Staying Ahead Of The Shortages: What To Stock Up On For The Coming Year
by Samantha Biggers via BackdoorSurvival.com,
ZeroHedge.com
Fri, 05/08/2020
While a lot of people are concerned about food shortages, one should not forget that there are a lot of items that make life easier or at least more enjoyable that come from abroad. A lot of these items specifically come from China and India. I am going to mention a few other things that are mostly made in the USA but that may potentially be in short supply as a result of the pandemic.
Food and water are primary concerns as they should be but what about these other things. I have compiled this list of things that you may want to consider acquiring if you don’t think you have enough to get through the next 6 months to a year.
Do what you can with what financial resources and ingenuity you have. You don’t have to jump on buying everything I talk about all at once. Sometimes people get caught up thinking that they have to do it all at once and that is not true. I presented this information so you can use it over the coming months to determine your preparedness needs and plan accordingly. I think this winter is going to be a difficult one and that the sooner you start planning the better.
That being said, I cannot predict what is going to happen but I can tell you that if you put back things you know you are going to need sooner rather than later than in the worst case you are prepared and in the best case you are ahead of the game and won’t have to buy those things later and may have some extra funds to put towards things later.
I am not trying to encourage you to buy things that there is no way that you are going to need. The intent of this post is really to make you think about what you do need considering the situation we are all in due to the pandemic and what things you have that are close to the end of their useful life and might need replaced soon.
Just because something is available later on doesn’t mean it will be affordable.
While as a country we may not run out of coffee grinders or coffee pots, they may get a lot more expensive. Buying now is one way to avoid potentially higher prices later on.
It is easy to take some of the basics for granted. The old saying “you don’t know what you got until it is gone” is accurate.
I remember going from years of having easy hot water and reliable heating and cooling in our living space to not having any of those things while we were living in a camper and building our house. To put this on a perspective for the average person in America, what if you couldn’t buy socks at an affordable price? What if you couldn’t get a broom or vacuum to clean your home? These are just a few examples.
When manufacturing starts coming back to the USA or we start contracting with other countries for some manufacturing, the price is going to go up and it may go up a lot.
People cannot live in the USA on a wage equal to that of a Chinese or Indian laborer. Also given that there are minimum wage laws, we technically wouldn’t be allowed to work for that low of a wage if we wanted to. Americans will work but they are not going to work for wages that require them to live under the conditions that a lot of people in China and India live in.
The Items
Sheets and Bedding
Have you ever priced a hand-sewn quilt? They are really expensive because they take a lot of time and they are usually made of fabric that is at least of moderate quality. I have made them and they last for years. I no longer have the time to make blankets that are that fancy and artistic so I buy them like everyone else. Regardless of how fancy or cheap you like to buy your sheets, those are made overseas. India produces a lot of the quality cotton blankets and sheets that are sold in the United States.
You may be thinking that we grow a lot of cotton in the United States. We sure do and it often that same cotton that goes into making the blankets and sheets that we get from India and China. The manufacturing facilities and inexpensive labor are not available here at the moment.
The other day I was thankful that I had bought a set of sheets ahead for everyone because all of a sudden I started noticing holes appearing in the ones I bought years ago. It is easy to not buy until you realize that things are getting threadbare. Here is a link to the sheets I bought. Sometimes they are a little less but they are still a very good deal for the quality you get.
Right now you can still get some inexpensive blankets but I am not sure how long that is going to last. I just know that there is only so much stuff in the country at the moment and it is pretty hard to say how much consumer goods are actually coming in. Just going by total container volume, it is not much.
Small and Large Appliances
This is the best deal I could find on a small chest freezer currently. If you are looking for one and want something compact, this freezer can be had for $179 and Wal-Mart offers 2-day shipping for free. I bought the 5 cubic feet version that opens from the top and paid less for it than this upright but those deals are gone.
The Rest…HERE
