It's hard to believe but we are still living in a world where some of our store shelves look like they did when we first went into lockdown because of the pandemic. In 2020 people began hoarding things and buying everything they could from the grocery store and other retailers. This kind of mentality hurt everyone because there wasn't enough to go around.

People were buying up things that didn't make sense: toilet paper and paper towels being the thing that comes to mind first. I understand that disinfectant wipes and bleach and other items like that were snatched up quickly. Nearly two years later, you think we'd be over it and that our stores would have returned to normal by now, but that's not the case.

Supply chain issues, worker shortages and some other factors have played a role in the fact that our grocery stores can't keep their shelves stocked with some of our essentials and other items. While shopping at a local grocery store recently, I happened to notice that so many shelves were empty in this big store.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've also noticed that the dairy case was often completely empty of milk, except the specialty almond milk. Now, this week it was pretty stocked, but I can't say that was true for a lot of other products in the store. Even baby formula is hard to find these days and this retailer has placed a limit on how much formula you can purchase in a day. Just like they placed limits on paper goods at the beginning of the pandemic.

I don't have the answers on when things are going to get better and when the store shelves are going to have what we need when we go to the store, all I can do right now is point out the items that are missing from our local grocery store.