A LIFETIME SUPPLY

As a man with a stockpile of pipe tobacco, I know hoarding. Plus, being a packrat, you can imagine how well prepared I am for the apocalypse. The pipe tobacco stash (several years worth of good smokeables) was started when I noticed brands of all my favourite lung poison disappearing, and will tide me through hard times. There's so much of it that if Health and Human Services knew about it, my apartment would be declared a superfund site as well a weapon of mass-destruction.

My doctor has told me to quite smoking, btw.

He didn't say bupkes about toilet paper.

Which I have not stockpiled.


First rule of hoarding supplies: Don't use it.


HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS

Always replenish what you use in any case. Use one, buy two (or a weeks worth) more. If you have utilized any fraction of your six month doomsday stash of bumwad, go out and acquire another twelve pack. Your home is your soft squeezable fortress, and to prevent the weight of the piled-up material leading to fermentation, and thus generating heat, which leads to fires breaking out, build containment walls around the stash with cans of Spam™ or tubes of toothpaste. Consider inundating the entire pile with bottled water, which you should also stockpile. Or periodically empty cans of baked beans over the lot of it. Sauerkraut too, plus it keeps.

Which is where several gallons of hand sanitizer come into play. Nothing breaks through congealed beans on your hands better than liquid with a high alcohol content. It also works wonders on dried sauerkraut.

The other great advantage of a stash like this is that no one will visit you, ever. Your relatives might send in a radio controlled drone occasionally to see if you're still alive (mighty decent of them), but your neighbors will know enough to stay away. You have effectively self-isolated.

With enough surgical grade face masks you'll never smell decomposition of the pile of toilet paper or the acids coming free from the chemically treated woodpulp fibre material. Normally. Multiple layers.

Fluffy rolls are an inefficient way of storing paper goods; unroll it, and stack it flat. You will line the hallway to the bathroom more efficiently that way.
Use document boxes and filing cabinets.

Also flood the internet with glowing endorsements for the brand of bum-fluff you would not buy. I shouldn't have to say this.
Dig pits in public parks near where you live to hide extras.
In case you leave your apartment.


The proper hoarder owns several sealable drums and bins for everything he would possibly need. As well as a stack of old tires for the re-usable raw materials and sulfur. In his basement.


You can never have enough avocados.
[They never ripen, they're safe.]


I've only just noticed a huge pile of old bus transfers from the San Francisco Municipal railway on the stack where I put my pipe tamper, coins, keys, and wallet, every night, so that I can find them again the next morning, and while they all expired over the last three and a half months, they must be usable for something. Insulation? Emergency bookmarks? Possibly postcards? They're rich in fibre.


Save the Oxford Comma! Once you use it, it's gone forever.




AFTERWORD

In all honesty, I think that the toilet paper hoarders are out of their buggery minds. Pipe tobacco I can see, especially in this age, when tobacconists and manufacturers are disappearing. I also have extra wooden matches. Plus one should always have spare bottles of Sriracha or jars of sambal.
It makes the Spam™ and toilet paper edible.

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