It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

tooldle

Our local coop has been looking like the above for months now, in fact probably getting on for a year. Sometimes the gaps are filled with an excess of one product or another. Fridges have been very empty of late. The manager says what is delivered is often not what has been ordered. 

Katiehound

Was going to ask which chain but then I spotted the logo. 
Certainly empty chillers.

Mummy2cheekymonkeys

Elisheba said:

weenancyinAmerica said:

little money: 

You might want to keep the ingredients for Dr. Kellogg’s Magic Elixir (really it is called Rehydration Fluid) for when someone can’t keep any food down and is getting dehydrated:

·         1 quart of water

·         ½ teaspoon salt

·         2 tablespoons white corn syrup such as Karo® syrup

Mix when needed. Add equal parts Seven-Up® - the kind with sugar, not the diet version. Start the patient with a tablespoon of the mixture and a tablespoon of Seven-Up®. Then increase the amounts as the patient can tolerate it. Keep refrigerated until used. When the patient no longer needs it, get rid of it. (Dr. Kellogg was the doctor who prescribed it for my sister when she was ill, and we named it after him.) This is from Time to Be Prepared: Emergency Preparedness on a Shoestring (my book)

Even easier as I've not seen corn syrup for sale over here,

1/2 teaspoon salt
6 teaspoons sugar (any will work)
1 litre of boiling water

Mix together, drink as and when.  You can add fruit juice to make it taste nicer.

I was going to post pretty much the same as this. A family friend is a pharmacist and swears that this is better then anything over the counter. He also says the same about honey and lemon for a sore throat. 

sammyjammy

Florenceem said:

I think soft Tp started in 1940s/50s. We had the shiny stuff at school in the 1950s/60s.

We had the Izal tracing paper (its pretty much all it was good for!) at my school in the 80s, pretty sad state of affairs for a girls boarding school.

sammyjammy

Wow those photos are shocking!  I got some salad cream today in a Sainsburuy local, was a big squeezy bottle and cost £3.30 but in my joy my money saving brain went out the window.  Sadly when it comes to salad cream nothing else is good enough for me  its just not a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Floss

I think that may have been chillers that weren't chilling correctly, there have been a lot local to me since the very hot weather.

greent

We had shiny tp in our all girls school in the 80s (I left in 1988) - absolutely rubbish as it doesn't absorb anything!

I went to Sainz yesterday and there were loads of spaces on shelves / in the chillers. Sometimes the same product but a different size had been intentionally moved over to fill the empty space - which can be a shock if you're not paying attention. 

@sammyjammy - there are certain products which we will not compromise on brands for, too - although I do my very best to buy at the best price (eg I've managed to recently buy H31nz beans and soups for 50p/ can - which is my go-to price - so bought a few trays of them (won't last too long in this house....))

Our G&E fix ends next month - our suggested new fix price is over £660 a month! And SVr a shade under £300/ mth. 

Thankfully we can absorb these increases - it means we save less, rather than make any hard choices - but I appreciate that this is not the case for many, many people. 

I think food banks are going to find it very hard, particularly after October (I'm not saying they find it easy at all at the moment) - more users and also donors possibly not being able to afford to donate as much - meaning a double whammy for them  

sammyjammy

greent said:

We had shiny tp in our all girls school in the 80s (I left in 1988) - absolutely rubbish as it doesn't absorb anything!

I went to Sainz yesterday and there were loads of spaces on shelves / in the chillers. Sometimes the same product but a different size had been intentionally moved over to fill the empty space - which can be a shock if you're not paying attention. 

@sammyjammy - there are certain products which we will not compromise on brands for, too - although I do my very best to buy at the best price (eg I've managed to recently buy H31nz beans and soups for 50p/ can - which is my go-to price - so bought a few trays of them (won't last too long in this house....))

Our G&E fix ends next month - our suggested new fix price is over £660 a month! And SVr a shade under £300/ mth. 

Thankfully we can absorb these increases - it means we save less, rather than make any hard choices - but I appreciate that this is not the case for many, many people. 

I think food banks are going to find it very hard, particularly after October (I'm not saying they find it easy at all at the moment) - more users and also donors possibly not being able to afford to donate as much - meaning a double whammy for them  

Haha I left in 88 too, funnily enough its the first time I've bought Salad cream full price in years and hopefully it'll be the last.  As soon as stocks are normal I'll be stocking up on a special offer.

Thing with food banks is I've always been of the opinion that hardly anyone needs to use a foodbank and its lack of budgeting/prioritising payments that cause people to use them (my Mum used to volunteer in one)  but in this current climate I'm seeing it very differently and I think need is really going to become prevalent amongst those who thought they'd never need it.  I've started to buy a few extra bits in my shopping to donate so maybe there will be more like me who can fill that gap.

Floss

sammyjammy said:

Thing with food banks is I've always been of the opinion that hardly anyone needs to use a foodbank and its lack of budgeting/prioritising payments that cause people to use them (my Mum used to volunteer in one)  but in this current climate I'm seeing it very differently and I think need is really going to become prevalent amongst those who thought they'd never need it.  I've started to buy a few extra bits in my shopping to donate so maybe there will be more like me who can fill that gap.

I know of colleagues in my NHS workplace who have recently used local foodbanks. 

weenancyinAmerica

The first time I went to the Imperial War Museum, they had the "waxed paper" type toilet tissue - and each square was stamped "Property of Her Majesty the Queen". Then there was the years of brightly-colored toilet tissue which I thought was dangerous, so I actually packed my own toilet tissue when I went over for several years.