My Year of Shopping Locally

The Ultimate Freedom: Saying No

2011-11-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

I did something stupid today, but then I immediately undid it.

One of the best things about my year of shopping only in New Westminster was how much stuff I got to ignore. Flyer from a store not in New West? I'd toss it without a second look. (And by "toss," I mean recycle, of course.) Email about some daily deal not in New Westminster? I'd hit delete, without a second thought. Or better yet, I'd unsubscribe and be done with it forever.

Since my year officially ended Oct. 1, I've been sticking mainly to New Westminster for shopping. I've yet to hit Metrotown or any other mall, which is also a relief. You know how some people love shopping so much they are energized by it? That's not me. I generally come home from a trip to the mall feeling like I've had the life sucked out of me.

Still, some of what I was able to blissfully ignore for a year has started to creep back into my life. I'm starting to look at flyers from places like RONA, even when there's nothing I need to buy from there.

Today, I received my Frugal Bits e-newsletter. It's a local website, that has all kinds of consumer and shopping information, including a feature that compares common supermarket items like pickles and ketchup. It also offers daily deals and since it focuses so heavily on buying, I do question its name. Because you know what's really frugal? Not shopping. Not subscribing to yet another email newsletter that brings mountains of merchandise to your inbox every single day.

Anyway, today's edition described a website called Gilt, which I'd never heard of, but apparently it's amazing! Offering great, time-limited, members only deals! Now shipping to Canada! And free shipping for the next week! Today's special was Hunter boots, which I've always wanted. So, before I knew it, I had signed up for the damn thing.

I clicked around a bit on the site, where, in addition to Hunter boots, one can also buy gaudy jewellery for the low, low price of something like $2,758.29. This was when I realized that I'd fallen for it, the delusion that seems to drive so much spending these days.

That delusion is the idea that being able to buy a bunch of stuff from all over the place is some kind of freedom. That in order to be truly fulfilled I must be able to order low price Hunter boots from a website and have them delivered to my very own country. That my quality of life will suffer if I can't drive across multiple municipalities to get a good deal on a chair or a winter jacket or whatever.

It's not that I have anything against bargains or shopping in general. It's that limiting where I shopped did not feel limiting at all. It felt like freedom. Letting all the noise—all the flyers, the ads, the online sales—creep back in feels stifling. That does affect my quality of life and not in a positive way.

So after a brief dip back into delusion, I said no, not today. I unsubscribed to Gilt as quickly as I had subscribed and it felt good. I'm not going to buy the Hunter boots. I can't afford them anyway, bargain or no. Besides I already have a perfectly good pair of cute rubber boots (blue with red cherries).

Sometimes, saying no is the most liberating thing of all.

What New West Needs

2011-10-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

My year of shopping only in New Westminster is officially over, so I have to write this post quickly. I have to get to IKEA, Costco and Metrotown as soon as possible. Kidding! I'm sure I'll stray out of New Westminster eventually, but for the moment, I feel no particular compulsion to do so.

I was reading in the Sun today about two creative guys in Vancouver who are polling the community to see what kind of store they should open in a 600-square-foot commercial space one of them owns on Union Street.

The choices are restaurant, service, retail or other. When you vote, you write in what specific type of business you'd like.

One of the things I like about the project is how the project's partners, Michael Leung and Josh Michnik, have linked business to community building. The partners want to start a business they think is viable, but it's inspiring that they also want to start a business the local neighbourhood community needs and will, one hopes, support.

They seem sincere about the project; it goes beyond intensive market research or a gimmicky idea to get publicity. They say they want to hire local residents and support community gardens, park restorations or homeless shelters with a portion of the venture's proceeds.

The idea of community building and retail business might not seem a natural one, but if there's one thing I've learned over the past year, it's that where we choose to spend our money is a powerful decision. It's not, I'm now convinced, just about the buying and selling of goods. Where we spend our money affects the communities, for better or for worse, where we live.

Check out the project's site at: http://thisspace.ca/

One of the things I did over the last year was compile a list of stores and services I'd like to see in New Westminster. I think New West needs these kinds of stores/businesses:

Outdoors/camping goods
Children's indoor play area
Cupcakes
Kitchen supplies
Greater variety of clothing and shoe stores
Sporting goods
Maternity
Department store
Bagels (there are already stores in New West that could sell good bagels, but no one seems to)
Hardware (yes, there's Griff's in Queensborough and Lowe's is about to open, but I'd like to see a Home Hardware-style store on the mainland)
Pop-up Halloween store
Tacos, need more tacos!

I had gelato place and garden store on the list too, but there is now a gelato place on Sixth St., with another set to open at River Market and a garden store just opened at River Market.

If there was a This Space type project in New West, what business or service would you suggest? What is New West missing that it needs and that you would actually shop at? What businesses and services would help build community in New West?

What I've Learned: I Like Shopping More Than Blogging

2011-09-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

My year of shopping only in New Westminster is winding down, so I've started reflecting on what I've learned and discovered over the year. Instead of writing one big long post at the end of the month, I've decided to do a few (so far just two!) posts throughout the month.

I like shopping more than blogging. Regular readers of this blog (fingers crossed I haven't lost everyone completely) will have noticed my blog entries have tailed off quite a bit. There's all kinds of reasons for that; mostly, life is busy.

As I've told various people, I didn't find it hard to stick to shopping only in New Westminster. It's true there has been some, ahem, slippage, in my faithfulness to New West as my year winds down. I'll confess: I bought a dress in Dawson Creek while I was on vacation in August. I'm actually leaving on a trip in a few hours, a repositioning cruise to San Francisco. I think the chances of me leaving San Francisco without making a purchase or two are low. Very low.

Still, I feel I've been relatively successful in my local shopping mission. I feel less successful at blogging about it. Now that my year is almost up, people have been asking me what's next? Despite my inconsistency with the blog, I don't think I want to abandon it entirely. There are so many exciting things going on right now in New West. The River Market is filling up with new tenants. The first building in the Brewery District in Sapperton is now almost complete. Ground has been broken on the new civic centre downtown.

I have some ideas about what to do with the blog, including doing mini-features on local businesses that gauge "How Local are They?" But I'm curious to know what readers of the blog think. Is it worth it to keep the blog in one form or another? What would you like to see?

What I've Learned: New West is not Second Best

2011-09-13T13:34:00.000-07:00

My year of shopping only in New Westminster is winding down, so I've started reflecting on what I've learned and discovered over the year. Instead of writing one big long post at the end of the month, I've decided to do a few posts throughout the month.

First of all, I've learned that New West is not second best.

When I first moved to Vancouver in 1999, my attitude was decidedly anti-suburban. Whether or not New West is actually suburban is another question. At the time, I thought it was.

"If we're going to move to the city, we're going to live in the city," I told my husband. I remember openly sneering at someone who told me they had just moved to Burnaby. Burnaby! The horror!

(This seems a fairly cocky and snotty attitude for someone who moved to Vancouver from Kamloops.)

But after a year of living just off the Drive, I got a job in New Westminster and we wanted a bigger place to live. We found a great apartment with the Holy Grail for renters: in-suite laundry.

While we liked lots of things about New West, including its small town feel, I think I held on to remnants of my originally snotty attitude even years after moving here, especially with regards to shopping. I thought, sometimes subconsciously, sometimes consciously, that if a store or restaurant was in New West, it was bound to be not as good as a store or restaurant elsewhere, particularly in Vancouver.

After about a year of working in New West, I started working in Vancouver again. That only solidified my attitude. New West was where I slept, but the exciting stuff—shopping, eating out, entertainment—was elsewhere.

Over this past year, my attitude has been transformed dramatically.

I can say with confidence that I've found many stores, restaurants and services in New Westminster that stack up against the best anywhere.

Here's just a few of the experiences that have changed my mind.

