The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the shortage of many products that we once could grab at a store or order online easily. The shortage also cultivated one of my favorite quips by an 
unknown author — “I use to spin toilet paper like I was on Wheel of Fortune. Now I turn it like I’m opening a safe!” (for more like this, check out Laughter Pharmacy).
Occasionally as we search and try out substitute products, we discover new ones that we really like – a silver lining in the midst of our upside down worlds. Here are a few of my new favorites:
🌻Eco Nuts Reusable Towels on a Roll – these are just plain wonderful if you haven’t tried them. There’s 25 on a roll and after 2 months, we have only used 4 and am still reusing 3 of those. They have been vigorously hand-washed many, many times and are holding up great. I believe you can also put them in the washing machine too, but haven’t tried. They really are amazing and needless to say, they are helping us reduce the number of paper towels we use. We still need and use plenty of paper towels especially with all our fifteen 4-legged family members. I plan, however, to always keep a roll of Eco Nuts on hand now. By the way, they are also very handy and useful to have on hand in our barn too.
🌻 Viva Paper Towels Choose-A-Sheet – many of you likely already know Viva well, but we did not (always been Bounty select-a-size fans). We like them although Bounty is still our top choice strength-wise. A friend, however, says she has used Viva for years now and that one or two almost always go through her washing machine as she’s forever leaving them in her pockets. She swears they come out strong as ever, not torn up and perfectly reuseable. Now that’s pretty impressive for a regular old paper towel!
As for more enviromentally friendly paper towels, Seventh Generation unbleached is my choice and we use them as well. For the tougher cleanups however, Bounty seems to be the sturdiest although now I’m learning to first reach for a Eco Nut Reusuable Towel (see above) because it can be used, washed and reused over and over and…well you get my point.
🌻 Muir Glen Diced Tomatoes (regular and fire roasted) – these are so dang good and I can’t believe we’d never enjoyed them before. Then again, we never had reason to explore these options since pre-pandemic, we could usually find fresh tomatoes pretty easily.
🌻 Amazon Prime Movie Offerings – okay – this is obviously not a food product but an occasional needed diversion. Before the stay-at-home restrictions began, we had not taken much advantage of Amazon Prime member’s free movie offerings. We’ve now learned it offers interesting and diverse choices and is indeed a nice perk beyond 2 day shipping, etc,
A few of our new favorite movies include “In-Lawfully Yours,” “Lost Husband” and “Still Mine.”
The first two are for those times you don’t want violent or in-the-sack scenes, but just want to sit back, enjoy some laughs and share an hour or two with a fun movie family. “Still Mine” has its own kind of humor,but is not a comedy. It is based on an amazing and heart-touching true story about an older Canadian rural couple and their love for one another.