What kind of shopper are you?
Do you have a list and you check it twice?
Or you just wander the stores treating it like some kind of adventure?
Shockingly, I have a list of things I need and things I might want. I usually to my shopping as soon as the stores open and get the hell out of there as fast as I can.
Why you may ask? I dislike dealing with busy traffic and other shoppers. Also I hate wasting time that can be better spent doing nothing or other things.
Or have you completely embraced the online experience? For books and hobby stuff I mostly do it online but try to use local-ish retailers who won’t stiff me on shipping. I don’t buy food or clothes online. The other thing I avoid online is getting home stuff.
Any thoughts?
I really enjoy social shopping – like if a friend calls and says hey do you want to run errands? I’m there. Let’s smell all the candles at Target and make fun of coffee cups at HomeGoods.
But most other shopping? Eh, I go when I can and whatever.
I like going to a fun place that happens to have shopping, like some interesting town’s main street or a good downtown. But I can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a mall that worked that way. They’ve gotten really dreary.
I can live with that, but that rarely happens to me.
Have you been to Asia Food Mart??? It’s open 24hrs a day and looks amazing.
I haven’t. It’s out of my way living in the west end of the GTA (Grand Theft Auto or Greater Toronto Area.)
Shopping gives me anxiety now (thanks Covid!). I usually write up my grocery list in order of where the items are located so that I can shop as efficiently and quickly as possible. Everything else I buy online.
I love it when they rearrange the aisles every couple of years. It takes me months to learn the new layout. WHERE ARE THE PICKLES DAMN IT!
I make our grocery shopping list that way, only to have someone drop something chocolate chip cookies anywhere completely out of place.
I understand that. I get paranoid too.
Full disclosure though I love grocery shopping. So I am that weird person that anytime I go somewhere on vacation, I want to scope out where food is sold. Even when I’m staying in hotels the whole time and not buying food.
Totally list driven, all on-line. Except . . . There is four-block square area of funky stores, artist’s galleries, restaurants, bars; and college buildings in the center of town. That is worth wandering every other month or so.
That’s one of the things that leads me to walk to our farmers market most weekends, even during crummy weather like today. It’s fun to see what new vendor has showed up, or who has something new for sale, even if I’ll never buy it.
The first time I was hospitalized was when I was at work and I had this dizzy spell and almost passed out. I went to visit the company’s on-site nurse, who was a saint, and she gave me an oxygen mask and a carton of orange juice to drink. But I wasn’t bouncing back, so she called a cab and dispatched me to the emergency room of a local hospital. They, of course, admitted me immediately, what with my private insurance and all.
It was during that experience that I learned some doctors have no sense of humor. During the admission interview the doctor I saw and his nurse decided to inform me that smoking was very harmful. “No it’s not! Who told you that?”
So the following day they released me. Turns out that just like many a high-strung Hollywood actress I was just dehydrated and exhausted. So they hooked me up to some kind of IV and rehydrated me and confiscated my cigarettes. It was true, though. I used to only get like 5 hours of sleep a night, out five nights a week, and basically ran on nicotine, coffee, and alcohol.
So, after that experience I vowed to clean up my act. I would go to the Union Square farmers’ market and buy the vendors’ incredibly expensive organic food. That lasted about a week.
I’m convinced (with zero evidence) the Union Square Farmers Market is responsible for 50% of the agita you read about in the NY Times.
AG Sulzberger felt snubbed at a mushroom vendor’s stall? Five new articles about Ivy League admissions policies. Ross Douthat had to wait another two minutes to get his heirloom tomatoes while the couple in front of him argued about the acidity level of Brandywine Yellows? Two more columns about how liberal Catholics are losing touch with the legacy of Pope John Paul II.
The other 50% of the nonsense is related to Park Slope Co-op drama. Thomas Friedman probably backed the invasion of Iraq because of a mixup over the packaging of his tabbouleh.
You are so right! I think that’s one of the most incisive comments anyone has ever made to me.
I’ll tell you what’s worse though is the Santa Barbara (CA) farmers’ market. A larger collection of rude, smug, self-involved bourgeois Bohemians you’ve never seen. The homicidal baby strollers. The gigantic rare-breed hounds. The paths between the tables and stalls are like a roller-skate-free roller derby, and for what? All the food in all of California is pretty terrific. That Colorado River water is not entirely going to waste.
