The shelves of Walmart remain completely barren of toilet paper and other cleaning supplies. OBSERVER Photo by Anthony Dolce.

Though the big box grocery stores in the area were able to restock over the last couple weeks amidst the COVID-19 supply buyouts, that doesn’t mean the stores are still in stock.

In fact, the big stores in the area still lack toilet paper and other essential supplies.

Walmart, Tops, Home Depot, Aldi, and Dollar General are still filled with empty shelves in the toilet paper aisle, despite all those stores having limits on how many rolls or packs a customer can buy.

Tops is still the most ravaged of all the stores around. There are a couple individual rolls of toilet paper left, though that is limited to a two-per-person limit. Toilet paper isn’t the only thing that Tops is out of, however. The only paper hygiene product Tops has in stock is tissues, as paper towels are also completely off the shelf.

In addition to hygiene products, the Tops buyout stretched to food items, such as Ramen Noodles, which are highly limited in shelf quantity, instant rice, pasta, and cans of soup. Pasta and soup can both still be found, but the kinds and quantity are highly limited.

Home Depot was a similar story in terms of toilet paper, with all of the aisles that normally feature toilet paper and paper towels absolutely empty, with that two-purchase maximum. Outside of toilet paper, any kind of sanitation wipes are absolutely wiped out, and have been for the recent days. The purchase limit on toilet paper expands to the sanitation wipes, as well as any kind of laundry detergent.

Aldi was in better shape food-wise than some of the other stores, still having stock of rice, but there was no toilet paper in sight. If you’re in need of paper towels, Aldi is a good place to go, still having a decent sized quantity left for purchase, but the toilet paper is the only real notable buyout at Aldi. Bottles of water are a little low compared to the other places, though a sufficient stock of water still remains.

Walmart is the most barren of all stores, and they actually have the most strict buyer limit. Though, unlike Tops, Walmart has soup and Ramen noodle stock to speak of. The buy-out hit Walmart in the same place it hit other stores, with the most barren toilet paper aisle, while also having the biggest area for it. Walmart’s aisle of toilet paper, laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies was the most barren of any store, with it essentially being a long ghost town. There are still more than enough paper towel rolls for people to buy, along with the other supplies, but any hope of toilet paper at Walmart is lost. The difference between Walmart and the other big stores is the buy limit. While the other stores seem to have landed on two items per person, Walmart is asking its consumers to buy only one of each item, and they are still bought out to the extent they are.

Dollar General is the same story as the other stores, being in stock of paper towels but without toilet paper. Interestingly for Dollar General though is that they were pretty cleared out of Cheez-Its and other snack crackers. This isn’t on par with the other stores, but most boxes of crackers in one aisle were totally cleaned out.

There were several signs at the varying stores saying a restock will be coming soon, with Home Depot having a sign saying the re-stock is coming next week.