I have spent most of this week cowering under a blanket on the sofa, and that's been really annoying.
Did I fail? Yes, twice. Did I feel really bad about it which didn't help me when I already felt ill? Yes. Is that silly? Also yes.
The week started badly as my husband, in the middle of cooking, realises he doesn't have an ingredient. I go to the shop I thought had the best chance of having it and it didn't and I spent more time than I should've in the car deciding whether I go 8+ miles to the next wee shop to see if they have it (and so on and so forth when they didn't, which was likely) or just go to the co-op on the same street and get the one thing. Then I felt guilty for making the sensible choice and going to the co-op.
On Monday I had a regular mammogram at the hospital in Aberdeen. If you've not had one before, they're not that big a deal, they don't take very long, and they're uncomfortable, but they're not overly taxing physically unless you have a chronic condition or disability, which I now do. I haven't had a mammogram since being diagnosed with fibromyalgia and I knew I would need to pencil in some recovery time to my week. I didn't realise how bad I'd feel immediately after though, nor that I'd need 3 days recovery after!
I had planned after the hospital to nip up to Tesco and get my dog his joint supplement (I wasn't taking chances with that) then I'd drop in by a wee shop for the other bits and pieces I needed on the way home. By the time I was half way round Tesco I was in a cold sweat and shaking so I thought I better get the rest of my stuff there, as well as get a snack as that may well have been part of the problem!
What I got from Tesco, other than the supplements, was -
2L coke £2.00
Mini Eggs £1.25
Garlic Bread and cheese £2.75
Fancy pizza (with clubcard discount) £3.75
Bacon rasher crisps £1.00
Chocolate £2.00
Wholemeal bread (with clubcard discount) £1.60
Pastel De Nata £2.25
Now, I know what you're saying, Carolyn this is dull af I don't care to see an itemised list of everything you buy, but stick with me, I have a point.
The top comment I had from people about doing this is that there's no way they could afford it. So I price checked these things at the local shop I went to today.
Coke – local cheaper
Mini eggs – same price
Garlic bread and pizza – I didn't check these items specifically because what was on my list was 'easy tea' and there were ample options in the shop for that for £6.50 (£7.85 without CC discount), including pizza and garlic bread.
Crisps – they had similar for 15p-20p more, however I chose the bacon rashers because they were £1. If I was comparing what I would've got if I wasn't thinking about the price it would've been something like Kettle Chips or Sensations which are roughly the same price. Can anyone else just not cope with spending more than £1 on crisps?
EDIT: I was just on another local shop's Facebook page and they have bacon rashers for 79p! Yay Billy!
Chocolate – I was sucked in by their marketing and got 5 Creme Eggs for £2. I think these are about £2.70 in the local shop (they didn't have any today) but I would likely have bought a pack of Caramel Wafers instead which are £1.25 for 5 in the local shop so I spent extra due to their big display for the same amount of portions.
Wholemeal bread – ok I'm just spoilt now with having good bread for 2 weeks. The loaf had thick slices and I can get a smaller loaf of nice bread with the same amount of slices (possibly more) for 9p more and it will ALL be eaten. About a 3rd of the supermarket loaf, which was a 'nice' one will be going in the compost because it's inedible for me.
Pastel De Nata – Today I bought a cream and jam filled meringue that is the length of my 2 palms put together for £1.79 and it DELIGHTS me because it is so ridiculously big. It's at least a 2 person job. No really! There were 4 tarts in the pack from Tesco but I didn't need 4, I only really needed 2 and that wasn't an option. Did we eat the other 2 tarts? Yes. Did they bring us the joy of the first 2? No.
So had I actually done my shopping in the shop today rather than Tesco (supplements aside) I would probably have spent the same or, more likely, less, and some items I bought purely because of how Tesco had marketed them. It's not about shopping like for like and comparing prices, it's about finding the items that fulfill the same need and comparing them.
Although this week felt terrible, and I felt a big failure, it has had some big realisations in it.
We cook based on supermarket shopping. Like most people, I think, we have a rotation of a number of meals most of which use cheap supermarket items – bolognese, chili, pasta, baked tatties, frozen anything with chips – and there's nothing wrong with that at all. These are tasty tasty things. But if we stop basing meals around what the supermarkets are pushing us to buy, how will our diets change? Twice in the last week we've had fried egg sandwiches for tea. This used to be a back up tea for us if there was nothing in, but made from gorgeous eggs from a young lad's pet chickens along the road, and nice bread, they were absolutely delicious. So delicious we had them twice.
