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Whatever you do, don’t forget the shopping bags!

Jess and I are in very much of a set routine doing the shopping for multiple households now. Although Jess sometimes says that she would rather spend her time doing something more interesting, she really enters into the spirit of the day and we have a lot of fun and laughter on shopping day. To get us in the mood, she tries to select music to play in the car to jolly us along. We listen to many ABBA tracks and songs from the musical soundtracks.

Yesterday we started shopping for a new client, referred by the Rotary Club volunteer scheme. So for me it was 3 people in one trolley to shop for, and just 2 for Jess. The first thing that went wrong was that, when we arrived at Waitrose, I realised that I had left all of the special bags behind – those nice trolley bags with cardboard sides and more of a structure for loading in the trolley. Disorganised or what?! Well, you have to bear in mind that we have spent the last few months transferring shopping bags and excess bags of recycling from one car to the other. There has been very little access to the community tip. This week for the first time in ages, we braved the tip on our appointed day and got rid of quite a few bags. However, to make space in the car, Jess had moved the Waitrose bags into Paul’s car and not put them back into hers! It really was not her fault; I should have checked!

Luckily my mother and one of our friends provide their own jute bags, and I had picked up one large shopping bag other than the designated Waitrose ones. I decided that I definitely needed to hand over shopping in a proper bag, so I found one bag for our new client and hung the big Sainsburys bag onto the trolley for our other friend. My shopping I just had to load up loose in the trolley. With five lots of shopping to do, it was quite a task keeping it all segregated and organised.

I also had the usual round of queries and wondering if to go for substitutes or not. My mother had asked for some items from ‘The Saucy Fish Company’ which we just could not find, so that meant a ‘phone call checking what she would like instead. Then I spent ages trying to find crisps with no added salt! After about 10 minutes of searching I established that they do not exist!

Once I had paid for the 3 loads of shopping and taken it all to the car, I had to find a sensible way to load the car so that it would not get muddled up again. Our new client was very happy with her first experience of us doing her shopping and would like us to continue. She gave us a gift of some Welsh cakes and some beautiful red roses from her garden. I had to unload her bag so that I could retrieve it and give it back to the friend it belongs to.

When we finally arrived home, over 3 hours after setting off in the morning, we had the task of fishing all of our own shopping out of the boot of the car and getting it into the house. We were all starving hungry by this time, so I usually quickly put the food into the fridge which really cannot wait, whilst Paul and Jess lay the table for lunch. We usually have home-made bread, cheese and ham on shopping days. Just as we were about to eat, my mother rang needing some help with sending and receiving e-mails in the car; she wanted to drop some books off to a friend locally. Explaining the complexities of turning data on and off whilst on the move was a bit difficult, so Jess had to run outside and give her a quick lesson…

Later on I realised that I had missed an e-mail from one of our friends asking for an extra item to be added to her shopping list! Oh well, there is always Saturday, when we have a little trip out to buy the Saturday Telegraph for my mother. How would they all manage without us?!

Gift of Roses from one of our clients

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Sarah’s Handy Guide to Shopping for Multiple Households

All ready to go and shop for five households!

Jess and I have been in a routine of shopping for up to five households a week for quite a number of weeks now. Her role is to drive the car and take one trolley round the shop. I don’t drive (well, I do a bit but it’s complicated!) so I organise the lists, take another trolley and do all the talking. We now have the task down to a fine art and have compiled the following bullet point list, which may or may not help others!

