Favours online shopping

As a retired guy, my job is grocery shopper in the family.

It has always been a chore I absolutely despise. (For me) it falls in the same category as fence post fixing, eaves trough cleaning, dog poop cleaning up, and snow shovelling.

Over the past three weeks, I decided to try the online grocery shopping and delivery, something I never dreamed I would do. Like a lot of people, we make a list of things we need, not a list of what we want.

The cost of the service to your door is certainly not overly expensive. The reduced cost of gas driving to the grocery store pays for the service.

Where the saving comes into play is the extra stuff you buy while you are shopping. We all do it.

I buy the 15 or so items on the list, however I never fail to come home without three other items that I didn't need. If they were needed they would be on the list.

If I was somehow trapped in the (snack food) aisle, I would buy cashews or salted peanuts. If I needed ketchup, or was in the Asian food aisle,

I would say, hey, that pineapple sauce is sure worth a try. And the same with the infused garlic olive oil.

(By shopping on line) I save at least $20 a week.

Also, there are no line ups, no cranky people, no car dings (in the parking lot), no exiting parking lot hassles, no asking at the checkout if I want to donate to who or whatever and no gauntlet of people to walk by when you leave the store asking for money.

But I cannot end without my plastic bag tantrum.

We all have bags now but they sit in the trunk because we forget the stupid things and its 150 yards back to the car.

Stores are following a mandate to remove plastic bags from stores but they charge 25 cents a (material) bag. Why not give consumers paper bags like they did for the past 80 years? And why not provide paper bags in the produce deptartment instead of plastic?

Chicken thighs have looked the same for 200 years, wrap them in paper. I know what they look like.

The same for steaks, burger meat, stewing meat, lamb chops, deli meats and cheeses.

If its right for one, it’s right for all.

Kenneth Warren, Kelowna