The Shopping Dilemma

Is it possible to not go food or household shopping ever again?

Reason One
‘Can I have some money please?’ seems to be my constant refrain to Bron these days. Poor chap, I really don’t like having to ask for it, and I’m sure he’s fairly sick of me always asking.

‘I can’t help it,’ was his hushed and irritated response yesterday evening when I pointed out the fact that April’s rent has now been removed from my bank account, but he has yet to finish giving me his share of March’s rent.

However, it did get me thinking: if Bron can’t afford to give me the rent, never mind his share of the shopping bills, then clearly we’re living outside of our means. Therefore, we (or I) should not be buying the things I do. Hence no more shopping ever again.

And, the more I think about it, the more I realise this would make a rather nice solution to everything.

Reason Two
As a general estimate, I reckon that I’ve reduced my plastic intake by at least half since last summer. I think this is fairly good going, but I know there’s still a long way to go, especially as I’m now getting onto the trickier things. For instance, although I only buy sauces in glass bottles, they still come with plastic lids; and pasta and rice always come packaged in plastic, but they’re such staples in our diet that it’s very hard to contemplate cutting them out.

If I stopped going shopping altogether, would Bron and I be forced to find alternatives? How long until we gave in?

Reason Three
I recently read the fantastic book Real England by Paul Kingsnorth. This investigates the multitude of ways in which corporate blandness and big business are taking over England, the English countryside, and English culture. Supermarkets are a huge part of this, and the inner workings of the minds who run them are officially scary. They are about as close to real evil as anything can get, in my book. If I keep on shopping there then I’m literally buying into and supporting this mindset, and effectively destroying my no-longer-quite-so-sturdy British heritage.

But if I stop shopping then what will we eat? Well, we still get fruit, vegetables, and eggs from Riverford, and we’ve got a cupboard full of tins that will take a little while to work through. Ideally, what I’d like to do is break our habits and go back to the absolute basics, all of which I know I can get from local health stores.

My real reason, secret and shameful though it may be
I wonder how long it will take before Bron notices that I’m no longer shopping? Perhaps then he’ll take the hint that if he can still afford to go out and buy the amount of tobacco, beer and wine that he does, then he really should be giving me the rent money first. I can’t decide, though, whether this makes me more practical housewife, or more bitch.