The Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2026

This article is about the 2026 crisis. For the 1974 shortage, see Toilet paper shortage of 1974.

The Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2026
Diagram of Aisle 14 of a typical American supermarket on March 21, 2026, prepared for the United States Department of Unnecessary Research. The single roll shown was later found to be a display model made of foam.
Date	February 27, 2026 (2026-02-27) – June 9, 2026 (2026-06-09)
Duration	103 days
Location	United States; isolated incidents in Canada
Also known as	The Roll Panic The Ply Crisis "Two-Ply Tuesday" (March 17 only)
Type	Supply chain crisis, panic buying
Cause	Disputed; see Causes
Participants	Approximately 214 million consumers
Outcome	Release of the National Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve Passage of the Household Tissue Continuity Act Permanent per-household purchase limits in 11 states
Deaths	0
Non-fatal injuries	41 (mostly shopping-cart related)
Property damage	$3.2 million (shelving, signage, one inflatable mascot)
Arrests	7 (later reduced to stern conversations)
Inquiries	House Subcommittee on Domestic Absorbency (2026)

The Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2026 was a 103-day nationwide shortage of household toilet tissue in the United States that began on February 27, 2026, and was formally declared over on June 9, 2026. At its peak in late March, an estimated 94 percent of retail toilet paper shelf space in the contiguous United States was empty, and the national average price of a twelve-roll package rose from $9.84 to $61.17.

The crisis has been variously attributed to a mislabeled shipping manifest at the Port of Savannah, a viral video titled "They Are Taking the Rolls", and a 0.3 percent decline in output at a single pulp mill in Wisconsin. Most scholars now agree that the shortage was primarily self-reinforcing: consumers who believed others would hoard toilet paper bought more of it, which caused the shortage they had anticipated.

The federal government responded with the first-ever release of the National Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve, a stockpile established in 1988 under the Unnecessary Research Act of 1987 with scientific oversight from the United States Department of Unnecessary Research. The release, the subsequent congressional hearings, and the cultural artifacts of the period, including the slogan "Squeeze Responsibly", have made the crisis one of the most extensively documented household-goods events in American history.

Background

Toilet paper is a low-margin, high-volume product whose bulk relative to its value makes large inventories expensive to store. In 2025 the average American supermarket held 3.1 days of toilet paper inventory on its premises, compared with 11.4 days of canned soup. Industry analysts had warned for some years that this arrangement left the category "unusually sensitive to mood".

The United States had experienced smaller shortages before, most notably the Toilet paper shortage of 1974, which was caused by a late-night television joke, and a brief regional event in Lesser Tumbleton, Minnesota, in 2011, when the town's only hardware store was closed for inventory and residents assumed the worst. Neither event was considered a precedent at the federal level, and the Strategic Reserve had never been drawn upon prior to 2026.

Causes

The precise trigger of the crisis remains disputed, and the House Subcommittee on Domestic Absorbency declined to name a single cause in its final report, describing the event as "a confluence of minor occurrences, each of which would have been unremarkable on its own."

The Savannah manifest

On February 24, 2026, a container manifest at the Port of Savannah listed a shipment of 4,000 pallets of "bath tissue" as "lost". The container was later found to have been correctly delivered to a warehouse in Macon, Georgia; the word "lost" had been entered in the wrong field and was intended to describe a single forklift operator's lunch. A screenshot of the manifest circulated on social media on February 26.

"They Are Taking the Rolls"

On the evening of February 27, an 84-second video titled "They Are Taking the Rolls" was uploaded by a user in Dayton, Ohio. It showed a man loading what appeared to be 40 packages of toilet paper into a sport utility vehicle while narrating, "This is it. This is how it starts." The man was later identified as Terrence Abernathy-Crowe, the facilities manager of a church, who was purchasing supplies for a scheduled pancake breakfast. Abernathy-Crowe told the Dayton Evening Register that his narration had referred to the pancake breakfast. By then the video had been viewed 31 million times.

Production factors

Output at the Kettering Pulp & Tissue mill in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, declined by 0.3 percent in the week of February 16 because of scheduled maintenance on a single roller. Economists have noted that this decline was "statistically indistinguishable from nothing", but it was widely reported, and several commentators cited it as proof that the shortage had a material basis.

Timeline

See also: Ohio Shopping Cart Migration of 2019

Principal events of the 2026 crisis

Date	Event	National shelf vacancy
February 24	Savannah manifest error	2%
February 27	"They Are Taking the Rolls" uploaded	4%
March 2	First reported purchase limit (Akron, Ohio: 2 packages per customer)	19%
March 6	Paper towel sales rise 400%; paper towel shortage begins	41%
March 11	A Midwestern governor holds press conference in front of a pallet of tissue "to reassure the public"; pallet is purchased within 11 minutes	58%
March 17	"Two-Ply Tuesday": a rumor that single-ply would be discontinued leads to a one-day run on single-ply	77%
March 21	Peak vacancy recorded	94%
March 24	President authorizes release of the National Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve	93%
April 2	First Reserve shipments reach distribution centers in Pennsylvania and Ohio	81%
April 19	"Squeeze Responsibly" public information campaign launched	66%
May 8	Prices fall below $20 per twelve-roll package for the first time since March	38%
May 30	Reserve release concluded; 61% of stockpile distributed	17%
June 9	Crisis formally declared over by the Department of Commerce	6%

Escalation (February–March)

Within 72 hours of the video's upload, purchase limits had been imposed by retailers in at least 14 states. Limits proved difficult to enforce; reports emerged of shoppers returning to stores in disguises, including one man in Toledo, Ohio who returned four times in a single afternoon wearing progressively larger hats. A secondary shortage of paper towels began on March 6, followed by shortages of facial tissue (March 9), coffee filters (March 12), and, in two counties in Kentucky, newspapers.

