Irrational panic!!!

I remember reading that VioletRose1 but I remember that the whole chicken in a tin was given to them as a wedding present and they opened and ate it on their 25th wedding anniversary and all was fine. I often quote this when I'm urged to throw out any out of date tins

DH is just the same with the packets of sugar which come when you buy a coffee - drives me mad when he 'just pops them in the cupboard'!

My mother also hoarded sugar. I'm sure it was a throwback to rationing and it rubbed off onto me when I was first married in 1969. I eventually realised that since neither of us used it in drinks or on cereals it was safe to buy it one bag at a time! I am guilty of hoarding toilet and kitchen rolls 'just in case'.

Regarding Olive oil and Red wine better get some before people start hoarding it me thinks

My 91 year old mother always collects the sugar packets and biscuits which come with cups of tea and coffee in a cafe. These are stored in her room at her nursing home (she doesn't take sugar or eat biscuits and my brother has to have periodic purges to get rid of them) - she doesn't suffer with dementia she just thinks as she has paid for the sugar and biscuits she is going to take them!!

We must be like manna from heaven to retailers.
When I had to organize the clearing out of my late aunts house I found enough bags of sugar to sweeten the cups of tea /coffee for her neighbourhood. My late mother had enough loo rolls to paper the wall of her bedroom.
I dread to think what my family will find when its' my turn.'

The game of Pit is quite old and will make you hoarse when you play it. Make sure the neighbours are aware that you will be making a lot of noise, mostly screaming, as otherwise someone may call the police expecting to learn of a murder!

I once knew a woman Jalima who bought new towels in every colour, just like your MiL. She stacked them in her airing cupboard on the top shelf and they were never used. Her family were not allowed to touch them, she just loved looking at the rainbow of colours.
The old ones on the lower shelf were for using.

I'm panicking now as I've only 21% left on my planner and still got the whole of the last series of Poldark to watch! Better get stuck in before the new series begins, but hang on The Handmaids Tale starts tonight!

I'm a 42er. Mother couldn't hoard food due to lack of cash and shops - our groceries were delivered from a shop in the town - though we did buy eggs from farms illicitly during the war and afterwards, and set them in isinglass in a bucket under the stairs. I'm surprised it didn't put us off eggs for life.

But I am a terrible hoarder and my family always said that we would last a month after everyone else if there was nuclear fallout and we had to barricade ourselves in the house.

I am relieved to find that I am not alone.

DH's aunt had a rather grand house with an enormous larder. When she moved to a smaller place, in the 70's, we found several tins of dried egg.

Yes, yes, yes! Kitchen rolls, toilet paper, tinned tomatoes, cider vinegar, actually nearly everything! But DH is even worse (he's shopping at the moment as I'm recovering from a foot op but he often does it anyway) just basically doubles what I put on the list! Can't complain though! But unlike other organised GN's I sometimes run out of something!

My sister and I are hoarders (or as she puts it, we just keep plenty in) as our Mum was a hoarder. I do think it comes from wartime habits. My daughters laugh at me and I at them when I visit and see their sparse stores. You can see vast tracts of shelf in their food cupboards and fridges!
I notice that it's food I keep stores of - not cleaning products. That's revealing, although I don't like to live in a tip.
As for the Sky box - when I moved I was given one with lots of storage space. Now I hoard programmes. Who needs box sets.

I have 4 freezers and 3 fridges which are usually full. Only one double cupboard for tins and jars though. We live in the country a long way from shops so a bit of an excuse there. I was born well after the war and definitely didn't learn this from my mother. We had no fridge or freezer, just a cellar and a "meat safe". Ingredients for meals were bought on the day from the corner shop. Only dried foods in the cupboards and not much of those.

A few years ago I saw an article in the paper about and old man who had kept a tinned chicken in the pantry since 1950. I remember that those tins contained a whole chicken. He was planning to eat it and the picture showed his grandchildren crying and pleading with him not to eat it. I don't know what the outcome was, but we frequently have to eat very old tins of food that I have stockpiled and we have never come to any harm.

Be a tad careful with the rapeseed - they put seven different spraying over the plants - all types of herbicides and fertilisers etc - and much of it goes through into the flowers and therefore seeds. The pollen is absolutely dreadful for giving people allergies - and this last spring was particularly bad.

I think they may well have shortage of good French red wine this year - many of the plants around Bordeaux looked dead when we drove through a couple of weeks ago and I saw a report that they are thought to have lost a million pounds worth of wine this year.

Exactly, Oldwoman70. When I've spent hours making the stuff, I just throw it in with the best of intentions to label it later....

Maggie - that has happened to me too! I now put the tupperware containers in freezer bags and label them, although when I have made so much soup it becomes a bit of a chore!

My DMIL left food stocks in her cellar that could have kept the family going for a year, if we'd overlooked the fact that the vast majority were many years out of date, or predated the dating system, and a lot of the tins had blown.

Despite my best intentions, eating from our well stocked freezers can be a bit of a lottery. Those pumpkin soup/orange sorbet/curry sauce conundrums have bitten me on the bum a few times.

Yes yes yes Kitty! I have my own 'shop' in an out building. Stocks everything from tinned goods, wine, beer, tea, coffee, long life milks, laundry & cleaning sundries, dried goods. Everything! I only buy when good offers on like 2 for 1 etc. I came from a background of neglect & hunger.

My family call it the Armageddon cupboard - they say they know where to head to in a moment of crisis.

Earlier today I checked that we had a spare liquid hand soap to find we had about 12 spares. My huge bathroom cupboard must have about forty towels of varying vintages, in my airing cupboard I have back-ups for the spare sheets - dozens of them! Forty bottles of wine I noticed yesterday. How will I cope with the inevitable downsizing (in the dim distant future) to a house with minimal storage???

27 toilet rolls under the bed and a whole box of those spray things that make the house smell nice..........I do have trouble getting out to the shops but it is becoming ridiculous here.

Sorry am 1943 and out of step. Visiting my Mum of 93 am horrified of the stores that will never be used so have an aversion to hoarding. Will cook in batches to freeze, that is all . If there is no olive oil buy pure rape seed oil, better for you and the country, as Brexit looms perhaps we will have to think in different ways. Think of ingredients we do grow, cook that way, perhaps? You never know we might be a movement to prevent food waste. Was stunned when discussing beetroot and chocolate cake and courgette cake that a female friend asked where they sell them, have we become so bereft of acumen? Keep nothing you have not used in a year?

So good to read this thread! Mr H thinks I'm a lunatic for my stockpiling habits, but I'm only happy when there isn't an inch of room in freezer! I open my kitchen cupboards gingerly in case I'm clouted by a bag of rice, and I have more bleach than you can shake a stick at! Hoarders unite!!!

I think it makes perfect sense to bulk buy when things are on offer. I only ever buy certain items when they are reduced & then buy enough to see me through until next time.

I used to know a woman who had a 'stock cupboard'. Her Mum had given her a box of 'essential items' when she got married & told her never to let it go down. Sounds OK in principle but I well remember being there when her husband came in & asked if he could have a corned beef sandwich & she told him NO as she only had 3 tins & that was her stock so he would have to wait until she bought a 4th!! Totally mad. They divorced not long after- she was a bit odd!