Fandango’s Provocative Question this week is to do with shopping, and he asks
During the height of the pandemic, to what extent did you avail yourself of online shopping for meals, groceries, and other goods and services? If you did use online shopping and delivery services, now that things have eased up a bit, has your reliance on or use of such service continued at the same rate, increased, or decreased. To what extent?
I have to confess Hubby and I didn’t use on-line shopping and simply adapted the way we shopped to suit the circumstances. There were a few things we were unable to get, but we either found suitable alternatives or didn’t bother.
We always did a monthly shop anyway which included stocking up the freezer and buying UHT milk for the month, so our shopping habits didn’t change that much, though we bought maybe a few extra tinned items just in case.
However, we didn’t hoard toilet rolls or anything else as we worked on the rule of one in reserve which when opened was immediately replaced. We modified that to holding two in reserve of some things instead, so we managed pretty well.
Many of our neighbours and residents on the estate used on-line grocery shopping and in the beginning it was all very hit and miss and a bit of a shambles getting slots for deliveries, let alone the things that were ordered.
Today we still mask up and sanitize like crazy when we go shopping or are likely to be somewhere where there are lots of people. We notice shortages on the shelves, most being items we wouldn’t use but sometimes see a pattern and buy two rather than one, especially when toilet cleaners, bleach and bin bags were scarce.
We are also seeing price hikes on everyday items, yet again some are not what we would normally buy. We don’t go for brand names, but do have our preferences of many basic foods and are lucky enough to have the time, and means, to shop around.
To be honest, our modified shopping techniques saved us money and my food sheet is about £100 down on last year’s expenditure.
The most frustrating thing we found was non food goods, and how things were out of stock, unobtainable and no delivery dates could be estimated, let alone honoured. That apparently is still current, so Hubby still hasn’t got his shed LOL!
pensitivity101 
I have never given other people the ability to do my shopping, COVID or not. This will not change.
To be honest, I prefer to select my own fruit, veg and squeeze my own bread!
I prefer my own grocery shopping, too, but we did use online ordering and delivery for a few months when everything was on lockdown.
We were lucky in being able to get out, but we were, and still are, vigilant.
I’m with you. I didn’t hoard items but when we bought what we needed we sometimes added a second to the quantity. I was at the store on Monday and the shelves had bleach in plenty but no yogurt to be found! I just don’t know what will or won’t be available week to week!
So far we have managed to keep ahead of the shortages. This week it was the cheaper red kidney beans and instead of buying 3 tins at 30p, I bought 2 at 49p to keep in budget.