How to get in-stock alerts for everything from toilet paper to a PS5

Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

During the great toilet paper and Purell shortage of 2020, my savior was Nowinstock.net. 

As coronavirus cases crippled the U.S. in the spring, cleaning wipes and soap were also hard to get online and in store. With store shelves left bare, Amazon prices surged. Then I was introduced to the stripped-down website that sends you alerts when a popular item is in stock. 

Before the pandemic, Nowinstock.net’s alerts focused on tech, toys, and video games. But as cases climbed in early spring, it added trackers for coronavirus-related items, like masks and thermometers, to its homepage. By April, traffic to the site exploded, jumping 1,900 percent year over year, said founder Justin Vavrick. As coronavirus' winter surge began, so did another rush on toilet paper, which has been in the site's first homepage slot for months.  Read more...