Toilet paper will be one of the first things to disappear from the shelves should a SHTF event occur. You can’t really have too much of it, but considering mice love this stuff and it can be easily damaged by water, it needs to be stored properly.
Obviously, there are solutions to using toilet paper and some more sustainable options out there, however, it won’t be fun to try to use those during a real survival situation. Imagine having washable and reuseable toilet paper when you don’t have running water…no thanks!
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Consider storing at least one year’s worth of toilet paper. To figure out how much this is, save your used rolls for the whole family for one week and count them. Then multiply that by 52 because that’s how many weeks there are in a year. Anticipate and extra ten rolls for illnesses or digestive issues that could pop up during the year too. This should give you a fairly accurate number. Once you know how many rolls to store, start buying!
A quick tip (that most of you probably already know) is to buy your toilet paper in bulk. It’s cheaper and you won’t be needing it right away. Much like certain food items, it’s better to just grab some and store and forget about it for your daily life unless it is warranted. There are a lot of options for toilet paper too, so make sure you are grabbing what you need. If you prefer 2-ply, now is the time to buy it.
The best option is to keep it in the plastic or wrapping, just to give it one more layer of protection. Then put it in a large plastic tub with a lid that snaps on. You will want a watertight option to prevent any moisture from getting to the toilet paper.
If your stash of toilet paper does happen to get ruined, you will need to improvise. This is where it can come in handy to save old t-shirts or linens and cut them down. Sure, this won’t be fun to wash these after use, but it’ll beat other things.
You will also need to dispose of the excrement/used toilet paper properly. In third world countries, one of the leading causes of illness and death is not
properly discarding human fecal matter. In a survival situation where the “S” hits the fan, and toilets won’t flush because there is no water to make them work, then we’ll find ourselves in a third world situation. There will be people who improperly bury excrement, which will lead to disease. Bury human excrement and your used toilet paper 6-8 inches deep in the ground and 200 feet or more away from your water supply! Proper disposal of trash is an issue that can bring hungry dangerous animals around drawn to the stench. Burning trash can be the choice of some, while plastic trash bags and the means to find someplace safe and sanitary to dump them is another alternative.
Figure out your toilet paper situation before the SHTF. You won’t realize just how much you miss it until it is gone.
This is a guest post by Mac Slavo of shtfplan.com