Grocery Shopping On Your Own

Living on my own has had its ups and down, one of the most prominent I’ve noticed is grocery shopping.

I hate shopping; anyone who knows me at all will know this. If I need something, I work out what I need and where I can get it. I walk in, I make my purchase and I walk out. That’s it. I don’t want to dally, I don’t want to know if it comes in different colours or if it’s available with a tassel and I don’t want to check other places too see if I can get the exact same thing.

The first thing I do when I get to a new area is go to the grocery store and walk around it for half an hour. I don’t buy anything – I just figure out where everything is. Then, when I write my shopping list, I work out what I need to last me the month, and write it in order of where everything is. I walk in, walk down each isle once and (pay then) walk out. This I have no problems doing on my own – it’s getting the stuff from my car to my kitchen that’s giving me problems. I did the shopping for the month last night and rather than the standard one trip from the car with 2 people, it took me 4 trips to get everything in – and I was exhausted! It was about trip 2 that I realised that I probably can’t do everything on my own.

My other problem is light bulbs. My apartment is really old, but the interiors been re-done and it’s gorgeous. They’ve kept the original high ceilings and while it’s nice to have such a spacious area, it mean that I can’t change light globes on my own. I’m short, I’ll admit that, but it means that even standing on the coffee table I can’t reach the lights in the living room! Last time the globes burst, I borrowed Hayley’s (woman downstairs) husband and he changed them for me, but I can’t keep doing that. I’m now down to 1 globe. Damn my stubborn-ness!

There are up’s however, I get to do what I want to do, eat when and what I want to, invite people over and say “why don’t you just stay the night” (as I did on Sunday night) and not have to a) make sure it’s ok with someone else and b) listen to them harp on about having to get up for work in the morning. I also get to pick up on my hobbies that I never got to do because I was accused of trying to ‘get away’ from someone and not ‘making time’.

I also get to buy Tim Tams when I’m shopping and still have them there in a week!