  • Request the shopping lists from friends and family at least a day in advance. Most people will change their minds about what they want a few times, or write down items which are not clear – ice-cream (any particular flavour?), grainy mustard (French or English?), organic chicken (will free-range do?)
  • Insist on lists being e-mailed to you, as you can then copy and paste onto sheets and print them out. Our system is that I do our own shopping, plus one friend. Jess does her grandmother and one or two friends. You need to be able to attach your list in a single sheet to your trolley. We used to get given hand-written lists (saves paper apparently! Oh no it doesn’t and it is just a faff! One week Jess had three hand-written lists attached to her trolley!)
  • Make sure the car you are using is not full of bags of recycling that you need to take to the tip when it reopens! If it is, just dump the bags into another car or a shed!
  • To go back to lists, your clients need to specify if they are not happy with substitutes for particular products. If they don’t specify, just buy them something similar! This is so much more flexible than shopping online, when I think you have to either say substitutes or none – not specific to each item! The first week we went shopping after lockdown, we bought quite a few alternative vegetables , as there was not much available! So people had to put up with sweet potatoes when they had asked for ordinary maincrop! Cabbage will be fine instead of broccoli of course?! Coconut flour was all that was available that week! Today one friend asked for either self raising flour or sultana scones. Neither were available, so I used my initiative and bought her plain flour, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar.
  • Only two forms of payment should be acceptable. Either they pay you online afterwards, or you take their credit/debit card. Am I really going to be dishonest with someone else’s card?! Cheques are an absolute no no. I don’t have time to go and cash them and I want the money now!
  • Use quick check with a scanner taken round the shop. In fact, gather together all the My Waitrose cards you can, and get lots of scanners – one for each client! (other supermarkets are available!)
  • One new trick we tried today was putting a named sticker on each scanner; it saves getting the scanners muddled up! It is a good idea to remove the stickers afterwards.
  • Using quick check means that you can pack the bags as you go. You can allocate different bags in your trolley for each person. With my own trolley, I start off very organised and then have so much shopping for our own household that I end up with a complete mess that I have to reorganise in the car afterwards.
  • You must go to the shop not being stressed about having to queue up. Treat it as a fun outing. Sometimes we chat or shout across to other people in the queue. Jess usually brings a book. You can always catch up on facebook and bring a cup of coffee in an insulated cup.
  • If you are shopping for several households, by all means queue up with the other member of your family who is helping you. If staff ask why there are two of you, it is simple enough to explain. We then tend to split up and take our trollies when we get towards the front of the queue.
  • Make sure that you are not going to end up starving hungry, so pick your time for shopping. We usually go mid-morning and end up having a late lunch at about 2:30 when we get back, but that suits us fine.
  • Another trick with the list is to take a clip or clothes peg to attach it to your trolley.
  • If you are going to forget items on a list, make sure that it is your own list. I hate failing to buy someone’s complete list of groceries.
  • Always talk to the staff and greet them with a smile. I always chat to the staff on the fish and meat counter and comment on how good the supplies of meat and fish have been during this crisis. It is also tremendously helpful to let it be known that you are shopping for several households; otherwise our trollies can make us look very greedy!
  • If you take a young person with you and they have alcohol on their list, make sure that they have age ID with them! You can read my other blog piece all about what happened when Jess forgot to take her ID – not fun!
  • Lastly, if you are buying items for the food bank, make sure you drop them in the crate at the end of your trip. Twice now we have forgotten to do this, so have to store them in the car for the following week.

So there you are, my slightly tongue-in-cheek guide to shopping during lockdown! I think I am going to miss these trips in a funny kind of way when this is all over….

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Isolation in the Seddon/Roberts Household: How to make your shopping trip even lengthier!

My lovely daughter Jess

The above picture is not part of our shopping trip; it is just meant to illustrate how youthful my daughter is. She finds it frustrating being asked for age ID, but I tell her she needs to enjoy it whilst she can and take it as a compliment!

We have fallen into a regular routine of shopping every Thursday at Waitrose, leaving home at about 11:00am and sometimes not getting home until 2:30pm. The other week our trip took even longer; I’ll explain why! The routine starts earlier in the week, when I e-mail two of our friends to check what provisions they need. One friend e-mails her list and the other leaves her list and shopping bags for us to collect from her doorstep. My mother does a hand-written list that we collect from her; she also takes a phone call from another friend so writes down her list too.

The queue to get into Waitrose is variable in length; it has taken us up to 45 minutes to get to the shop, although on occasions it can take just 15 minutes. When we get towards the front of the queue, we split up, take two large trollies and then proceed. It takes a very long time to shop for 5 households, with each list covering roughly the same areas of the shop. Sometimes we have to go and hunt for items that we are not familiar with; staff are always most helpful. I usually have to give Jess a helping hand and advise her on vegetable varieties if complex, and cuts of meat. She deals with 3 shorter lists and I do our own shopping plus one other list.

We buy most of our own wine and beer in the cash and carry, so don’t have bottles to get in Waitrose, although I sometimes buy a bottle of whiskey. On this particular occasion my list for our friend included gin. I am not that familiar with gin, so took some advice from one of the Partners on what to get. I also helped Jess to select two bottles of wine for her grandmother; it was coming up to the Easter weekend, so we wanted to make sure that she had something good quality. Because Jess is 22, I never think to ask her if she has age ID with her. Unfortunately she behaves a bit like the Queen and prefers to travel without the incumbrance of a purse! Paul does this too; they are lucky that I never go anywhere without my handbag and purse! So of course, the bell rang at the Quick Check till for Jess to be age checked. The Waitrose Partner naturally thought that she looked under-age and refused to authorise the wine purchase. I realised that I had been a bit silly in not just putting it in my trolley to put through with my purchases. “Oh never mind,” I said naively, “pass it over and I’ll pay for it!” He was not happy with that at all! “I cannot let you buy alcohol for your daughter!” Jess protested that she does not like wine and that if she were going to buy alcohol she would not choose “fancy, expensive wine!” What really annoyed me in addition was that my purchase of gin was approved with no questions! However, the damage was done. By this time we had been shopping for about an hour and a half and were tired and hungry. My last ditch attempt to buy the wine was to suggest that I went round the shop again. The Partner said, yes you can do that if you want to. However, when I put the wine through the till a second time, he came over and refused to sell me the wine! I have to say that I have not had this experience in my favourite supermarket before, and I think that the stress of the current situation is getting to everyone. I was a bit upset by this time, explaining that we just trying to make sure that my mother had a jolly, happy Easter Sunday dinner on her own! But all to no avail. So we had to give up and go to Tesco to buy wine afterwards. Luckily there is a small branch on our route, and the queue was not too long….

On our return home, Jess put her driving licence in her phone pouch ready for the next week (when of course wine was not on the list – what a shame!)