10:05 – Email overnight from Jen and Brittany. For the last ten weeks, they’ve both been keeping track of how much toilet paper their families actually use, counting dead rolls each time they emptied the bathroom trash. They both thought the toilet paper they had in LTS was sufficient for at least a year. They were both optimistic by at least a factor of two.
Jen and David average 2.2 rolls/week for the two of them. Brittany and her family average 4.1 rolls/week. That sounds about right. Men average about half a roll per week. Women, particularly those of menstrual age, go through two to three times that much. Young children average somewhere in between.
So Jen and Brittany both plan to do Costco/Sam’s runs devoted to paper products. Not just toilet paper, but paper towels, napkins, and plates, all of which would be consumed at much higher than normal rates during an emergency. In fact, those things are on my Costco list for our next run as well. And I suggested to Jen and Brittany that no matter how much toilet paper they have on hand, it may eventually run out. If that happens, it’s an excellent idea to have a bunch of personal cloths on hand, as well as lots of bleach/pool shock to sterilize them.