I will also tell you, though, that Santa Barbara, despite its relatively small size, has several micro-neighborhoods. I’ve been to SB so many times. There’s definitely a wrong side of the tracks. There’s an overpass that goes into the UCSB campus, who knows why, and then east of that things get interesting. I knew this and the last time BH and I went I demanded that we walk everywhere. Our mid-century modern motel was on that wrong side of the tracks but it was on the ocean. On our way back we stopped in at this bodega (it would be called in NYC) and it was a Diane Arbus photo brought to life. If the people in there weren’t so strange and scary I would have loved to ask them, “So what brought you to Santa Barbara? Do you enjoy shopping at the famers’ market?”
I like when you get far enough East that you get the whole low-rider culture and spectacular Mexican food. When I lived in San Luis Obispo, I would occasionally visit further South and really enjoy myself.
Oh, I didn’t know that you once lived in San Luis Obispo! Are/were you involved in the wine industry?
No, we were teaching at CalPoly.
CalPoly! I have made no secret of my love for California. To the point where I pestered young children (relatives of mine and children of friends; nothing nefarious) to apply to the University of California system. None of them ever did. They were put off by the fact that if you weren’t a CA resident some of them, like Berkeley and UCLA, are as exclusive as Harvard. “Well go to UC San Diego. I have a friend whose son goes there and he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” But no dice. They all stayed in the Northeast.
I once read that one of the reasons why Britain’s economy can be so sluggish is that no one ever moves. So while London and the Southeast are thriving and could use more workers (and is horrendously expensive) people avoid it if they can and remain in their grim post-industrial cities and towns. Meanwhile in America we’re constantly on the move. I don’t know any young people who are native to New York, also horrendously expensive, who stayed here. And in a lot of cases it wasn’t for lack of money. Their parents had/have loads of it. It’s just that the grass is greener outside the 212 area code.
I almost always make a shopping list and almost always leave it on the kitchen table where it does me absolutely no good.
Ever done the thing where you reluctantly call someone at home from the store and ask them to read you the list?
Oh yeah.
Because I tend to not have too much time, or have been sick a *lot* lately, and not felt like cooking, most of my Grocery shopping has consisted of catching the sale rotisserie chickens at either Kwik Trip (Mondays), or Lunds & Byerly’s ($6.00 on Fridays)
And then I occasionally hit up the local franchisee-oened Grocery Store, because the manager of the Meat Department there must have soooome sort of “in” with the UNFI warehouses in Hopkins.
That store *regularly* devotes loooots of footage in the open-top refrigerator cases & open-top freezers to “close-dated” markdowns, which are *amazingly* priced, if you aren’t picky on what your weekly menu will be!
I can *usually* find some type of sausage (hot dogs, breakfast links, fancy hot-dog-sized flavored sausages, etc), for $0.99 to $2.99 a package.
They also *often* end up with ready-to-microwave potatoes, pasta dishes, and *other* sides, for $0.99 to $1.99.
The other place I hit–mostly for produce, Nature Valley granola bars, ketchup, Mayo, and frozen stuff, is the Discount Grocery store, out by the school.
I can typically get grape or cherry tomatoes for $1.00-2.00 a pint, grapes for $1.99 a pound (or less!), bagged salads for $1-2.00, etc.
The Nature Valley bars usually are priced at 2 of the 12 count boxes for either $4.99 or $5.99, so I get those for my breakfast.
You can’t really pre-plan your meals, by shopping that way, BUT, you *can* easily get enough for 2 weeks’ worth of meals, for between $50-70.00.😉
well i have all the shops i need within an easy walks radius of me….so im an exceptionally chaotic shopper
really not unusual for me to be in the supermarket 2 or 3 times a day just to pick up an item or two…i could be more efficient…but honestly i like the little walks and not planning things is pretty much how i like going about my day
only things i order online is stuff i cant carry home myself and books…mostly coz the english selection in my local bookshop is non existent
and on that note ill go walk myself into town to get some kitchen rolls from the discount shop as ive decided the supermarket rolls are too expensive….also coz its sunny and a walk sounds good