Over the past year, I:

had one of the best facials I've ever had,
had one of the best haircuts I've ever had (bonus: definitely the most reasonable hair cut I've ever had),
had some of the best cake I've ever had,
had some of the best pie I've ever had,
found a new favorite tea drink, the River Market Mist, the best tea latte I've ever had,
drank one of the best Americanos I've ever had,
bought a top-quality made in Canada bathing suit, and
bought a solid wood, made in B.C. desk.

All in New Westminster.

I'm still not sure what I'm going to do when my year of shopping locally is over. It's doubtful that I'll stick solely to New West for all my shopping. But I do know this: I will look in New West first and for many items and services I won't even think of going anywhere else. There's no need to leave home when I can find the best so close by.

What to Do When Local Stinks

2011-08-04T23:19:00.000-07:00

When I decided to shop only in New Westminster for a year, I made an exception for my pits. Yep, my armpits. I can't use most antiperspirants and deodorants, even the all-natural kinds. They make my armpits all red, bumpy and itchy. So I don't smell, but I walk around all day scratching myself, which is probably just as unattractive as stinking. Some time ago I found a cream deodorant at Kiehl's. It's expensive, but it doesn't make me itch. I wasn't even sure how well it worked because it doesn't have a strong smell; I was just happy I wasn't itchy anymore.

But a couple of months ago I decided to try something I could buy in New West. I was hoping to save time (no more trips to Kiehl's in Vancouver) and money. I bought a made-in-Canada deodorant from Green Beaver, which was available at Donald's Market. That's when I figured out just how well the Kiehl's stuff works: when I saw (or rather, I've gotta say it, smelled) how poorly the Green Beaver stuff did.

The experience got me thinking about the risk involved with trying new products and services. It's a lot easier to stick with the tried-and-true than to try something new. For the sake of everyone I know, I have gone back to my Kiehl's. But I won't stop trying new stuff. I won't even abandon trying Green Beaver products.

While I've found more hits than misses in my local shopping, here's a few things I keep in mind to get the best shopping experience:

1. Ask for recommendations
Do some research. Ask your friends. Do an internet search. Check out sites like Yelp. For New Westminster specifically, go to Twitter and ask a question with the #newwest hashtag at the end. "Hey, does anyone in #newwest know where I can get a good haircut for curly hair?" is a question I asked and got several good recommendations. I picked one and found a stylist who really knows how to cut curly hair. (Sarah at In Style Hair Studio.)

2. Don't be harder on local products and businesses than on big brands/stores
I tried a vegan cupcake recently at the New West farmer's market and was super disappointed. It was gloppy and moist, not cake-like at all. The thought that popped into my mind was, "I'm never eating a vegan cupcake ever again, if this is what they taste like." My son however liked it and encouraged me to buy another one. So I did. The second cupcake was delicious: light and fluffy with yummy icing.

That taught me to give a new business or product a fair shot before I make up my mind. I think I used to judge small businesses more quickly and more harshly than big businesses, for reasons I'm not quite sure of. After all, I do a lot of grocery shopping at Safeway and I don't always love everything I buy there, but that hasn't stopped me from shopping there. I keep that example in mind while shopping at smaller businesses. If I don't like one product a local merchant offers, I'm now willing to try another.

3. Talk to the owner
Small business owners don't have several layers of management to go through to make a change. They can and do make decisions all the time at the direct request of customers. That's what happened when vegan blogger Melissa Balfour talked to the owners of Crepe Des Amis. She was hoping for the business owners to start making vegan crepe batter. As she describes on her blog, The Hungry Taurus, they went beyond that and created a whole vegan menu.

Imagine if you suggested to the person taking your order at McDonald's that they start serving a vegan "burger." What would happen? Absolutely nothing.

Mmm, pie and other delights of Sapperton Day

2011-06-23T17:51:00.000-07:00

Sapperton Day Festival, June 12, 2011

While I'm regularly on East Columbia St., going to cardio karate at Hawkes Martial Arts, I have never attended the Sapperton Day Festival before. It was a beautiful day and a great opportunity for East Columbia St. businesses to showcase themselves to large crowds. I didn't "win" anything on the Royal Columbian Hospital Foundation silent auction, but since I tend to get a little carried away with bidding, that's probably a good thing. This event is definitely going on my "must attend" list.

Bought soap from a street vendor. If I see soap, I buy soap.

Bought pie at Farm Cottage Bakery. Meant to take picture of the whole pie,
but got fork out before camera.

Flowers are Pretty!

2011-06-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

Not much to say today, I just wanted to share a pic of this lovely bouquet from Queen's Park Florist that I got in the silent auction at the Royal City Farmers Market fundraiser on May 26. I took this pic right after I got the bouquet and while some of the blooms have now faded, it still looks pretty enough to keep on my table.

Don't forget: The 2011 summer farmers' market starts this Thursday, June 9, at 3 p.m. in Tipperary Park.

Chair Shopping in New Westminster (or Oops! I Bought a Desk)

2011-05-06T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today was big day in local shopping for me. I went out looking for a desk chair and ended up buying a desk. I got it at Modern Home Furnishings on 12th St.

It's going to look something like this, but in a dark stain and with different handles:

Despite doing this blog and this local shopping experiment, I have a conflicted relationship with buying stuff, particularly big stuff. (Yeah, yeah, husband, I know you don't believe me.) But it's true.

When I was a kid, my aunt and cousin came to visit us one summer and they took a trip to the local mall. When they got back to our house, my aunt said it was so cold in the mall, she had to buy my cousin a towel to wrap around herself to keep warm. I was astonished and even shocked by this because this is something my parents never would have done. They didn't actually use the phrase, "Suck it up," but that was their attitude. In the same situation, they likely would have told me to go outside to get warm. Spending money and buying something was never the answer to a problem.

This upbringing has left me with the mindset that if anything costs more than, let's say, $20, it's too expensive. Of course, I do regularly buy things that cost more than $20, (the desk, for the record, cost more than $20) but there's always a voice in the back of my head telling me I'm spending too much. Thank goodness for this blog, which is helping to snuff out that little voice. Because of this blog, I would feel bad if I didn't buy stuff.

And there are all kinds of reasons to feel good about this purchase.

Yay, new desk! I've written before about my desk chair, the one that I bought second-hand for $25 over 10 years ago. I didn't mention that my current "desk" is a plastic folding table. I used to use a small table my grandfather made as a desk, but it's now our hall table.
B.C.-based and made in B.C. Modern Home Furnishing is a local chain. Most of their products, including my desk, are made at their factory in Surrey.
Made of B.C. wood My desk is going to be made of alder wood and, from what I understand, alder wood grown here in B.C.

I'd say this desk is so far my biggest purchase in my year of shopping locally. I'm glad it's such a thoroughly local one.

What's in a name? New Westminster's retail mix

2011-04-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

While driving home a few days ago I saw some workers pounding in a few new signs at the corner of the outlet mall in Queensborough. "Coming soon! The Gap!! and Banana Republic!!!"
My first reaction was to get excited because, like all North Americans, I've been trained to salivate at the sight of shiny brand names. My second was to think, "Hmm, maybe if I start dieting now, I can actually fit into some Gap and Banana Republic clothes by the time the stores open." (Hey, I'm sharing my thoughts here. Some of them are stupid.)

It got me thinking about the ideal retail mix for New Westminster. North Americans are trained to salivate at the sight of brand names. But when New Westminster gets big chain stores, they are choosing to locate mainly in the island of outlet stores anchored by Wal-mart in Queensborough. There's nothing really cool, nothing really local or independent. New West's other shopping areas are mostly absent of many big name chains.

The question is, would a few "big" names in other parts of New West help out the existing locally owned, independent stores? There's some evidence this works, at least for coffee. It's called the Starbucks Effect. Essentially, Starbucks revived interest in coffee and gave the public a taste for expensive, premium coffee, which was good not just for Starbucks, but for anyone selling coffee.

