Sonya Bateson: Where’s the plan to combat a looming recession?

There’s only so much fat one can trim before there’s nothing left, writes Sonya Bateson. Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

I found myself investigating how to make reusable toilet paper this week.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of tutorials online. It’s a thing. It’s really a thing. Blargh.

One tutorial recommended cutting up old bedsheets into reasonably-sized strips and zigzag stitching the edges. The instructions come with a tutorial for making a washing bag too, the creators insist the used wipes don’t smell when bundled inside it. Gag.

Another suggested cutting up old T-shirts to maximise the softness factor.

And then there was the tutorial that required pretty pieces of patterned flannelette to be overlocked together and adorned with snap buttons, attached together in one long chain, then wound around a plastic tube to aid with that authentic toilet paper tearing feeling.

I won’t lie, I felt a little queasy at the end of my research. The idea of handling such fabric for laundering isn’t pleasant. Or maybe I’m just more squeamish than most – heck, I struggled to get past the ick factor of changing my own child’s nappies.

I suppose I’m lucky enough to have grown up in modern times where disposable everything has meant never truly having to get hands-on with the yuckier things in life.

It might be the way of the future for many of us though judging by the state of supermarkets at the moment.

Did anyone else struggle to find toilet paper in their weekly shop last week? On my last grocery mission, the whole aisle was wiped bare (haha) of the precious paper.

Cue my frantic Googling, hoping like anything I wouldn’t actually have to resort to fabric.

Thank goodness we had enough rolls to tide us over until the shelves were restocked a day or two later. Crisis averted – for now.

It feels like we are dealing with a situation like this every time we shop for groceries: What won’t be available today? What will we have to stop buying due to immense price hikes? What can we substitute? What can we do without?

Those price rises are especially brutal. This was painfully highlighted this week when Stats NZ revealed that food prices jumped 1.1 per cent in December and were 11.3 per cent higher than a year earlier. It was the biggest annual food price increase in 32 years.

I don’t know how some families are managing to eat at all, let alone buy toilet paper.

No wonder so many people are seeking external help.

In the year to September 2022, the Ministry for Social Development paid out more than $52 million in hardship grants for people living in the Bay of Plenty to cover essential costs. People earning wages are eligible for those grants too, so don’t be too quick to judge beneficiaries.

Then there are all the social services that have reported a huge surge in need.

St Vincent de Paul spent $80,000 on food and provided 1900 food parcels in December alone for people in the Western Bay.

In the first 10 months of 2022, the Rotorua Salvation Army provided kai to the value of $87,000 to its clients, an increase of about 89 per cent on the previous year.

That’s a small picture of a very large problem facing our country. These figures only capture what’s happening to the people hardest hit by the cost-of-living crisis, the ones who are desperate enough to seek help.

But those of us who aren’t eligible for Government assistance or can’t get help from social agencies are still finding life really hard right now.

Judging purely from the chatter I’ve heard out and about, there are a lot of middle-class families who are struggling. Almost everywhere I go, conversations are dominated by how expensive literally everything is. One week it’s toilet paper, the next week it’s eggs, the following week it’s frozen vegetables.

It’s become a game in some circles. Find the most ridiculous-priced item you can. At least it gives us something to laugh about.

At one shop I visited recently, a particular name brand of flavoured puffed rice cereal I used to eat as a kid was proudly displayed on its own shelf for $11 a box, as if that were a bargain.

Eleven dollars. For cereal. Bonkers.

What I find truly scary, nay, terrifying, is that it’s likely our cost-of-living crisis will get worse this year.

New Zealand is predicted to face a recession this year. So many of us are already finding life hard, imagine how much harder it is going to get if large numbers of people start losing their jobs or defaulting on their home loans.

There’s only so much fat one can trim before there’s nothing left.

Maybe I’ve been burying my head in the sand over the Christmas holidays, but I’m yet to see any announcement from any of the main political parties with solid ideas on how to alleviate these struggles either. And that worries me more, especially in an election year.

But hey, if nothing changes, then maybe I can make a bit of extra cash whipping up some reusable toilet paper sets for the masses.

Someone’s got to profit in a crisis, right?

Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader, and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.