Jim,
I hope the following information will help some of the readers with their supplies of toilet paper. I consider this a very important part of the total preparedness plan. If anything it will be a tremendous comfort for people during a really Schumer time. I will mention toilet paper brands, however, this is in no way an endorsement of any particular brand.
I was always curious how much toilet paper I would need per person for a year during a post-SHTF event. Not being the one that bought the stuff I relied on the wife for this. The info I got just wasn’t exact enough. I really needed to know so as to have enough on hand. I did what anyone would do and searched the internet. I was looking for the average amount of toilet paper that is used per person per day. Wikipedia had the answer. It said that Charmin Toilet Paper determined that an American uses 57 sheets of TP per day. I needed to convert this into how many rolls used per year. All brands make different size rolls of TP. So to make it easy I used Charmin’s numbers. Charmin makes 176, 352, 440 and 704 sheet rolls of TP. For my calculations I used a roll of 352 sheets. The number of ply’s was not considered. If I use 57 sheets per day that comes to 20,805 sheets per year or (using 352 sheets per roll) 60 rolls per year. Again, your numbers will vary depending on what sheet count you buy and even your daily usage. Multiply that by the number of family members and it should give you a pretty good idea of your yearly TP needs. You might want to add an extra case(s) for good measure incase mice, water, charity or what ever depletes part of your stash of TP. Try and buy the cases of TP that are in the cardboard boxes. This will provide them some limited protection. Plastic tubs are another good form of protection. These would also help you with storage issues because the cases could be broken down into smaller units. Make sure you identify them.
If you have a retreat and are expecting people to be there they should preposition TP for themselves (as well as other stuff). You can’t be expected to provide everything for everybody.
As Buckshot mentioned in an earlier post, telephone books can be a good source of TP. I consider this emergency TP. I consider using the full size telephone books but the smaller ones work also. Each page can be cut in half long ways and used that way. Maybe crumpling them up and then unfolding them will make them a little softer to use. Oh well, hope this helps some of your readers. – Larry in Kansas
JWR Replies: As previously mentioned in this blog and in my novel “Patriots”, I recommend acquiring a large stack of telephone books to use a secondary supply of toilet paper. Phone books are usually available free for the asking. New phone books would be preferable (more sanitary), but they are not quite so readily available as used ones.