A store called Red Brick just opened on 6th St. at Carnarvon. It features a funky mix of modern home furnishings and eclectic accessories, such as salad servers with twig handles and oversized vintage (or vintage-look) clocks. I have to confess though, when I walked in to check out the store, I felt a pang of fear. It's exactly the kind of store New West needs; it's exactly the kind of store that has trouble staying alive in New West. Would it be more successful if there was a chain store nearby? An Urban Barn perhaps?

But I wouldn't want New West to ever have a retail landscape like Robson Street's, despite its popularity. I'm old enough to remember all the character Robson St. used to have when it was still called Robsonstrasse and young enough to remember scoring drinks while underage in several places along it. Robson Street's location and all the foot traffic that location brings meant rents skyrocketed, until only the biggest companies with the deepest pockets could afford stores on Robson. It now has all the character of a suburban mall. A glossy, upscale mall, but a mall nonetheless.

New Westminster has, in Columbia Street, the kind of downtown main street urban planners go crazy for. We have what other cities are willing to pay money to try to recreate. Just take a look at this story about Surrey and Mayor Diane Watts talking about the importance of town centres.

New Westminster is lucky, we don't have to build Fakey Town like they did at Park Royal Mall. I hope for a funky future for New West's shopping areas, less like Robson St. and more like Commercial Drive, which last time I checked has very few big chain stores, (unless you consider Ten Thousand Villages a big chain).

Screw the brand names. Let New Westminster and its retailers make a name for themselves.

Special Spend Report: Shop Small, Save Big

2011-04-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

During the month of February I didn't shop at any major chain grocery stores. I did all my shopping at smaller grocery stores. I assumed prices would be crazy expensive and that my monthly grocery bill would skyrocket. I was wrong.

So, where did I buy my groceries?

I shopped at:

Donald's Market
Uptown Market
Queen's Park Butcher
M&M
Kin's Farm Market
Bella Bakery
Holland Shopping Centre

Probably the best deal I found was black forest ham for just .99 cents/100 grams at the Holland Shopping Centre, which has a deli. (That seems to be the regular price for it.) Safeway's was $1.79/100 g.
I did most of my grocery shopping at Donald's Market. I found that on produce and regular priced items, Donald's was very competitive with Safeway, which is where I usually do my big grocery shops.

For example:

Philadelphia soft cream cheese: $4.49 at both Safeway and Donald's.
Bananas were .79 cents/lb. at both Safeway and Donald's.

Some items were cheaper at Donald's, like Eggo Waffles, which are $2.99 at Donald's, but $3.29 at Safeway.

It is hard though to beat the big stores' sale prices: Safeway sells Eggo waffles on sale for $2. I bought a big box of Froot Loops at Donald's for $6.49; the same box at Safeway is regular priced at $7.11, but on sale, it's just $4.99.

It was tough to find a deal on milk. I'm used to paying about $4.50 for 4 litres. It was a lot more expensive at Uptown Market—$5.99 for 4 litres—and a bit more expensive at Donald's—$4.99 for 4 litres. And the wonderful glass bottles of Avalon Dairy milk are way more expensive, I think about $2.99 for 2 litres.

But sometimes it's worth it to pay for the quality. That's what I found at Queen's Park Butcher, where I got a pound of ground beef that cost about $1 more per pound than at Safeway. But there was such a noticeable difference in quality, I know I'll go back. When I cooked up the ground beef and went to drain off the grease, there was nothing to drain off. Not that it was entirely fat-free, but there was not enough to drain.

Was there any cheating? You bet. My husband made a couple of morning runs to the nearby Price Smart for milk. I felt a wee bit bad about this, but while Price Smart is part of a big chain, it's a B.C. chain. Plus the store near our house is always being threatened with closure so I always feel good when I shop there because if it closes pretty much the only place to buy milk near our house will be Wal-mart.

Other than avoiding big chains, I did make one other big switch to my shopping habits in February: I meal planned. Every Sunday, I figured out what we already had in the fridge, freezer, and pantry and I planned my meals around that. Instead of buying things I thought we might need, I was buying only the specific items I knew we would.

According to one blogger, after she started meal planning, her grocery bill was cut in half. Mine didn't go that low, but I did spend less, and I did use up way more of what I had in my pantry, fridge and freezer.

In total, I spent about $380 on groceries in the month of February. In January, I spent just over $450.

I have to admit that after February I pretty much reverted back to my old grocery shopping habits and I've abandoned meal planning. That's something I want to start doing again.

I'm also hoping to make my way back to the smaller stores on a more regular basis especially now that I know I can get:

reasonably priced ground turkey at Uptown Market;
great meat at Queen's Park Butcher; and
a made-in-Vancouver laundry detergent at Donald's Market that is formulated for this area's soft water and is priced comparably to big name detergent brands.

Local shopping missionary or losing my religion?

2011-03-29T23:28:00.000-07:00

I've had a couple of reminders that I haven't exactly been devoted to updating this blog recently.

The first kick in the pants came from a recent column in the New West News Leader about the importance of shopping locally.

"Ideally, we’d all be doing more of what Sheila Keenan’s doing this year," wrote editor Chris Bryan. "She’s a missionary type, going at it with a zeal few could sustain for the long term."

So full of zeal that I hadn't posted on this blog, which he included a link to, for over a month. D'oh!

What really got me though was an e-mail today from a reader in Texas, asking if I was still shopping locally since she had noticed the blog hadn't been updated lately. I didn't know I had a reader in Texas, let alone one I was disappointing with the infrequency of my posts.

The truth is I've been feeling kinda blah about this whole local shopping endeavour. In February, I did a month of grocery shopping only at small grocery stores and no big chains. That got me fired up about local shopping, though not, you'll notice, fired up enough to actually blog about it yet. (The short story: it's not as expensive as one might think. For produce and regular-priced items, a store like Donald's is fairly competitive with the big stores.)

I didn't have any special focus to my local shopping in March and that's when the doldrums really hit. I bought my office chair used for $25 over 10 years ago. It now makes my butt sore every time I sit in it. I don't just write for fun, I do it for a living, so my butt's in the chair quite a bit. I really want a new one and I want a good one. I know I could drive about five minutes away from my house to the Staples in nearby Burnaby and pick one up pretty quickly. I'm not sure where I'm going to find one in New West and the thought of making a big hunt of it is just kind of tiresome. (Wal-mart has them, but they're $90 and I'd really rather not buy one there.)

So much for my missionary zeal. Here I am ready to abandon the whole thing due to one slightly sore butt.

Remember how saintly and devout everyone thought Mother Teresa was? Then after she died and some of her letters were published, it turned out she had struggled mightily with her faith for decades, to the point of doubting the existence of heaven and even of God at times. Not that my boredom with shopping in New West compares in scale with a saint's crisis of faith, but I have been wondering if doing this is worth it. If it really makes any difference at all.

Then, it turns out I have a reader in Texas who cares whether or not I'm still shopping locally.

And a friend tells me she tried a restaurant because I wrote about it.

And I see this neat video about what the development around the New Westminster Skytrain Station is going to look like:

Or I read about all the super-cool stuff coming to the River Market that I can't wait to see.

And then I think, sore butt or not, it is worth it to keep the local shopping faith.

Small Shift No Chicken Scratch for B.C.'s Economy

2011-02-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

This post is an excuse to share this clip from the show Portlandia. (A great show with lots of evidence that Vancouver is quite a bit like Portland.) Since I feel the need to have a point when I write, I came up with one that fits in pretty well with the clip.

Watch it first, then I'll make my point:

As you can see, this is taking the whole idea of going local to ridiculous (and hilarious) extremes.

There's a new "shop local" campaign that recommends a far different course. Instead of going to extremes, it recommends making a small change, a small change that could make a big difference to B.C.'s economy.

The Ten Percent Shift is a campaign aimed at encouraging B.C. residents to shift just 10 percent of their household spending to locally produced goods and services and locally owned businesses.

