It’s a question every prepper has asked themself. How much (insert life saving product here) do I need to store up? This blog post is inspired by a You Tube video I just watched on the subject of storing toilet paper. What I learned is that people have forgotten how to count and multiply or think for themselves. In this day and age where it seems the answer to everything is at your fingertips waiting to be discovered on some obscure website somewhere, we have forgotten how to figure things out for ourselves.
Let’s use the toilet paper question here as an example. How much toilet paper do you need to store to have a 1 month, 6 month, or 1 year supply on hand? One could, and many probably do, turn to the internet and start asking google how much bum wad does a person use in a year. The answers you find will vary greatly from one source to another and likely have more to do with how much company X wants to sell you as opposed to actual research.
In the video I watched, the presenter used Google to come up with a number of sheets used per visit to the loo, after which a complex calculation based on average visits per day, people per household, etc was used to come up with a number. Out of curiosity, I tried out this calculation to figure out how much toilet paper I would need to keep my backside clean for a year. The result was that I would be resorting to leaves and moss by the 3rd month!
As with anything else, you can easily calculate your requirements by taking a one week sample. Since today is Tuesday, let’s say you open a package of toilet paper today. In one week from now (next Tuesday) count how many rolls were used. Now simply multiply that number by the number of weeks you wish to stockpile for (4 for one month, 26 for 6 months, 52 for one year, etc). Now of course stuff happens. People get ill with gastro issues, rolls can get wet and useless, whatever. Adding a 10% margin of error will more than make up for this. Multiply your stockpile number by 1.1 and you should be good to go…pun intended.
Now, a lot has also been mentioned about rationing to make supplies last longer or to cut down on the investment needed to achieve your goals. While this may be a valid point, rationing can easily be taken too far. Personally, when SHTF hits, I suspect that I will have better things to do than to distribute everyone in my household their allotted 8.6 sheets of toilet paper each morning and acting like the outhouse police.
Alternatives to toilet paper are also widely discussed, and for those who are thinking about them right now, you’ve completely missed the point of this post. Hint: it’s not really about toilet paper! Today’s society has gotten so used to someone else figuring out answers for you that we’ve forgotten how to answer our own questions. Forget google, try asking yourself these questions. The answers may surprise both you and the search engines.
