shopping locally.

With our many visits to NYC and Paris and our year in DC, I’ve always imagined a life of living locally. But somehow, I just can’t seem to manage it yet.

Today, I read this story in the New Yorker about a local mozzarella place in Manhattan — and why it has gone out of the “retail sales” business. One of the reasons — there were no longer Italian housewives in the neighborhood who could afford the time to go to ten different shops for their daily groceries.

So I don’t feel so bad — while I like the idea of visiting various stores to collect the freshest groceries, I am not going to be too upset that I don’t get there. With my work, volunteer work, home care and child care duties, I simply can’t “do it all”. One of my goals in the next year is to pick up the “local” project as best I can, starting with going to the farmers market. Of course, that adds additional planning challenges as well as epicurean ones I don’t know what to do with many of the vegetables available (okra, anyone?).

Today’s trip to Target to return an item got me dreaming of local shopkeepers and simple items. Last weekend, Camille and I bought Christmas lights for our new home. We bought two sets of icicle lights for our balconies. In then end, we ended up with one set with white wires and one set with green wires, simply because they were on the shelf together and I didn’t know to look for the distinction. And apparently, neither did the cashier when we checked out. When I tried to return the “green” wired lights today ,she scanned the box and the receipt (I still had it). She then rudely let me know that it wasn’t on the receipt. I showed her where on the receipt the cashier had scanned the TWO boxes from the one “white wired” one, assuming, as I did, that they were the same. After some grumbling, she gave me my refund on the unopened, returned box. Sigh.

As I checked out with my new purchases, I watched as a cashier scanned two boxes of pushpins (different styles) off of one package. I sure hope I don’t have to return the unscanned ones. While I can’t imagine having to dispute a return to a local shopkeeper like this, I also can’t imagine that I would end up with one stop shopping – Christmas lights, conditioner, and cat food all in one place.

lights – 4 dec 2013