Think 10 percent wouldn't accomplish much? Think again.

The B.C. campaign ties in with many other "Shift 10" campaigns in the United States. A study recently completed in Michigan found that if the 600,000 residents in the area studied shifted 10 per cent of their spending the results would be dramatic.

In just one year the shift would:

Create 1,600 jobs.

Create $137 Million in new economic activity for the area.

Create over $53 Million in new wages.

Check out more research on the benefits a small shift can make.

The point is, you don't have to know your chicken's name to make a big difference to B.C.'s economy.

Pledge to go local in B.C. now.

Spend report-a-palooza: Spend Reports #16 to #21

2011-02-17T22:06:00.000-08:00

I've gotten incredibly far behind on my posting, specifically my spend reports. I got derailed after Christmas. Going through two months of receipts is not fun, but I've done it. December and January were the months of both shopping at Wal-mart and at a whole bunch of fast food joints. I must have never said no to my son when he wanted to go to Tim Horton's or McDonald's. I have to work on my resistance to letting him get his way. Him saying, "Wow, you're letting me get away with so much stuff," one day really drove that point home. And let's face it, I don't think I ever said no to myself either when I felt like eating out.

I've decided to do one condensed spend report for Dec./Jan. and then catch up on February later.

In February, I'm not shopping at any big chain grocery stores, so I will put together a post on how that's going. Sneak peek: I have paid $5.99 (!!!) for 4 litres of milk and .99 cents/100 g for Black Forest ham (also !!!, but in a good way).

My last spend report was from way back in December, so this one covers from Dec. 17 to Jan. 27.

From Dec. 17 to Jan. 27, I spent approximately $3,000 in New Westminster. (Wow, that's a big number. Bear in mind two things: this includes Christmas shopping and covers six weeks.) I bought:

Groceries at Safeway, IGA, Donald's Market, PriceSmart, Save-on, M&M, and Kin's
Baking supplies, mostly nuts, at Galloway's. Their nuts are so reasonable compared to grocery stores.
Food/drink at Hi Dozo Sushi, Indian Star, Taco Del Mar, Boston Pizza, Starbucks, Opa Souvlaki, Tim Horton's, Schanks Sports Grill, Great Wall Tea, Graze, Dairy Queen, McDonald's, and Queensboro Pizza
Christmas presents at: Fraser River Discovery Centre gift shop, Black Bond Books, Home Outfitters, Purdy's, Wal-mart, Pedagogy Toys, Chatters, London Drugs, Moores, and Shoppers Drug Mart
Clothes at Laura
Winter boots at SoftMoc
Toner at BestBuy

I also did some non-New West spending, including a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium, which is a pre-Christmas tradition for my family. After my husband's Christmas party, we stayed downtown at the Hyatt. We could not resist taking advantage of the grandma in-home babysitting, which is not available to us very often. I also went to a movie and to the Burnaby Village Museum. I've never really settled on what I'm doing about stuff like this, which is not exactly shopping, but it is spending money outside of New West. I do want to make more of an effort over the upcoming months to go to New Westminster events and entertainment.

I also took a trip up to Dawson Creek for my uncle's funeral and a trip to Kamloops for a fundraiser at my high school. On trips, I'm buying only essentials: food, gas, lodging and not doing any other shopping.

Great idea, but you're doing it wrong! What does "local" mean anyway?

2011-02-03T16:53:00.000-08:00

I get a variety of reactions when I tell people about my shopping in New Westminster experiment and those reactions generally fit in to three broad groups.

1. "Oh my gawd, that's going to be impossible!"
This reaction is the one that is most surprising to me. Also surprising is that I've gotten this reaction from some merchants in New Westminster. While I certainly can't deny getting swept up in a consumer frenzy now and again, it's always at the back of the mind that most of the stuff I buy fulfills wants, not needs. I didn't (and still don't) see giving up shopping outside New West as any sort of particular hardship. There's plenty of food here after all and if there does end up being something I can't get here, going without for a year doesn't seem like such a big deal.

2. "Uh-huh. Huh. Interesting."
These are the people, who, like me, don't think limiting myself to New West is a hardship.

3. "Ooh, good idea. But you're doing it wrong."
People who have this reaction generally have difficulty with how I have defined "local." I've always been clear that I was using "local" in its geographic sense, not in the "independently owned business" sense that some would prefer. It's not that I disagree with organizations like LocoBC, who both praised my experiment and chastised it (albeit gently) recently. Far from it. I think it's fabulous that more and more people and groups are promoting shopping at independent businesses and making more informed consumer decisions.

It's just not exactly what I'm doing. It's not that I didn't think about shopping only at New West's independent businesses this year. I decided though that I really want to deal with New West as it is, not as I (or others) may wish it to be. (And let's face it, I knew I would have to buy my toilet paper and light bulbs somewhere. Cutting out all big chains would probably have meant my family and I would end up sitting in the dark sometime this year, wiping our butts with newspaper. I'm into this experiment, but I'm not that into it.)

Sure, I've got a picture in my head of an ideal New Westminster: one full of dozens of unique, diverse, independently owned small businesses that attract not only local residents but people from all around the Lower Mainland. But that's not reality, at least not right now. Not yet.

I want my experiment to reflect the reality of what shopping in New West for a year looks like for the average consumer. And that means my choices are between some locally owned businesses and some big chains. It's fascinating to me that if I stuck to shopping at stores only within walking distance of my home my choices range from as local as one can get (produce and flowers grown at a tiny farm about two blocks away) and, well, Wal-Mart, where much of the merchandise is imported from China.

I want my experiment to deal with the reality of New Westminster's retail landscape as it is today. That's not to deny I'm hopeful it will look different tomorrow.

Catching up after Christmas

2011-01-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

I've let things slide on the blog since Christmas. And now it's January 23.
The New Westminster NewsLeader did a story on shopping locally last week where I discussed my blog and how my experiment is going so far.

As I said in the story, I'm still sticking to the local shopping and there hasn't been a case yet where there was something I really, really needed to buy that I couldn't find in New Westminster. (Other than food and a sufficient amount of clothing, there's really not much that anybody really, really needs to buy. Most purchases fulfill wants, not needs.)

Still, I am having moments where I really, really want to go somewhere, anywhere else, and buy something, anything.

The main conclusion I've reached at this point in my experiment, almost four months in, is that limiting my shopping to a small geographic area hasn't magically made me shop only at small, locally owned independent businesses. I thought maybe it would. Despite the impression some have that there's no shopping in New West, it's actually pretty easy to find major chains to shop at and to shop solely at big chains.

One of my main goals for the year is to change my shopping habits and include smaller independents in my routine shopping. So far, it hasn't happened yet, so I'm going to make February no big chain grocery shopping month. I'm curious to see how that will change our eating for the month and especially how it will change our grocery bill.

Spend Reports #14 and #15: Christmas blackout

2010-12-22T00:32:00.000-08:00

With the Christmas crazy season, I have fallen behind in both writing for and thinking about my blog. Predictably, with Christmas approaching, my spending is up. I'm not expecting the January credit card hangover to be too bad since I have been using debit a lot.

I've been dreading writing about what I'm buying for Christmas and how much I'm spending. Itemizing every single present I've bought and posting about it doesn't seem very Christmas-y. Saying how much I'm spending on presents doesn't seem very Christmas-y either.

Theoretically, someone could do the math and figure out roughly how much I'm spending per person. Theoretically, you might say, but who on earth would actually do such a thing? Bear in mind the kind of family I'm from. My dad once counted every single carrot, pea, green bean and piece of corn in a bag of frozen mixed vegetables because he felt the photo showed more carrots than were actually in the bag. He then wrote a letter to the vegetable company complaining that the photo was false advertising since there were far more carrots on the bag than in the bag.