When I went to our favourite butcher in the first week I bought mince because that's what I was shopping for because that's meat we regularly use because it's cheap in supermarkets. I didn't look at anything else. I didn't buy the gorgeous tatties that I thought about FOR A WEEK and had to go back for. Maybe there would've been something better or just different that I would've picked had I not been trained by the supermarkets to go for mince.
And to further that point we need to talk about loss leaders. Now if you don't know, a loss leader is something that a supermarket sells at a loss to get you in the door. How it works is you need milk and you decide to go to the supermarket rather than the local shop as it's £1 in the supermarket and closer to £2 in the local shop. You get your milk but then you also get other things as well, things that have been cleverly positioned or have big eye catching displays so the shop makes far more because you spent far more than the £1 you intended to spend on milk. Even if you go straight to the milk you'll have walked past many tempting offers (count them and let me know next time you're in), and if you've managed to not pick up anything else, there's again more items at the check out for you to sneak in your basket. Many of our neighbouring European countries have banned the practice of loss leaders as they're so detrimental to 'competition' as well as household budgets and food and packaging waste.
It occurred to me today that tinned tomatoes, a staple in our home, is a loss leader. If I think of a meal plan for the week I think of mince and tinned tomatoes then I think of how much that is in the local shop, 89p for a tin of tomatoes today, of course I'm going to plan to go to the supermarket where they're only 30p.
I tried to find out which products are regularly loss leaders and I couldn't, but from the stuff I did read they are generally milk, chicken, eggs, bananas, as well as seasonal items like pumpkins at halloween (so you buy the plastic kit and bits to go with it) and barbecue kits because those come with sales of prepared meat and soft drinks, not to mention all the smart price/basics/whatever the dirt cheap brand is in the supermarket.
Those super cheap items aren't just a tool to get you through the door, they're actually a tool to make you spend more even if you stick to your list. Studies have shown that people, taken as a group, will buy the mid range priced item in pretty much all circumstances. The cheaper items, with their associated branding, make the next price point up look fancier, but the super high price item with its gorgeous packaging makes the price point down look like a bargain. So we pick the middle priced item because we think it's higher quality than the cheap one, and a bargain next to the expensive one. After all how much different could they be?
Highlights of the week
The items that I've noticed are cheaper – one would be the cat litter I got from the pet shop. We normally use Catsan – if you don't have a cat, it's not the very most expensive litter, it's the second one (you see what they did there?) - and we got a big 30L bag of litter from the pet shop which I swear is just Catsan in a different wrapper and cheaper.
Not really a highlight, but probably a positive, I didn't like going in Tesco. More choice definitely doesn't make you happier.
Lows of the week
I'm not going to call the fails a low because I had good reasons and I actually got a lot from that Tesco visit.
Pet food. I can't rely on getting it in regular local shops at all and the choice at the pet shop for dog food was overwhelming and some of the prices were quite alarming! If you buy your pet's food from the vet or a mail order service I would definitely recommend checking out your local pet shop. I think I have to try again on this one as maybe it was just not the right pet shop for my needs.
Neutrals of the week
This nearly went in lows because when I realised it I was HORRIFIED but actually I figured out why. I haven't bought veg this month until today. Now I did start the month with some veg in the fridge, it isn't like we didn't have any at all, but going to the supermarket once a week or 2 weeks always involved bags of veg.
WE DON'T EAT VEG! I practically screamed when I realised, but actually that's not true. We do, it just doesn't come in the form of bagged fresh supermarket veg. We eat lots of tinned tomatoes, as mentioned before, onions, garlic, peppers and carrots, as well as lots of frozen veg, and dried and tinned beans, but what we'd been doing is buying more fresh veg than we needed and throwing stuff out. “Oh I'm going to the supermarket so I'll get carrots and onions and peppers because they're cheap there” even if I had a couple left so either that week or the next week something is getting thrown out. I try to buy veg unpackaged but it's not always possible, and buying in packages seems to be more than we really need.
Next week will be the last week! I don't know how I feel about that. I guess we'll find out!