getting some bones and other things that can entertain my pup that we won’t use unless we need to, since she’ll go nuts if we all don’t feel good and can’t give her attention.
I’ve also really fallen off the bandwagon on meal planning and cooking every week and so we’re sort of day-to-day figuring out food which = lots of grocery trips and lots of take out. So this weekend I turned down a somewhat interesting but not super exciting social thing to instead have time to meal prep and grocery shop so I can prioritize having the next week’s worth of perishables on hand in a way that I don’t right now. I’m especially focusing on making sure we have things like oranges that will keep decently on the counter and help the kiddo stay hydrated if he’s not excited about drinking if he gets sick and also help us all feel less like we’re eating a ton of canned food and it’s boring.
We have some N-95 respirators on hand because of smoky PNW summers, but I wouldn’t be buying masks right now even if we didn’t, because they are most effective at protecting medical workers and everywhere people have bought a ton of masks the medical workers have been left without.
I think even in Wuhan people are able to go to stores a bit but there’s almost nothing to buy. It’s also possible that if one of you got sick, you’d all be asked to stay home, but in that case, you may be able to get a neighbor to drop something for you on your doorstep.
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I really don’t know what it’s like for people in their own houses, but I saw a video on TikTok of someone in Wuhan explaining that since they are quarantined, the door to their apartment building is locked from the outside and the gate out of the apartment area is also locked. Seems like a huge fire hazard. Apparently their apartment manager sends around a spreadsheet and gets residents groceries once a week. Not sure what a quarantine would look like in other countries but found it interesting.
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We’ve also been doing this. I’m trying to build up a bigger food buffer of foods that need very little prepping, and we’ve stocked up on basic cold and flu supplies.
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May I ask what kinds of food are on your non-perishables as there are only so many kinds of beans/tuna/soups that we can tolerate in a row, were it to happen (as someone who has access to the same shops as me)?
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Beans, soups, muesli bars (the ones we like are actually a seed bar; if Mr H didn’t have a nut allergy we’d get the nut bars), crackers, almond butter (because no peanut butter). I’m still trying to think of other things to add. Mr H has insisted on many many blocks of chocolate being included in the stash, which is probably sensible.
Having things like a spare loaf of bread in the freezer and a spare dozen eggs in the fridge would also help.
I’m trying to think through, okay, what if all three of us are sick for two weeks with a flu (because that’s basically what coronavirus is?), what will we need? Okay, now what if we’re not sick, but for whatever reason we can’t go to the shops?
In terms of non-food supplies, I’ve stocked up on cold and flu meds, kiddie paracetamol if Ewok has a fever, throat-numbing lozenges, electrolyte tabs and basic first aid stuff.
I’m not buying anything that we’re unlikely to use within its use-by, I’m just buying enough of it that we will always have extra on hand if we replace it as we use it.
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Ok, thank you. That’s basically what I’m planning (except with peanut butter, no almonds coz different nut allergy!), plus a bit extra of flour/pasta etc that we can bake with, since this won’t be a no-electricity scenario. We won’t stock up on extra perishables unless it looks like we might have to so I’ll stick to basically a fully stocked fridge and will go over my first aid supplies this weekend. Thanks for the chance to think through some more 
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Oh, and because lots of our supply lines are fragile (Perth is super isolated, yo!) we’re stocking up on things like disposable nappies and toilet paper. It would suck to have to go out to get those while sick with the flu, and it would also really suck for the shelves to run bare of disposable nappies if we’re all sick and needing to make life easier with them.
I know it’s far more likely that we won’t all get coronavirus and need the extra help, but I also know that we have a kid in daycare and thus are likely to get a million different viruses this year anyway. None of what I’m buying will be wasted.
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Yeah. It’s pretty likely that at some point this year, I will be stuck in the house for a week and/or will forget to do a food shop and we’ll be eating out of the pantry, regardless of a pandemic.
I’m going through our bathroom supplies and other non-edible, non-perishables this weekend to sort them and make notes on what to replenish.
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I really like that discussions about covid19 are turning into thought exercises about what’s good to have in case you’re too sick to go out (here and in my parenting group). I usually keep painkillers, gravel, allergy and cold meds on hand, but things like extra tissues and canned or frozen fruit have now hit my list and I’m planning to have them next time I shop. Because it’s awful going out for supplies sick.
I have enough calories of food for a month…the second half would be unpleasant but fine. And that’s my standard.
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Gravel ??
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If I’m online I’m nursing a baby. Everything is a typo
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I enjoy all your typos now and actually look forward to finding one in each post. 
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To be fair, gravel is also important if you have a car and live in an area that gets cold + precipitation.
We have 10 cups of homemade chicken stock, rice. We should probably stock up on painkillers. And I am down to my last ginger gravol. Maybe one or two bags of freezer vegetables?
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I ordered shelf stable food adult medications for typical illnesses and made a list of the items I needed to find elsewhere.
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I did some stocking up yesterday with an eye towards hurricane/flu prep. I got:
- Eight soups in like 4-6 flavors
- Apple sauce
- Canned vegetables (peas, carrots, potatoes)
- Canned fruit (peaches, fruit cocktail, and something else I forget)
- Raisins, craisins
- Beans
- Rice (should’ve gotten minute rice)
- Ramen
- Mac n cheese (with Frozen characters as something nice for kiddo)
- Granola bars
- Instant oatmeal packets
- Canned chicken, tuna
- Zinc/Vitamin C packets
- Big bottle of ibuprofin
- A shit ton of bandaids in various sizes including teeny ones for kiddo (we had lots of bigger sized ones already and needed teeny ones, I think we’re set for life at this point).
Need to check/get:
- Nyquil/dayquil/cough syrup
- Cough drops
- Gatorade
- Don’t let gas tank get lower than half as a habit (this really saved my --bacon-- peace of mind during past hurricanes [how do I do strikethrough formatting?])
Parenting stuff:
In addition to toy rotation, I have squirreled away some small things kiddo has brought home over time (silly glasses, cheap plastic toys he forgot about the minute he took his eyes off them, coloring book, etc.)
I also printed out two pictures for washing hands, I’m going to ask for his help in coloring it and we’ll put it up in the house as a reminder to wash hands when we come home. Usually he fights it but maybe if he gets to be the boss of it he’ll be more cooperative? Okay that has like a 5% chance of working, lol.
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