So, for the month of December, I've decided to do a truncated version of my usual spend report. I've named all the locations where I shopped, but I haven't named any presents and the amount doesn't include the price of any Christmas presents.

Overall, shopping only in New West for Christmas has been a relief. One night early in December an Old Navy commercial came on blasting away about some great deal on jeans or sweaters and I was glad when I realized I didn't have to pay one moment of attention to it. I didn't have to go to the Old Navy Website to figure out if the deal was being offered in Canada. I didn't have to drive to Metrotown to fight my way through crowds to see if I could get a stripey sweater or whatever the heck they're selling this season for $10. I haven't had to pay attention to the stacks and stacks of Christmas flyers in the paper either.

I do feel though my Christmas shopping in New West has been somewhat of a failure. I had every intention of checking out every cute-sy store in New Westminster and I did check out some (as I wrote in this post for 10th to the Fraser). I found lots of things I liked for myself and I bought stuff for myself. But in terms of finding stuff that fit the people on my Christmas list, I did not do so well and ended up sticking mainly to chain stores, including Wal-mart, for many of my gifts.

Still, I did buy Christmas presents at places I have never considered before, like the Van Dop Gallery and the Fraser River Discovery Centre's gift shop. And I haven't been tempted to go shopping outside of New West. (We did buy our Christmas tree in Richmond as that's a family tradition to go to the same place every year. We also went to a Vancouver Giants game as we got discounted tickets through a reading program at my son's school.)

From Dec. 3 to 9, I spent about $550 in New Westminster (excluding Christmas presents) on/at:

Lunch at Victoria Sushi
Dinner at McDonald's
Massage at Columbia Integrated Health
Breakfast at Couzie's on Carnarvon St. – eggs Benedict for $7.95!
Deck plate for our new faucet at The Ensuite
Van Dop Gallery
Bracelet (just $10) at the Arts Council of New Westminster's Christmas Treasure Room
Starbucks
Tim Hortons
Swimming lessons at Canada Games Pool
Groceries at Safeway and IGA
Gas at Petro-Canada
Garland workshop at Queen's Park Florist
Lunch at Graze
A&W
Taco Del Mar
Facial and brow wax at True Serenity Day Spa, a great small spa right in Queensborough

From Dec. 10 to Dec. 16, I spent about $370 in New Westminster (excluding Christmas presents) on:

Groceries at Safeway and Kin's
Christmas cards at London Drugs
Baking supplies at Galloway's
Lunch at Graze
Stamps at Queensborough postal outlet

Also bought items at:

Wal-mart
Purdy's
Carter's/OshKosh
Home Outfitters
Lindt store
Fraser River Discovery Centre gift shop
Black Bond Books

Spend Report #13: I can resist the mall, I can't resist a party

2010-12-04T21:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas ornaments from Lofty Living, Cadeaux and Van Dop Gallery

I had another busy shopping week (mostly) in New West. I thought I would be all prepared and early with everything for Christmas this year (I think this every year), but whoops, all of a sudden, it's December and I'm suddenly feeling very far behind (this happens every year too).

I did a post for Tenth to the Fraser about some of the places I will be shopping in New West this Christmas. I like giving and receiving Christmas presents that get used up or used often. I make an exception for Christmas ornaments, which don't get used every day, but they do get used regularly every year. I found lots of shiny, pretty ornaments at Lofty Living, Cadeaux and the Van Dop Gallery.

Now, it's true confession time: I left New Westminster and bought stuff in not one, but TWO other cities. I also broke my pledge to avoid Wal-mart for the entire month of November by buying some craft supplies for Beavers there on Nov. 29. (I know, I was so close!)

As for my other shopping sins: I went with some friends to a wreath making workshop at Garden Works in Burnaby and out for dinner after. Our financial planner does a movie day every year at Silver City Coquitlam. The movies are free, but the snacks aren't and even at 10 a.m., the popcorn was impossible to resist.

It was funny going to Garden Works because in addition to shopping only in New West, I've pretty much been staying only in New West for the past two months. Driving along Lougheed Highway seemed to take so long and the Garden Works seemed incredibly far away. I ended up driving past the entrance and had to circle around to get in. I felt like a tourist.

I felt quite guilty during the wreath making. I bought the bare minimum to do my wreath and shielded my eyes from all the (I'll admit) tempting merchandise. I felt less guilty about the dinner because after two hours of sticking tree branches into peat moss I was cold and hungry.

I knew it would be tough for me to stick to my New West only rule at this time of year. I can resist the mall, but I can't resist a party and these were more social occasions than shopping expeditions. Other than that, I have nothing to say in my defence. Go ahead and pillory me. (But bear in mind it's Christmas, when we should all be keeping the words of that delightful old carol in mind, the one that says, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, be kind to wayward bloggers." It goes something like that. I can't recall the exact words.)

From Nov. 26 to Dec. 2, I spent about $735 in New Westminster:

Coffee and food at Starbucks
Ornaments at Cadeaux
Groceries at IGA and Donald's
Ornaments and soap at the Van Dop Gallery
Christmas present for my son and ornaments at London Drugs
Pulled pork sandwich at Graze
Food at McDonald's
Craft supplies at Wal-Mart
Kitchen faucet at The Ensuite (on Braid Street)
Dinner at Boston Pizza

I spent about $40 in Burnaby:

Wreath making at Garden Works
Dinner at Soho Bar and Grill

I spent about $25 in Coquitlam:

Popcorn and pop at Silvercity Coquitlam

Spend Report #12: Soap, glorious soap!

2010-11-28T23:45:00.000-08:00

Soap and other goodies from Pure and Juicy Bath

Twenty-four. That’s how many bars of soap I have squirreled away in my bathroom. That’s why my husband groans a little when I tell him I’m going to a craft fair.

Other people go to craft fairs to buy Christmas presents. That’s why I claim I go. I really go to buy soap. My habit started off with the Body Shop’s glycerine soaps, especially satsuma. I was pretty loyal to their stuff for quite some time, but then I started trying other types and now I'm a hardcore bar soap user. I dabble a bit with some French bars, but what I really love is pure B.C. gold. There are a ton of fabulous soap makers in B.C.

One of my favourites is Naked, made on Bowen Island, but I'm always on the look-out for more sources and craft fair season is when I feed my addiction. (See how close I was to making a lame joke about having "a good, clean habit," yet deftly avoided it? See how I got it in there while claiming to avoid it?)

This year I discovered Juicy Bath Soapworks at the Herbert Spencer Elementary craft fair. I got four bars, including chocolate covered strawberry, which my husband initially thought was fudge. I stopped him before he ate it.

I also bought a bar made by Pure Daily Essentials (based in Langley) at Urban Academy's craft fair, along with some of their skin care products, which are gentle and smell great too.

It was a good shopping week in New West:

I attended the long-awaited opening of Donald's Market, (which I waxed rhapsodic about in a previous post);
I went to a shopping night at Pedagogy Toys;
I found some ultra-pretty, ultra-sparkly Christmas ornaments at Lofty Living;
I tried out the Village Coffee Lounge on 12th St. for the first time and found out they sell reasonably priced coffee beans;
and I got a massage at Columbia Integrated Health

From Nov. 19 to 25, I spent about $750 in New Westminster (please remember, and I'm addressing my husband here, I had a couple of really slow spending weeks!). Close to half was spent at local, independent businesses and/or on locally or Canadian-made items.

I spent $750 at/on:

A & W
Hand cream at Adriana's in Royal City Centre mall
Toiletries at London Drugs
Bloco set at Pedagogy Toys
Christmas ornaments at Lofty Living
Candles and holders at a PartyLite party
Lunch, an eggnog latte, and fair trade coffee beans at the Village Coffee Lounge
Coffee and sandwich at Starbucks
Snack at Tim Hortons
Groceries at Safeway and Donald’s Market
Massage

At Herbert Spencer craft fair:

Cutting board
Soap and lotion by Juicy Bath
Christmas ornaments

At Urban Academy craft fair:

Tea
Pure Daily Essentials soap, skin care kit, and face mist
Cookies

Spend Report #11: Another slow shopping week

2010-11-23T21:48:00.000-08:00

It was another fairly slow shopping week and mostly full of chain stores. (Still no Wal-Mart though.)

