Grocery shopping

.
There are many ways to do the grocery shopping ~ from going to the small ‘mom-and-pop’ stores in the neighborhood, to going to a well stocked supermarket; from the farmers market to the ‘week market’; or even doing the grocery shopping online and having your groceries delivered ‘into your kitchen’ as the TV commercial proudly proclaims.

Chances are the well stocked supermarket will give me the best chance at a ‘one stop shopping experience’. It is efficient, as I only have to visit that one store and I am done... So whenever I want to save time, it is most definitely the way to go.

But when I want to save money, experience tells me that I will be better off in visiting a number of stores ~ or markets ~ buying specific items at each store. It can easily add up to 10% to 15% of the weekly grocery bill. That doesn’t sound as much ~ looking at the percentage it may not even be worth the trouble ~ yet it means somewhere between €10 and €15 each week. In a month that adds up ~ and over a year it becomes ‘real money’.

Logic would suggest to take the money-saving route every time.
Time pressure makes me realize that I will happily spend the extra tenner to save an hour of grocery shopping.
Any kind of stress I may be experiencing can push the decision either way. Sometimes stress can be relieved by moving around ~ multiple store shopping ~ other times to get rid of stress it is best to take time to sit down with a cup of tea ~ which indicates that single store shopping is my best option.

Pretty much any decision we make in life is based on any number of circumstances, and often many options are available to us.
In reality, depending on what is going on in our lives at that particular time we make a choice of the options that are available to us at that time. This means that in similar circumstances, but at different ‘days of the week’, we may make different choices. Because all things considered, going ‘right’ was our best option on Monday; while going ‘left’ may make more sense on Thursday.

This is not inconsistent. It is being flexible. Choosing what is best for us at that moment, rather than choosing once and then sticking with that choice for the rest of our lives.
And it is therefore this flexibility that can help us a lot in our lives in the energy of this point in time...
.
.