What should you buy for home quarantine?

Long-life food such as pasta, rice, grains and canned soup, vegetables and beans, plus soap, paper towels, tissues and toilet paper. Add washing powder, dishwasher capsules and any medicine you take regularly, and baby formula or pet food if you need them. Board games and video games make the days at home easier.

How much food should you stock up on?

Experts recommend a maximum of a two-week supply of food for each family member, pets included. The point of stocking up is to limit your visits to the stores, not to prepare for a shortage of goods. Check your household supplies first and note down only what you are missing.

Is canned food as healthy as fresh food?

Canned alternatives are generally nutritionally no worse than their fresh counterparts. Canned food is also usually already partly cooked, which means less trouble in the kitchen. Keep buying fresh herbs and vegetables too, because nothing replaces them.

Is soap or hand sanitizer better?

Soap is the most important cleaning item on the list. Alcohol-based disinfectants are less effective because they do not always reach under nails and between fingers. Paper towels, tissues and toilet paper cover the rest of your hygiene.

How much medicine should you have at home?

Try to get at least a month's supply of anything you take regularly. Pharmacies are full of customers and you may have to wait for stock, so ask whether yours sends medicine by post. Check your medicine cabinet for painkillers and something for diarrhea as well.

What to Buy for Home Quarantine and Household Supplies

Q: Should you buy up all the toilet paper?

No. The situation may be new, but there is no reason to panic buy, and garages full of food mean most of it goes to waste. Plan your shopping ahead and buy a normal amount of what is on your list.

Pasta and canned food disappear from shop shelves. Toilet paper goes like hot cakes. Some people clog garages with so much food that most of it will go to waste. Meanwhile, experts recommend to stock up a maximum of a two-week supply of food for each family member, including pets. How not to go crazy in all this muss? If you want to prepare yourself properly, read our guide on what to buy for home quarantine and how to cope with being trapped within four walls.

Before You Leave the House

The point of stocking up is not to prepare yourself for a sudden shortage of goods, but to limit your visits to the stores. The less time you spend in a crowd, the less likely you will be exposed to the virus. For this reason, good planning of your visit is crucial. Go check your household supplies, unlock your mobile phone, and note down all the products you are missing.

We also encourage you to think about those who might need help with grocery shopping. As sick people and the elderly are particularly at risk of contracting the virus, your little favor significantly reduces their risk of infection.

What to Buy for Home Quarantine?

Food

First, you should buy products with a long shelf life. Pasta, rice, and grains will be fit for consumption after several days of quarantine, they are easy to store, and provide you with practically all the essential minerals (More here). But rice alone is not dinner yet. Take a stroll down the canned food aisle and pick up some canned soup, vegetables, and beans. They can be just as healthy as fresh food.

WAIT, canned goods are healthy?

Absolutely! As you can read here, canned alternatives are generally nutritionally not worse than their fresh counterparts! What’s more, canned food is usually already partly cooked, which means less trouble in the kitchen. However, it doesn’t mean you should don’t give up on fresh food entirely! Although it can’t stay too long on the shelf, nothing can replace the smell of fresh herbs and vegetables.

Cleaning products

Nothing annihilates the virus as effectively as a good old bar of soap. It is hands down the most important cleaning item on your list. Even hand sanitizers are less effective because alcohol-based disinfectants do not always reach under nails and between fingers.

But you’ll also need something to wipe wet hands and to maintain hygiene in general. Add paper towels, tissues and toilet paper to your list of essentials.

Heavier items like washing powder and dishwasher capsules pick up on your way to a cash register.

Medicine

If you take any medicine, try to get at least a month’s supply of them. Pharmacies are full of customers and you may have to wait for a supply of drugs. To avoid additional trouble, ask if the pharmacy offers to send medicine by post.

You may also be unfortunate enough to suffer from period pains, toothache or diarrhea during the quarantine. Check your medicine cabinet and make sure you are prepared for this scenario.

Board and video games

Cinemas, pubs, and gyms will remain closed for some time. But quarantine is not a boredom sentence!

Actually, it’s a great opportunity to dig out old jigsaw puzzles, scrabble, monopoly, and other board games, and gather the family together. If you are a solo player, use the quarantine to catch up on some video games! Many companies offer discounts on digital copies of games to encourage people to stay home.

So, should you buy up all the toilet paper? God, no. The situation is new to all of us but there’s no reason to panic. As long as you plan your shopping ahead, you’ll supply yourself with everything you need to make your home quarantine will pass easily and pleasantly.

Buy for meals, not for shelves

Pasta, Rice and Grains are not dinners. Two weeks of them with nothing to put on top is how a well-stocked cupboard still ends in a takeaway order.

Think in combinations before you fill the cart. Canned beans with Rice is one meal, Canned beans with Pasta is a different one, and Canned soup poured over either stretches a tin that was never going to feed anyone on its own. Canned vegetables do their best work stirred into something rather than served beside it. Count the evenings you’re shopping for and make sure you can name that many different plates, because you’ll be eating all of them in the same room.

The small things are what make the big things edible. Cooking oil, salt, pepper, stock cubes, garlic and a jar of something with flavor in it take up almost no space and almost no money, and without them two weeks of Pasta and Rice tastes exactly like two weeks of Pasta and Rice.

Then eat in the right order once you’re home. The fresh herbs and vegetables you bought alongside the cans go first, in the early days, while the Pasta, Rice, Grains and every tin sit there unbothered. That is what they are for. The worst outcome is finding the fresh food spoiled behind a wall of cans you never opened.

What there’s no point buying in bulk

Stocking up has a limit, and it’s set by what actually keeps, not by how worried you feel standing in the aisle.

Bread is the clearest case. Buying four loaves for two weeks mostly means throwing three away, so buy one and put a bag of flour next to the Pasta and Rice instead, or freeze the loaves and take them out one at a time. Fresh milk has the same problem and a neater answer: a carton of long-life milk waits in the cupboard until the fresh one runs out. Salad leaves, soft fruit and anything sold in a bag with holes in it are bought for the first few days of the two weeks, never for all of them.

The other half of this is the things worth more than you would think. Soap, Toilet paper, washing powder and dishwasher capsules don’t go off, so one normal extra pack of each is sensible rather than panicky. The same goes for Painkillers and Imodium, which take up no room and are miserable to be without when you can’t easily go out.

Jigsaw puzzle, Scrabble and Video games are the items people cut first and regret. They’re the only things on this list that make two weeks at home shorter rather than merely survivable, and nobody has ever come out of a quarantine wishing they’d bought more pasta instead.