I sent my husband out to do the big grocery shop since I was still sick in bed. He got to use my grocery list template, which I created in one of my rare Stepford wife moments.

I wanted to improve my efficiency at grocery shopping. My usual procedure was to make a list in any old order, then go up and down each aisle, scanning the list to see which items were in that aisle. That meant I went up and down each aisle, whether I needed anything from it or not. So I made a template organized by aisle. The template includes the most common items I buy in that aisle. When I make my list, I just need to delete the items I don't need that week and print it out. Then I know exactly which aisles I need to visit and which ones I can skip.

My husband was fairly stunned when I told him about the grocery list template. He's used to my lackadaisical (and somewhat contemptuous) attitude to housekeeping and the housewifely arts. Example: when the topic of ironing came up early in our marriage, I paraphrased the line from the English Patient: "A woman should never learn to iron and if she can she shouldn't admit to it." (In the movie, the statement was applied to sewing, which works for me too.)

From Nov. 12 to 18, I spent about $310 in New Westminster on:

Groceries
Pulled pork sandwich at Graze in Sapperton
Starbucks
Taco Del Mar
Advent calendar at the Lindt store in Queensborough – only $6!
A baby gift at Carter's/OshKosh B'gosh in Queensborough

Donald's Market and River Market Make Local Shopping an Adventure

2010-11-20T12:17:00.000-08:00

I'm only in my second month of my shopping in New Westminster adventure and frankly, it was starting to feel like not such an adventure. I was starting to go stir crazy, especially as I watched the Canadian dollar climb in value and saw all the glossy, tempting Christmas flyers starting to arrive in the paper. I was getting pretty bummed about not being able to make a quick cross-border shopping trip to Bellingham or even a quick cross-border shopping trip to Burnaby.

Today all that changed. Today I got my local shopping mojo back. Today I went to the grand opening of Donald's Market at the River Market and saw all that potential New Westminster civic and business leaders have been talking since time immemorial realized.

I'm not going to lie. I had my doubts, especially given that the renovations dragged on for so long and at least one of the tenant choices seemed goofy. When I heard the Vancouver Circus School was a tenant I was skeptical. What the heck is a circus school doing in a market? After attending the grand opening today, I found out what it's doing there: being awesome. After all, which grocery store would you rather go to: normal grocery store with just groceries or grocery store where there's a guy doing a handstand all the way down the escalator and a girl juggling all the way up? I pick the grocery store with the circus school. (In addition to classes, they are also going to offer birthday party packages.)

I actually got a little teary-eyed on the drive home, thinking to myself that this marvellous place is in New Westminster. I went to San Francisco for the first time in August and visited the Ferry Building Marketplace. The River Market reminds me of that market, but I won't have to take a plane to get to it. It's right here where I live, in my city. And I think the River Market actually has a warmer, more organic atmosphere than the Ferry Building Marketplace. Maybe that's because the River Market is not quite finished yet. I found something rather charming about the work-in-progress feeling of the place.

I was pleased to read in the Record that the Market's management is being very careful and choosy about its tenants. I used to visit the Quay fairly often and always got a, "Close, but not quite," feeling about it. There were some bright spots among the tenants, but overall, the place didn't have a bustling, happening atmosphere. I think that's why I was getting a bit bummed about my local shopping: there are bright spots, but overall, New Westminster felt, "Close, but not quite."

Seeing the River Market confirmed to me again, all New Westminster needs to do is build on what we already have, to build a critical mass of exciting shopping options. Seeing the River Market confirmed to me that it can happen here and it is happening here. Local shopping is an adventure again.

Spend Report #10: Finally, the secret of not spending money

2010-11-16T13:12:00.000-08:00

Last week wasn't a good week for shopping or anything else. I had a cold, so I was stuck at home most of the week with few opportunities to blow cash. So, finally, I've learned how to hold on to my pennies: be very, very ill. No need for anything life-threatening or exotic, just a cold bad enough to keep me curled up under the covers for most of the week—that kept my wallet closed. Funny how I managed to still eat out quite a bit. That's because in the early stages of the cold I was in denial about how sick I was, so I kept going out. By Thursday though, I took to my bed and didn't get out until Monday. So it's a pretty lame spend report, not much interesting on there, save, of course, for the wonderful pulled pork sandwich from Graze.

From Nov. 5 to 11, 2010, I spent about $115 in New Westminster:

Starbucks – I like the new version of the Cranberry Bliss Bar and it turns out I like eggnog lattes too. I usually avoid those types of drinks because they're usually too syrupy and because I don't really need to like any more high-fat food and beverages.
Avalon Dairy milk and pulled pork sandwich at Graze in Sapperton. If you haven't gone yet, what are you waiting for!?!
Indian food at Naan Bites in Queensborough. Good concept—Indian fast food—and tastes good, they just haven't quite got the "fast" part of "fast food" down yet. Still the place smells so good, I didn't really mind the wait.
Bread from McGavin's Bread Basket in Sapperton
Glue sticks
Groceries at Price Smart
Dinner at A&W

Spend Report #8 and #9: Local stores need my dollars more than Wal-Mart

2010-11-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

I got behind on my spend reports, so I decided to combine two into one. By the end of October, I realized I was still mostly sticking to chain stores, so I've decided for November to avoid Wal-mart.

Shopping locally seems more important than ever, given news of the Orange Room's closure and a perhaps shakier-than-hoped-for-revitalization of Sapperton. I'm sure Wal-mart will survive without my dollars for the next month; local stores need my dollars more.

I wish I had an unlimited budget, but I don't, so I'm also thinking up some ways to promote more local businesses through my blog, even if I can't buy something from each one every week.

Spend Report #8 and #9

From Oct. 22 to 28, I spent about $490 in New Westminster:

McDonald's
Toiletries at London Drugs – Including made-in-Canada shea butter hand cream for $1.99.
Slider at Royal City Curling Club – not a mini-burger, some type of thing curlers wear on their feet; for my husband.
Gas
Groceries at Safeway and IGA
Craft supplies at a dollar store and Wal-mart
Dinner at Boston Pizza
Lunch at the Heritage Grill on Columbia St. – I'd never been to this New West institution before, but I'll be back. I had a yummy lamb burger and the fries are great. This Columbia St. venue hosts many events and groups including a documentary night, Philosophers' Cafe, Green Drinks, GIN (Gay In New West) Nights every Saturday and lots of live music.
Boots at Army and Navy for my Halloween costume

From Oct. 29 to Nov. 4, I spent about $280 in New Westminster:

Halloween make-up and costume items at Shoppers Drug Mart, Pharmasave on Columbia St., London Drugs and Wal-mart – I really think New West needs a Halloween superstore. An existing retailer—hello Salvation Army? Dollar store owners? Army and Navy?—could operate it as a pop-up store just for the Halloween season.
Lunch at Quantum Deli and Bistro on Sixth Street
Scones and a cappuccino bar at Bella Bakery
Bread and coffee at Farm Cottage Bakery in Sapperton
Puzzle and CD at Pedagogy Toys
Three pumpkins at Yin Leong Farm in Queensborough – Can't make a more local purchase than this! Bought here, grown here, about five blocks from my house.
Pulled pork sandwich at Graze in Sapperton – You must go here. That sandwich was so good, I'm still thinking about it a week later.
Coffee and a cranberry bliss bar at Starbucks
Sushi at Tora Sushi in Queensborough
Groceries at Price Smart.

