Friday 1 February 2013

First month completed!


As any addict who goes cold turkey knows, it’s important to mark milestones and give yourself credit for small achievements. So I’m proud to say that today marks my first full month without supermarkets.

It may not have been heroin or crack cocaine, but my habit was pretty serious. I estimate that I’d have shopped in the supermarkets a whopping 20 times last month - including visits to my local Co-op and Tesco petrol stations as well as the big superstores.

Instead I spent January walking into town on my lunchbreak to visit delis and market stalls, popping to the row of independent stores round the corner from my house and frequenting a number of local farm shops.

So far I have learned:


  • My balance is really poor.
  • Follow the old folks - they know where it's at.
  • That smell in butchers' shops lingers in your nose for hours afterwards.
  • Wilkos is the best place on earth (yes, even better than Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China).
  • Love can be found at farmers' markets.
  • Savvy shoppers use tartan trollies.

And on a more serious note, here are some of my highs and lows so far:

HIGHS
  • People really can be wonderful and when you avoid the supermarkets you get to meet so many more of them - from market stall holders and farmers to greengrocers and other fellow shoppers. Away from the stress and bustle of the megastores people are much more inclined to stop to chat and shopping trips are more pleasurable. It has also made me feel more connected to my local community.
  • Local shopping certainly turns up some food gems - we’ve enjoyed locally-produced cheeses, artisan bread, organic fruit and veg, and Neil has been thrilled with the farm shop meat I’ve been buying. When it comes to quality and taste we’ve been reaping the benefits of avoiding the supermarkets.
  • It’s much MUCH easier to find out where your food comes from when you’re shopping local - you can even find out which farms have produced your food and what kind of conditions livestock have been kept in. Remember the scandal when horse meat was found in supermarket burgers a couple of weeks ago? You certainly don’t get that if you get to know your local butcher.
  • Going supermarket-free has helped me reclaim my lunchbreaks. Instead of eating at my desk I’ve had a reason to step away for half an hour and do a bit of shopping at lunchtime. Ditto my Sundays - when the local shops are closed your time is free to do other things and you still find you have plenty of food in your cupboards to tide you over to Monday.
LOWS
  • Shopping does take a bit more forethought and planning. I’ve been jotting a shopping list into my diary so I can pick things up when I’m out and about. I did initially try doing it all in one go on a Saturday morning, but without having everything under one roof and a supermarket trolly to carry it all, it proved to be a bit much. Now I’m finding the continental way of shopping almost daily for what you need a little easier.
  • Sometimes it’s just a bit tiring in terms of effort. I must admit that my heart has sunk once or twice at the idea of dashing into town on my lunch break, especially when the weather has been bad. We’ve currently run out of washing powder and I’ve got a busy couple of days ahead so I’m trying to think of a way to fit in a trip to a hardware store - dashing into Tesco on my way home from work would admittedly be much easier.
  • Because of the bitty, bobby nature of my new shopping routine it’s been tougher to keep on top of our budget and I’m not entirely sure where we’ve been saving and where we’ve been spending more. I’m going to try to keep a tighter rein on this in February by jotting down the cost of things as I’m shopping, and then comparing this to supermarket prices online, so hopefully I’ll then have a clearer idea.
To conclude, so far so good and I’m definitely enjoying it enough and reaping enough benefits to want to keep going. But I do concede that the issue of convenience needs to be addressed to make shopping local more popular. The current 9am-5pm Monday-Saturday opening hours operated by most shops do clash with work, and I think a lot of people would find it easier to visit their local butcher or greengrocer if they opened at 8am or shut at 6pm instead.


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