Hoarding Update: 10-10-2021

 

Hoarding is a severe psychological disorder where a person gathers an excessive number of items and stores them. The reasons someone become a hoarder include altered brain connections, genetics, stress, OCD, environmental factors and altered levels of serotonin. 

I'm going with environmental as cause for mine, and genetics for my wife. 

So it is predominantly food supplies for us. I try to keep approximately 3~6 months of non perishables on hand. Replenishing these stocks on FIFO basis, does keep me busy. Freezer ready goods are mostly in the 4~6 weeks range. 

Admittedly there are some items from summer of 2020, but they are slowly being reduced in inventory. At current rate, maybe another couple of months will see replenishment at a lower pace. Refrigerated items are mostly replaced on a weekly basis.

Kroger, Walmart and Amazon are the principle curbside visits. There may be items missing one week, but generally in stock the following... thus far. No reason to panic, although some of the food choices by this method can be boring. Restaurant delivery, drive thru, or curbside seems to alleviate some of those urges. 

Staying warm...

With food in "good" supply, what about staying warm? It's either going to be warmer than normal or colder. It's either going to be wetter than normal or drier. Then there is the time period potential for all those swings. 

Ice is the wild card and could do lengthy damage to transmission lines, etc. In an all-electric house, that could be a factor. However, not going to go nuts over generators, etc. I could say blankets would be the way to go, but sitting around the house staring at each other could lead to altered brain connections and stress. Not to mention cold food and losses in refrigeration. Might need to rethink this whole thing. 

A long term freeze out might not be in the cards, as I do live in an area where high energy industries have priority on restart, imo. 24~48 hours at the most... I hope. There could be possibility of outages from transmission lines to substations and from there to individual neighborhoods. My neighborhood and the surrounding are buried lines... but are fed by overhead lines from substations. Again, the transmission lines to heavy usage industries will reduce the outage time, even to our feeder substations, etc. Or it should.

Food...

There may be plenty of food and access to food, but what about ice storm related outages? Restaurants and grocery stores might be down as well. I do have a gas grill, so some relief in that area, although trying to grill in such temperatures could be a challenge. I'll try if necessary. Otherwise... cold canned goods, snacks, etc. 

Now I'm working up some stress. Time to chill! After all, it is over 80ºF outside.