Local Brands or How the Internet Gave My Husband Beer

2010-11-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

I have all sorts of thoughts flitting through my head about local retailers, branding, and marketing in the age of social media, so bear with me if this post is a little scattered. I promise, I do have a point or five, though I may make them in a round-about, not-entirely-clear fashion.

Point one: Brands matter.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Not me, brands don't affect me." Yeah, well, you're wrong. That's what we all think and we're all wrong. I'm reading a bunch of books that explain how and why they affect us. Brands affect our brains. Or how about this story, where the mere act of carrying around a Victoria's Secret bag affected how the bag carryer felt about herself?

Point two: Local brands matter.

My husband has loved Creemore beer for a long time. It's a brand of beer not available in B.C. It used to be a small local brewery located in Creemore, Ontario. It's still located there, but it's now owned by Molson. Technically, it's not a local brand anymore, but it was when my husband started loving it. And when we visited two summers ago, we saw that it has maintained its small brewery charm. On that visit we bought Creemore glasses, a Creemore hat and, of course, Creemore beer. My husband likes to call it "The Happiest Place on Earth."

My husband started using Twitter a few months ago and took to it immediately. He rarely uses Facebook, but Twitter, he likes. He likes it even more now, because through it, the Internet gave him beer.

One of the first things he started tweeting about was Creemore. Things like how Creemore was the best beer not available in B.C. How on a trip to Ontario, the first thing he was going to do was look for Creemore. Long story short, @CreemoreKaren, who tweets for Creemore, noticed all his comments and said it sounded like he worked for them. He asked if that was a job offer, she said no, but offered to send him a coupon for an eight cans of Creemore.

He e-mailed me, "The Internet gave me beer."

My response was suspicious. "Hmmm . . . I don't know if I like this. Some strange woman (or "woman") from the Internet wants you to send her your address so she can buy you booze . . . "

Luckily, @CreemoreKaren was legit—I believe she's Creemore's marketing director—and before long my husband got his coupon. Someone my husband knew was going to Ontario and he agreed to pick up the beer for my husband and bring it back in his luggage.

My point here is that when people like a local brand, they are loyal to it. They will go to great lengths to promote it. They will go to great lengths to seek it out, even if they live several provinces away from where it is sold.

Point three: If you own a local store, you have a brand. Build it.

Your brand is not likely to be built around a fancy logo or a multi-million dollar marketing budget—that's what big brands do. I think people stick with certain big-chain brands because they know exactly what they're going to get wherever they go. People don't eat at McDonald's because it makes the best hamburgers. They eat McDonald's food because they know it's going to taste the same wherever they go.

Local brands are different. A local brand is strongest when people know it offers something they can't get anywhere else.

Your brand could be built on a sandwich—a delicious sandwich that people can get only from you.

I had an interesting exchange on Twitter on Tuesday with a number of local New West people about what I think is a great local brand in the making. It all started with my tweet: "Can't stop thinking about the pulled pork sandwich I had at Graze in Sapperton yesterday. So good."

I added the hash tag #newwest to my tweet. Before too long, someone from New West wanted to know where Graze was. Then someone else mentioned Graze has a ribs and beans night on Friday. Someone else complained that we had made the newsroom hungry and now, how were they going to put the paper out? (Though I have to say, in my experience, it's not hard to make a newsroom hungry.) I and others who had eaten there ended up making several people who didn't know about Graze curious and, in some cases, hungry.

And here's my point about marketing in the age of social media: people will build your brand for you, with or without your participation.

If you want to shape your own brand, it's probably best to participate. Pay attention to social media. If you don't know how to use Twitter or Facebook, find out how. Google "how to use Twitter" or "how to use Facebook" and you'll get a ka-jillion results.

In doing my experiment, I've searched online for New Westminster businesses and checked for those that have Twitter and Facebook accounts. There are some exceptions, but a lot of New Westminster businesses don't have much of an online presence. I realize social media isn't the only way for businesses to market themselves, but it is a way and it is usually a very low- or no-cost way.

Point Four: This is the most important point. Go to Graze at 450 E. Columbia St. (See all this free work I'm doing for a local brand? And I've only had one sandwich there!) Have a pulled pork sandwich. It's so good. The meat drips with sauce, there's a satisfying crunch of cabbage with every bite, the bun is so soft and delicious . . . it is truly food for the soul. It will leave you with a warm glow in your stomach and your heart. Graze also has a deli and grocery items and vegetarian menu items.

Point Five: I really need to stop writing about food at night. I'm so hungry right now.

Why We Buy What We Buy

2010-11-01T17:07:00.000-07:00

"If we want independent retailers to stay in business, we have to patronize them. It's that simple."

From The Mom & Pop Store by Robert Spector

My first month of shopping only in New Westminster is over. What I've learned is that it would likely be possible for me to spend the entire year shopping only at chain stores without ever setting foot in an independent, locally owned business. Of course, that's not what I want to do, but it would be possible. I did go to some independent, locally owned businesses in October, but not nearly as many as I thought I would have by now.

I told the Record I didn't want this to turn into "My Year of Shopping at Wal-Mart." Despite my perception that I don't shop at Wal-Mart much, I went there six times in October, so at least once or twice a week. Part of what I want to do over the course of this year is to change my spending patterns and habits, to re-focus them to more local stores. So, for November, I'm going to go no Wal-Mart. Let's see if I can break my Wal-Mart habit.

I've also been reading a lot about consumer behavior and why we buy what we buy.

Here's my reading list this month, with a brief summary of what I've gleaned from each book so far:

The Mom & Pop Store: How the Unsung Heroes of the American Economy Are Surviving and Thriving – Locally owned businesses are good.
Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses – Big chains, especially Wal-Mart, are evil.
Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer – I saw this one at the library and wasn't sure about getting it, until I read the book jacket description:
". . . the average mall shopper will spend about $100, then leave when she hits that limit. She'll probably buy shoes rather than clothing, because she doesn't want to think about her dress size." Clearly, this guy knows me, so I better see what else he knows.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture – I'm not too far into this one yet, but love this quote: "I do not prize the word 'cheap.' It is not a badge of honor." – U.S. President William McKinley

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are – I haven't got too far into this one yet, but the author talks how pervasive brands are, despite consumers' assertions that we are not affected by marketing. ". . . we can talk all we want about being brandproof, but our behavior tells a different story. This is why I have come around to the view that there is nothing to be gained by simply believing we are immune to brands. But there might be something gained in understanding why we aren't."
Spent. Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior – How evolutionary psychology explains what we buy and why we buy it. Essentially, the author's theory is that we buy what we buy to signal fitness (of various types) to others. But as the author explains, evolution has already endowed us with all the equipment we need (both physical and mental) to display fitness and form lasting, meaningful relationships with others without buying a single thing. But we're all caught up in "the fundamental consumerist delusion—that other people care more about the artificial products you display through consumerist spending than about the natural traits you display through normal conversation, cooperation, and cuddling."

Spend Report #7: When I think I'm not spending any money, I'm still spending money

2010-10-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

Huh. My perception was that I had bought absolutely nothing last week. In reality, I spent just over $600. Huh.
I've always had the magical ability of making money flow through my fingers like water. (My husband does not think this is a magical ability. He has other words for it, but he doesn't use them out loud.)
If my husband starts the week out with $100 in his wallet, he'll finish the week with maybe $87.75 and know exactly where and how he spent the $12.25. If I start the week out with $100 in my wallet, on the second day, I'll ask my husband if he has any money I can have.

Then we'll have a exchange something like this:
He'll say, "What happened to the $100 you had?"
"I don't know."
"Well, what did you buy?"
"I don't know. Give me some money."
"What do you need it for?"

"I don't know. Give me some money."

Then he won't give me money, I'll go to the bank machine instead and the cycle begins again.

Despite having managed to blow over $600, I'm feeling guilty about not having made much effort to get out to small local businesses yet. I feel like shopping is my job and I'm not doing it very well. (Imagine the look on my husband's face as he reads that. I am and it's making me giggle.) But I have been stuck at home most of the week doing my other job, the one that actually pays me money, so exploring small local stores had to wait.

