Horrors of the Grocery Store!!! (I

There is nothing more depressing in my mind than pushing a shopping cart (more likely than not to have a wonky wheel and a mind of its own) down narrow aisles blaringly lit by artifical neons, crammed full with products screaming 'look-at-me, Look-At-Me!!' And this all the while negotiating self-absorbed fellow shoppers determined to block the way too narrow for you and their trolley combined, topped off with a soundtrack of screaming children and cheesey pop music.

Oh yes, I detest the grocery store. Too bad that I'm supposed to make more of an effort to get out of the house. If I'm going to do that, I'd rather it not be listening to other people's children screaming in the shopping centre because their parents are ignoring them and seem quite ok with imposing their life choice upon everybody unfortunate to exist anywhere in close proximity, say a 1km radius.

The whole grocery store experience is solely set up for the convenience of the capitalist shop owners and their willingness to use every trick in their arsenal to manipulate you into harried, rash or misguided purchases you will likely regret.  In the old days, you' d take your list to the counter and the friendly assistant went and got the stuff for you, so no opportunity for impulse buys. That was before the greedies figured out how to get you to walk into their storeroom and get the stuff your goddamm self, all the while trying to distract you into buying more stuff. And then there is this business of pricing products in less than round amounts to make a quick calculation challenging. God dam you, I will stand there for 5 minutes if I have to, so I can figure out if its cheaper to buy the 145g or the 270g jar of vegemite, just to spite you! I hate supermarkets with an unequalled passion.

Of course, I tell myself there are sensible, financial reasons for shopping online and my distaste for supermarkets is not the only reason. If not,  I would be getting out of the house every week, right? I've used both Woolworths and Coles, and while they both have 'unit pricing' only Coles allows you to sort accordingly. This makes it a very straight forward thing to figure out which sized product is the best value for money, even when the specials are on. Coles is also better because they will charge your account on the day the groceries are dispatched and you will not be charged for out of stock items, unlike Woolworths. At Colesonline I have a record of every product I have ever bought, which after nearly a year is over 600 items. I can see when these are on special and time to stock up. I have a few days to work on my shopping cart, coming back to it as I need to change it, so there is plenty of time to make sure I'm getting what I need and not just what I've managed to grab in under an hour. This forward planning means I am able to stick to my budget and feed two people for just over $100 a week, and that includes toiletries and cleaning products. I'm more than confident I get my $5 in delivery fees back and then some. Also, I almost always get a cute little sample to try, which is a nice little bonus, like tasty new sauces, spices, tissues, frozen fruit, canned chicken, etc etc. Like these cute little toy trucks, which I can give to the nephews when I see them next.

So shopping online is not just for insane hermits like myself, it is thrifty and sensible. Impulse buys and budget blowouts are a thing of the past,  stocking up on specials are GO!

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