Because my apartment is too small to store the recommended pandemic preparedness supplies without turning the space into an obstacle course, the packages of water, peanut butter, canned soup, granola bars, pasta, tomato sauce, Theraflu, DayQuil, and Purell now protrude from under my girlfriend’s dining room table (which is also the kitchen table and living room table) in her slightly bigger place, where I spend half of my weeknights anyway.

To combat the spread of Covid-19, several New York City schools have shut down and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has pledged to use hospital-grade disinfectant to sanitize the agency’s entire fleet of subway cars and buses every three days until the virus is contained. Over the weekend, as the number of confirmed patients in New York State crept past 100, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency. Already, about 2,200 people in the city are under quarantine.

It’s statistically unlikely that I’ll be affected, yet I also know that if I’m in the wrong place at just the wrong time, and fail to keep my hands off my face, I could be. In case things go sideways and you have to “shelter in place” for days on end, many experts have suggested stocking a roughly 30-day supply of prescriptions, food and household items.

But that advice seems made for people with both the square footage and disposable income required for a Costco-sized stockpile. We have neither the generous space of a brownstone nor the big, homey pantries of a suburban home. There isn’t really space in either of our places for whatever the math is on a monthlong supply of life’s bare necessities.