How much should your household keep on hand?
Nobody wants to run out of toilet paper. Nobody wants a basement that looks like a warehouse either. Most of us live somewhere in between, never quite sure we've got it right.
There's no magic number
You'll hear advice like "keep a month's worth" or "always have three." A family with four kids and a couple living alone aren't living the same life. Three packs might last one of them a week and the other until summer.
So a better question than "how many do we have?" is "how long will this last us?" That's the one that tells you whether you need more.
Some things deserve a bigger cushion
Running out of your favorite dish soap is annoying. Running out of diapers at 10 p.m. is a crisis.
Keep more of the things that would really hurt to run out of, as long as they keep well. Keep less of what spoils, and less of what you can pick up anywhere.
A little extra lets you say no
When you're on your last bottle of detergent, you buy whatever is on the shelf at whatever it costs that day. With a spare in the cupboard, you can wait for a better price, or just a better day.
That's the real point of having a cushion. You're never forced to buy.
You already know more than you think
You don't need to count anything. You probably already know that the detergent runs out about once a month, that paper towels vanish in a couple of weeks, and that the snacks go faster when the kids are home all day.
That rough sense is all you need.
The sweet spot
You have enough that you're not worried about running out. You don't have so much that you're buying things just because they're on sale. You're prepared without being buried in stuff.
And when you do buy, it's because you know your family will use it.
This is what StockPock is for
It keeps track of what your family has and how fast you go through it, so you know when to buy, when to wait, and when you're covered. The free calculator shows how it thinks.
Try the calculator