On March 15 the parking lot of a supercenter outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was the site of a 40-minute queue for a single delivery truck. Commentators drew comparisons to The Great Walmart Parking Lot Incident, though local officials emphasized that the 2026 queue "remained orderly and was over before lunch".

Peak (March 17–24)

On March 17, an unsourced claim that manufacturers would discontinue single-ply tissue caused a reversal in consumer preferences, and single-ply stocks, which had until then remained relatively available, were exhausted within a day. The episode, known as "Two-Ply Tuesday", is often cited as the moment the crisis became fully irrational. Vacancy peaked at 94 percent on March 21. In Lesser Tumbleton, Minnesota, the office of Mayor Doug issued a proclamation, bearing a ceremonial paw print, asking residents to "share with neighbors and to consider leaves."

Regional variation

The crisis did not affect all regions equally. Shelf vacancy in the Midwest exceeded 90 percent for eleven consecutive days, while parts of the Pacific Northwest, where consumers had reportedly "already stocked up in 2024 for unrelated reasons", never exceeded 60 percent. Rural areas were generally less affected than suburbs, a pattern that Pruitt attributes to the lower density of social media users and the higher density of people who "keep a few extra in the barn". In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, local farmers' associations organized a voluntary rationing scheme modelled on the feed-sharing arrangements of the Pennsylvania Chicken Uprising, distributing four rolls per household each Saturday from the Strasburg Grange Hall.

Several communities developed informal exchange systems. In Dayton, Ohio, a "roll library" operated from a public library's book-return slot for nine days before being closed on hygiene grounds. In Duluth, Minnesota, a neighborhood association published a weekly bulletin listing which households had surplus rolls and which had surplus paper towels, and brokered 1,400 trades. In Fargo, North Dakota, a bowling alley offered a free roll with every third game, and was obliged to end the promotion after a single evening on which 2,200 games were bowled.

Retail response

Retailers adopted a range of measures, including purchase limits, designated "tissue hours" for elderly shoppers, and the relocation of toilet paper from the back of stores to locked cabinets near the registers. Supermarket chains in Ohio and Indiana reported that customers who found the aisle empty made an average of 1.7 additional purchases of unrelated items "out of a sense of not wanting to leave with nothing", a phenomenon which partly offset the chains' losses. Store employees were frequently praised in local coverage; a cashier in Akron, Ohio, Doreen Vasquez-Holt, became briefly known nationally after declining a $500 cash offer for the last package in her store and selling it instead to the next customer in line at its regular price.

Government response

Main article: National Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve

Release of the Strategic Reserve

On March 24, 2026, the President signed Executive Order 14,912, authorizing the first drawdown in the history of the National Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve. The Reserve, then holding approximately 1.8 billion rolls in salt caverns beneath Louisiana and a decommissioned missile silo in Kansas, had been established in 1988 under the Unnecessary Research Act of 1987, and its existence had been regarded for most of the intervening decades as a punchline.

Reserve Administrator Lorraine Pettibone-Haas told reporters that the stockpile had been "maintained at full readiness for 38 years, rotated every eighteen months, and inspected weekly for humidity" and that the agency was "very glad, frankly, to be asked." Distribution was hampered by the discovery that approximately 12 percent of the stockpile consisted of a 1990s-era "economy" grade that the Reserve's own testers described as "structurally similar to wax paper". This grade was distributed last.

Role of the Department of Unnecessary Research

The United States Department of Unnecessary Research (DUR), which provides the Reserve's scientific oversight under a 1990 memorandum of understanding, deployed 26 field researchers to supermarkets in nine states to document conditions. Their reports, collected as the Aisle Observation Series, include the diagram reproduced in the infobox above and a 340-page study of the rate at which shoppers checked the empty shelf a second time "in case something had appeared". The study found that 71 percent of shoppers looked twice, 23 percent looked three times, and 6 percent "stood quietly for an extended period". Under Secretary for Domestic Phenomena Hollis Marchbanks defended the expense, noting that the study "cost less than the shelving".

The DUR also commissioned a parallel study on whether toilet paper stored in a refrigerator lasted longer, citing The Ben Refrigeration Hypothesis. The study found that it did not.

"Squeeze Responsibly" campaign

Beginning April 19, the Department of Commerce ran a public information campaign under the slogan "Squeeze Responsibly", featuring a cartoon roll named Plyford. Television spots urged viewers to "buy what you need, then go home". A widely circulated poster read "THE REST OF THE COUNTRY ALSO HAS A BATHROOM". A post-campaign survey found that 58 percent of respondents recognized Plyford and 9 percent changed their purchasing behavior; 3 percent reported that the campaign "made them want to buy more toilet paper".

