Pandemic Preparedness: Meeting Your Family’s Hygiene Necessities

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After food and water, hygiene products are the next items that disappear from shelves when a pandemic strikes. So your odds of getting what you have to have during a time when needs are elevated are slim. It pays to know what Family’s Hygiene Necessities for a Pandemic Preparedness would or should look like.

Pandemic Preparedness article cover image

You want to prepare now so that you don’t have to fight crowds. Plus, you want to make sure you can stay isolated from them so that you won’t bring any illness back to your own home.

Cover Your Family’s Hygiene Necessities for a Pandemic Isolation Period

What Do You Need?

You’ll want to figure out how much of each hygiene product your family goes through by adding up what you usually go through in a year. Then multiply that by at least two years.

Hygiene items can store that long, so even if the pandemic doesn’t last that long, you won’t have wasted the expense of buying the items. You’ll need to stock up on toilet paper.

Toilet Paper

If the Covid-19 panic buying taught us anything, it was the fact that TP is king. There were Facebook groups dedicated to a “where is it now” concept to help people find what they needed. Add in all the TP memes talking about how TP was used to make moonshine, or it was replacing poker chips?

It became pretty clear that this baby is important to have. The best rule of thumb for Pandemic Preparedness is to figure two rolls per family member per week with extra rolls figured in for the event of an illness that could require more usage.

Teeth

For toothpaste, think that a family of four would need two tubes of toothpaste per month. Dental floss should be figured at one container per month per person. Toothbrushes should be replaced more often during a pandemic because of the higher chance of you having to deal with germs.

A good rule of thumb is to change toothbrushes every four weeks – sooner if anyone in the family has an illness. In between time? Throw them in your dishwasher each week for a quick clean. Toothpaste?

This isn’t so critical as you can even resort to baking soda in a pinch or worst-case scenario? Just brush with water. You really want to get the “scum” off your teeth and prevent plaque build-up.

Soap

You’ll need bar soap. If you currently use liquid hand soap, it’s more cost-effective to plan to use bar soap during a pandemic. However, since pandemics are spread through viruses and germs, you’ll want to make sure that you have a hearty supply of hand sanitizer to use during the length of the isolation period.

There are those of us that like to make our own – I have an oatmeal honey sensitive skin bar that I make and love for my daughter’s skin, but prefer the Eucalyptus soap recipe for myself that I found HERE.

make your own soap for Pandemic Preparedness

Deodorant

While this doesn’t seem like a top priority for pandemic preparedness, everyone in the family – except for infants and small children – will need deodorant. Using the solids is more cost-effective than the spray-on kind. Figure a container per person that uses it per month. It doesn’t really pay to stock up on 5-10 years’ worth of this, it degrades pretty fast.

Feminine Hygiene Items

Feminine products should be figured at the current use, but always store extras in case of additional needs. If you use condoms for intimacy, you’ll want to pack a supply of those as well to keep those little swimmers in check. If you don’t?

You may find a bonus family member in about nine months. There are already jokes about the Covid-19 pandemic babies being called “Quaranteens” a dozen years from now. A few tampons should also go in your first aid kit – professional sports medicine docs use them for nose injuries!

tampons are also good for the first aid kit when looking at Pandemic Preparedness

Razors

You’ll need to pack in storage a supply of razors for both men and women as well as an amount of shaving cream. The shampoo is something you can also store up, but in a pinch, hand soap can be used to wash hair if you don’t have enough shampoo.

Basic Skin and Nail Care

You never know when a problem will strike, and Pandemic Preparedness needs to take that into account. Is it the middle of winter? Lotions for dry skin should also be on your store list. Also, add Chapstick to prevent cracked lips from occurring. Q-tips and nail clippers for each person should also be stored for use.

You’ll want separate nail clippers to help keep nail fungus and other bacteria or viruses at bay. A Great DIY Home Manicure Starts with a Manicure Kit has a great list of basic supplies.

It goes beyond saying that if you have infants, you’ll want to store up diapers and baby wipes. Now you’ll want to be careful on the diaper sizing since babies can outgrow diapers. So buy these in size increments to allow for that.