There’s now a toilet paper calculator to estimate how much you’ll need during your lockdown

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Forget bottlecaps, the coronavirus pandemic has shown us that the humble toilet paper roll is going to be the currency of the apocalypse. To find out how much you need to hoard to survive your self-quarantine, people have been putting together handy web-based calculators for the optimal number of rolls to have on hand (hint: it’s not quite the buttload you think).

A large chunk of the rest of the world might have embraced water washing, but not the U.S., where bidets were associated with salacious lifestyles so that means toilet paper continues to reign supreme. Head on over to How Much Toilet Paper to get a handy guesstimate of how much pillowy softness you’ll need for the two (or more) weeks you really, really, really shouldn’t be leaving your damn house.

It’ll ask for how many times you visit the *ahem* facilities daily, and also how many rolls you have on hand already. Crunching those hard numbers gives you a soft estimate of how many days before you need to start sacrificing socks. I’ve got at least six full rolls on hand, and the two people in my household go at least three times a day, giving me  32 days of the good stuff.

Image: How Much Toilet Paper

32 days, people! Stop panic buying enough to fill your eight-seater minivan – you don’t need it. At least, unless you actually have enough teenagers to fill that minivan’s seats, in which case you might well need that much in two weeks and I take pity on the amount of air freshener you also need to buy.

Oh, and in case you need to adjust the settings, hit that Advanced Options button to tweak things like the number of wipes, sheets per wipe, and how many sheets are on your mega-ultra-super-rolls.

Image: How Much Toilet Paper

If that’s not a good enough estimate for you, check out Got Paper? which has more probing questions about your habits. You could also buy a bidet (if you can still find one on Amazon), and not have to worry about using toilet paper every again. I mean, it’s the green option, right?

What do you think? Are you worried about a toilet paper shortage in your home? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.