The first 6 months when we were too scared to go anywhere or do anything, we saved like $1000/month. I proceeded to learn nothing and we went back to max spending as soon as scientifically acceptable.
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Hmm. Individually washing the eggs in the carton before they went in the fridge, maybe.
Finding out it was definitely airborne was such a relief.
I like this one!
My wife got upset with me for getting coffee at the drive thru.
I refused to stop though, told her if that thing was going to spread via someone passing a coffee cup thru a window we're all fucked anyways and I may as well enjoy my coffee on occasion.
I used to make my husband text me pictures of him in a mask at the grocery store just slightly before masks became mandatory. I swiped some from work just before things got rolling and we began wearing them. Probably my best idea.
I remember using ATM's for the first time ever (because bank branches were closed) and using our stock of nitrile single use gloves to touch anything.
I also remember still going to work as a machine operator and being forced to wear the paper mask on top of my existing eye and hearing protection... my safety glasses would fog almost constantly and I scrapped at least a few parts cuz I couldn't see what the fuck was going on and they wouldn't let us take any safety gear off (even for a second) unless we left the shop floor. Good times.
Constant hand sanitizer - I still haven't dropped this habit. I see hand sanitizer, I use hand sanitizer.
This is a habit you should keep!
My church bestie and I always sit together and when we pass the peace and hug and shake hands, she always immediately puts sanitizer on my hands and hers after without even asking. She's the best.
I hate that people will look back on this behavior with derision, rather than taking sensible precautions during a time of uncertainty.
Seriously, this is just peak hindsight and at the time things people did where the most appropriate application of better safe than sorry.
I think a lot of that depends on your viewpoint and attitude. I will admit that I got grocery delivery for a few months and would actually sanitize the packaging before bringing it inside. I chuckle about it now and think I was maybe going a bit overboard - but like you said, the times were so uncertain for many - especially during the beginning.
It's funny to look back on is my point in posting this, but at the time we were just trying everything we could.
For a few months basically no one knew how it spread. I look back and think about how it could be seen as overboard, but being cautious and careful is more important in a time when something like Covid was quickly spreading and had these wildly different experiences for people. Especially the first alpha variant which seemed to either kill people, or cause them to not smell/taste and have memory issues. I wasn’t going to fuck with that, and still don’t want to.
Also, some forget, but there was a lot of videos coming out of China where it started with people running around seemingly trying to infect others and felt very zombie-esque.
Yep. There were reports that it could live on plastic surfaces for over a week.
Is it silly in hindsight knowing everything we do today? Sure. But if a new epidemic spreads rapidly again before we have any reliable info on it, I'm going back to wiping things down and washing my hands after touching anything.
Same... we'd wipe down our groceries, and anything delivered by mail or UPS would sit on our back porch for a few days before we'd bring it in the house. Was it necessary? Probably not, but our house never got sick - at least not until 2023. So for the next pandemic I won't mind being overly cautious again.
Yeah I remember it was months in before studies started coming out that it didn't spread via surfaces. I distinctly remember thinking "shit what am I supposed to do with all these Clorox wipes??"
I remember that I got to wfh so I had no commute, and people left me alone to actually do my job. All the orgs I keep busy with were shut down, so I finally got to rest.
But my anxiety was through the fucking roof because every 2 weeks, either my work or some other group would be like “let’s plan a get-together now that COVID is almost over!”
I was an Animal Crosser.
I didn't change much. On the other hand I was already pretty socially distanced before. I honestly loved how society came down to my level. It's much more stressful again now.
I went to the expensive grocery store. I had to keep working the entire time. When I went to my usual store after work, I'd have to wait in line to enter the store just to find out the horders bought everything again. The horders didn't go to the expensive store, so I didn't have to wait in line and most of the time I could find everything I needed.
That's how I got turned on to expensive Alfredo sauce. It was the only thing left, and now I can't go back.
I bought a house 6 months before lockdown.
I bought a super huge pack of charmin toilet paper at BJs. My ex bought a super huge pack of charmin toilet paper at BJs.
We had a laugh about all of our toilet paper.
As a joke I bought 2 more huge packs, because we had room and it was funny and had basically become an inside joke.
Then lockdown happened.
Toilet paper became a commodity.
I JUST (December 27th to be precise) ran out of the pre-covid toilet paper stocks we had.
That's amazing!
I mock threatened my friends that if I couldn't buy toilet paper when I needed it, I was going to come over to their house and scoot my ass across the rug like the dog does.
Bulk non-perishables is always the way to go. I think my family buys tp, garbage bags, light bulbs etc maybe once every two years.
How do you go though so many light bulbs?? I haven't had a single one fail in the past 2 years
We use incandescent bulbs as heaters to keep water pipes from freezing in the winter. When put in a brooder lamp housing they're safer than dedicated space heaters on a thermostat and useful for places where heating tape isn't practical (eg around a pressure tank)
We usually go through 8-10 100w bulbs a year across the three pump houses and crawl spaces We have to maintain. Running continuously they only have a life span of a couple months.
Very unusual situation of course. Idk i think we last bought LED's for the actual inside of the house maybe 5 years ago lol.
I didn't do none of that shit. I worked outside, so I never even stopped working.
I worked at walmart and was therefore 'essential.' The only way my life changed was I had to wear a mask, got screamed at a tiny bit more and people would look absolutely HORRIFIED when I sneezed.
Same. I'm from the UK so people used to come out at whatever time to clap for the NHS workers. The fun bit was there were no NHS workers near us but I would get home just in time to be applauded by my entire street for working like normal.
Thursday nights at 8pm in my neck of the woods. There used to be one excited happy clapper who banged pans or pot lids together in half an hour sessions
I too never stopped working. Went in every day like "we ride at dawn bitches"
Masks were hard to come by so I 3d printed them and added filter material from furnace filters. They were super hard to breathe but I felt more comfortable shopping with them. Probably inhaled a lot of micro plastic.
I'm rather impressed by this though! Clever.
Masking outdoors with no one around. I heard on a podcast that it was still good practice so you'd remember not to touch your face, but it was mostly just hot and miserable.
I know a few people who still wear surgical masks outside when the pollen levels are high because it helps with allergies. Not perfect, but the masks reduce enough of the pollen breathed in to be helpful without the sweating problems from n95 masks.
This is the reason I will now always fly with masks. Just to keep myself from touching my face and getting sick at the start of a vacation.
I always fly with masks now because I’ve realized how many people are harbingers of disease in the airport.
That's where I got COVID is on a plane where my husband and I wore an N95 the whole time. He was immune suppressed I think for another reason, which is a whole other story, and I think that's why. He ended up hospitalized about two weeks later and while we had five vaccines apiece at that time and our COVID was mild, it sure didn't help later.
Me too! I also had special touch screen gloves my husband insisted I wear everywhere in the dead of summer so I wouldn't touch anything with bare hands. I looked ridiculous in summer short sleeves wearing gloves. I also had safety glasses.