Food prices: How the humble shopping list is saving us money
Faced with a rapid rise in food prices, Jen Butler admits she is "very particular" about planning family meals.
A weekly dinner plan is written up on a whiteboard. Prices are compared between the local Asda and Aldi. Items in the kitchen cupboards are thrown together in an "anything can happen day" meal.
I'm not convinced about this. Is the Beeb claiming that people go to the supermarket in order to wander round picking up anything they fancy?...
On reflection, wandering around does describe quite a few of the supermarket shoppers I come across. I've also noticed how many of them stand around for ages just in front of the shelves I need to visit in order to tick something off my list. In which case, maybe the shopping list innovation isn't entirely implausible.
Of course, this BBC article is one I picked up casually while wandering around the internet. I didn't actually need it.
10 comments:
I’d say from observation in my local supermarket that the use of lists correlates strongly with age.
Mobile phones seem to have caused a seismic shift in the concept of forward planning - the youngsters of our family have what seems to us an astonishingly ad hoc social life, full of spur-of-the moment decisions, because they can always contact everyone involved. They don’t need maps either - the phone tells them where to go and how to get there.
I wonder whether this is already feeding through into other aspects of life and behaviour, reinforced by the daily habit of ‘casually wandering around the internet’; if so, it will surely make people easier to control - and infinitely more susceptible to marketing.
Cutting-edge journalism like this will ultimately save the BBC - it certainly makes me want to start paying the licence fee again. Apparently, some people make lists before they go shopping.
I might try that myself. Over the years, I've tried lots of different ways to somehow link the shopping trip to what I actually need from the shop. Buying everything in the first big display on entering the shop; asking a stranger if I can buy their full trolley for twice what they paid for it; trying to pick up the secret messages in the muzak being played. None of it works all that well, I have to say.
We went to Waitrose this week. I put the wine and beer in my trolley and went off for a sit-down in the cafe. My beloved pushed her trolley around buying the other stuff on our list and then came to collect me. She writes the list in the order in which goods are on the shelves. (She therefore disapproves of rearrangements inside the shop).
Doesn't everyone do it like that?
P.S. We were near a Morrison's this week so she popped if for some croissants and also picked up biscuits, parsley, and fruit juice, plus a couple of books of bar-coded stamps. We don't use many stamps nowadays but it seemed well worth dodging the new, inflated prices. In the summer we'll have the excitement of trying to get money back for our obsolete stamps.
Macheath - the youngsters of our family are full of spur-of-the moment decisions too. It seems to give them less control over their lives in that they seem to be more controlled by the immediacy of situations they can't foresee because they lack the foresight habit.
Sam - it's impressive isn't it? I'm looking forward to a piece on commuting where we learn to travel to our place of work rather than some randomly-chosen location.
dearieme - we rely on knowing the approximate location of the items on our list, although these days lists are quite short because we have a weekly delivery. Sainsbury's used to be a pain though, because items were moved around quite regularly.
The Spouse, when I mentioned this, reminded me that, in a recent BBC news report on the adverse impact of rising energy prices, the reporter announced in portentous terms that, in the area from which he was reporting, there were ‘even washing lines starting to make an appearance’.
Macheath - could be enough there for a BBC programme - the history of the washing line, how it works, its green credentials and how to make one for yourself.
Shopping lists, I don't. Sometimes I do make notes before setting out but I rarely take them along. I remember—sort of— I made a note to buy kitchen roll, maybe I did, but returning home I find it should have been bog roll. No matter, just a bit of overstocking.
I must admit, on the rare occasions we actully do the months shopping in store, we wander up and down all the isles and pick out the stuff we want
We use a "washing line" in the form of a whirligig. Why wouldn't you? The dried clothes smell and feel better and it saves money.
It's good for 7 - 8 months of the year. In the off months we dry clothes on a rack on the Aga. OOOh, Agas are good in winter. Ours goes off in the summer, though, else we'd roast.
djc - that sounds very laid-back and modern.
Bucko - that's how we cope with an unfamiliar store, just cover it all systematically. Not something we have to do very often though.
dearieme - we just have a line slung between the magnolia tree and a rusty old hook on the house wall. Always use it unless the weather says not.
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