Congressional hearings

The House Subcommittee on Domestic Absorbency held eleven days of hearings between May and August 2026. Witnesses included Abernathy-Crowe, who testified for four hours about the pancake breakfast, and Pettibone-Haas, whose request for a 40 percent increase in the Reserve's budget was approved by voice vote. Representative Clement Ashby-Fowler of Ohio asked witnesses on six separate occasions "whether anyone had tried simply making more", prompting a two-hour explanation of paper manufacturing lead times. The hearings produced the Household Tissue Continuity Act, signed on September 30, 2026.

International reaction

The crisis received limited coverage abroad. Canadian retailers in border provinces imposed purchase limits after reports of American shoppers crossing the border to buy tissue; one store in Windsor, Ontario, displayed a sign reading "CANADIAN BATHROOMS ALSO EXIST". A spokesperson for a Mexican paper manufacturers' association said that the association was "following the situation with interest and some concern for our neighbors". Several European newspapers ran explanatory features on the Strategic Reserve, which a Danish columnist described as "the most American thing I have ever read about".

Economic impact

Selected indicators, 2026

Indicator	February 1	March 21 (peak)	June 9
Average price, 12-roll package	$9.84	$61.17	$10.92
Average price, single roll (secondary market)	—	$14.00	$0.95
Bidet unit sales (weekly)	11,200	486,000	92,300
Paper towel shelf vacancy	3%	88%	9%
Pulp futures (index)	100	214	107

The crisis is estimated to have cost the American economy $4.7 billion, of which $1.1 billion was attributable to lost working hours spent in stores and $0.9 billion to the purchase of bidets that were subsequently returned. A secondary market emerged in which single rolls were traded online, at flea markets, and, in Missouri, at a weekly auction held in a bowling alley. Several online marketplaces banned the resale of toilet paper on March 13; in response, sellers began listing rolls as "white decorative cylinders".

Manufacturers increased output by 31 percent between March and May, but the resulting surplus arrived after demand had collapsed, and by July warehouses in the Midwest held an estimated 9.4 months of supply. Economists have termed this the "post-roll overhang". Approximately 400 million surplus rolls were purchased by the federal government to replenish the Reserve.

Cultural legacy

The crisis produced a substantial body of popular culture. The phrase "Squeeze Responsibly" entered common usage as a general admonition against overconsumption, and was named Phrase of the Year by the Midwestern Lexical Society. Plyford merchandise, including plush toys and a commemorative stamp, sold an estimated 2.2 million units; critics observed that much of the merchandise was itself made of paper.

The International Association of Professional Yappers held an emergency panel in April titled "The Roll and the Soul", which ran for nine hours and reached no conclusions. A play, Aisle Fourteen, premiered at a community theater in Akron, Ohio, in August and consists of a single character looking at an empty shelf for 95 minutes. It received mixed reviews.

Sociologists have compared the crisis to the Ohio Shopping Cart Migration of 2019 and to The Great Wi-Fi Password Schism as examples of what Corwin Pruitt calls "mundane panic": collective anxiety concerning objects that are, in his words, "too ordinary to be taken seriously until they are gone". Pruitt's book on the subject, Empty Aisle, spent three weeks on a regional best-seller list. Several commentators have noted that the Gravy standard proposal, which had languished since the 2009 federal review, saw a brief revival in public interest during the crisis, as consumers began to regard household staples as stores of value.

The crisis is commemorated each March 21 by "Empty Shelf Day", observed informally by some supermarket employees, who are said to leave one shelf bare for an hour "out of respect".

Criticism

Critics have argued that the federal response was slow and that the Strategic Reserve's release should have been authorized as early as March 6. Others argued that releasing the Reserve validated the panic. Economist Abigail Feeney wrote that "the government spent 38 years preparing for exactly this, and then spent 25 days deciding whether this was exactly this." Pettibone-Haas responded at the hearings that the Reserve's protocols required "three consecutive days above 85 percent vacancy and a signed letter", and that the letter had been delayed by a printer jam.

The Aisle Observation Series was criticized by Senator Ruth Calloway-Banks as "a census of disappointment", and a motion to defund it was defeated 211–207.

See also

• National Strategic Toilet Paper Reserve
• United States Department of Unnecessary Research
• Unnecessary Research Act of 1987
• Ohio Shopping Cart Migration of 2019
• The Great Walmart Parking Lot Incident
• Project Lukewarm
• Toilet paper shortage of 1974

Further reading

• Pettibone-Haas, Lorraine (2026). Ready Since 1988: A Memoir of the Reserve. Baton Rouge

Underbrook Press. ISBN 978-0-00-000388-4. (fictional source)

• Marchbanks, Hollis (2026). Looking Twice: Field Notes from the Empty Aisle. Washington, D.C.

Department of Unnecessary Research Press. ISBN 978-0-00-000417-1. (fictional source)

External links

• "Squeeze Responsibly" campaign archive