We did go to Taverna Greka on Columbia St. last week for dinner. I'd been there before, but not for seven or eight years. And, other than the Keg, I don't think we had ever gone out for a family dinner on Columbia St. Taverna Greka has a great view of the river and the food was good, especially the dolmades and a wonderfully creamy, custard-y dessert. (I have to stop writing this blog at night, I'm getting really hungry.) We will definitely go back.

From Oct. 15 to 21, we spent just over $600 in New West.

We bought:

Girl Guide cookies
Food at the Royal City Curling Club
Lightbulbs and toiletries at London Drugs
Cleaning products at a Norwex home party
Groceries at Price-Smart and M&M
Haircut at Gem Barbers on Sixth St. (That was my husband.)
Dinner at Taverna Greka, part of Zest of New West
Coffee/food at Starbucks
Scholastic book order (Someone should do a year of buying stuff only from school and kids' group fundraisers.)
LEGO and Halloween candy at Wal-Mart (My son saved up his allowance money for a few months to buy LEGO.)
Piano lessons

Spend Report #6: Almost no shopping at all

2010-10-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

My husband, who initially was going to stick to his daily routine, has decided to participate by taking his lunch to work at least sometimes instead of always buying it downtown. He says it's partly about the shopping experiment, partly about the money.

Keeping track of our expenditures for this blog has made one thing painfully clear: we spend too much money. We already knew that, but it was easy to push to the back of our minds when we just knew it in the abstract. Writing down every expense and seeing it all on paper, week after week, makes it harder to ignore.

He is even doing his own weekly spend reports for me to incorporate into mine. His first includes every detail, including $1 in lottery winnings and the 25 cents he spent on candy at work. He says he likes writing everything down because it keeps him from spending money.

He also included the days he didn't spend anything. I could read too much into that and take it as a jibe at my own spending habits, but I'm not going to. Besides, this past week, for the first time in a long time, there were several days where I didn't buy anything either. Of course, the long weekend helped. But I've also been feeling a little disoriented. I'm not shopping outside of New West, but I don't have new routines and habits to replace my old ones yet.

From Oct. 8 to 14, I spent about $164.

I spent $53 in New Westminster on:

Breakfast at the Hide Out Cafe on Carnarvon St. My first time visit. Lots of lawyers and students, so fashions were a mix of rumpled suits and the boho (or is that hobo?) chic I remember so well from my own student days.

Stuff at Wal-mart. (Dishwasher detergent, milk, salt and vinegar chips)
Coffee at Starbucks

I also spent about $100 for gas ($75) and food on a trip to Kamloops for Thanksgiving.

I also spent about $11 for groceries at the Price-Smart in Hamilton.

What I would be doing if I wasn't in New West

2010-10-15T01:00:00.000-07:00

"I have to start making a list of stuff I haven't done or gone to because of shopping only in New West," I say to my husband, while we're packing to go to Kamloops for Thanksgiving.*

"I'm not going to Gogol Bordello, I'm not going to Ghostland Observatory, we haven't given money to KEXP . . ."

At this last one, my husband give me a guilty smile, looks away and starts staring assiduously at our bookcase.

"What are you staring at?"

"I'm seeing if there's any books I want to take with me," he says.

Yeah, right. I start haranguing him, in between laughing, and use what is becoming my favourite threat: "It's going in the blog."

"YOU didn't give any money to KEXP," he says defensively, "I did."

True enough, but we had discussed making a donation during their annual fall membership drive this year and I thought we had agreed not too, because of the blog and because of the money. I knew it was bugging him though.

My husband listens to KEXP every day online. Notions of "community" and "local" are much more elastic with the Internet and I know KEXP is important to him. At any rate, it was only $20, much less than we have given in previous years.

Here's the list of what this blog is keeping me, if not my husband, from doing this year. At some point I'll figure out how to put the list into a sidebar and make it a standing feature that I update throughout the year.

Please understand, this is not a list of complaint. It's a list of potential. Money I didn't spend outside New West that I now, potentially, could spend inside New West. The odd thing is, I've bought almost nothing this past week. But more on that in my next weekly spend report.

Things I haven't done or bought and places I haven't gone that I usually probably would:

No Smaller donation to KEXP
No snacks or coffee on the way up to Kamloops
No Cowboy Coffee in Kamloops
No Senor Froggy in Kamloops
No Gogol Bordello
No Ghostland Observatory (They gave the best live show I've ever seen ** and they're coming back to Seattle in November. This one is a little complain-y. Just a little.)
No dollar-almost-at-par shopping trip to Bellingham/Seattle
No Priceline hotel for trip to Ghostland Observatory and/or shopping trip
No crazy expensive Halloween costume for my son from BuyCostumes.com when it turns out he is just as happy with the $24 one from Wal-mart.

* No, I didn't buy anything in Kamloops, other than gas. And food on the way home. We weren't going to, but traffic was really bad. I'm committed to this blog, but I draw the line at letting my son go hungry. Okay, to be honest, I draw the line at listening to my son say, "I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm soo-ooo-ooo hungry," over and over and over again in the close confines of our Hyundai.

** See video at top of the post, which may look like nonsense to some, but trust me, the show was epic. It included getting tickets for the Saturday show, figuring out three days before the show that it would really be better to have Friday tickets, posting a ticket trade on Craigslist, arranging to meet with Dave from Texas in Seattle to trade tickets before the show, while making sure Dave wasn't a scammer or crazy, jumping up and down for two hours at the show even when standing still because the sprung-wood floor was bouncing so hard, staying up until 3 a.m. after the show and getting up at 9 a.m. Saturday morning to drive back to New Westminster and familial obligations. Epic.

Spend Report #5: Turkey Trouble

2010-10-08T16:55:00.000-07:00

This year I am helping with crafts at Beavers, which my son attends. I agreed to do the shopping as long as I don't have to do any outside New West. I'm assured the craft items will all be dollar store stuff. Monday's craft was turkeys made out of napkins (see cute picture above). I did find everything I needed in New West, but only after visiting five dollar stores and Wal-Mart. (Why does New West have so many dollar stores? I went to five, but I know of at least two others.)

It made me wonder if I could have bought everything at one store if I had left New West. So I visit craft superstore Michaels. The answer is no. I still would have had to go elsewhere for the napkins. The supplies I would have bought at Michaels would have cost about $15 (no napkins) compared to about $13 (including napkins) for the dollar store/Wal-Mart supplies. I know there are other places outside New West to buy these supplies, but it is most likely that I would have chosen Michaels. There may be no one-stop napkin turkey shopping in New West, but there is cheap napkin turkey shopping.

It's the end of my first week shopping only in New Westminster. As I review my receipts, I realize I have spent money mainly at fast food joints, dollar stores and big chains this week. But I did discover that New West has a swimwear store. I also tried to redeem myself at the end of the week with a visit to the Royal City Farmers Market.

Spend Report #5

I spent about $575 in New Westminster on:

A bathing suit at Just Swimwear on Sixth St. Bonus: the suit is made in Canada.
Coffee at Starbucks
McDonald's (twice! Eek!)
A t-shirt at Warehouse One in Royal City Centre. I also tried on jeans and I'm surprised and happy to find they have jeans that fit me. I'll be back.
Beer at the B.C. Liquor Store
Groceries at Safeway
Toiletries at London Drugs
Gas
Greek food at Opa
Food at A&W
Halloween costume and miscellaneous items at Wal-Mart
Butter tarts, quinoa salad, cheese and a crepe at the Royal City Farmers Market. Oct. 7 was the last summer market, but the winter market is on the second Saturday of the month from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Holy Trinity Cathedral hall at 514 Carnarvon St. in New Westminster.

I'm cheating on New West already

2010-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry, New West, I hate to tell you this. I'm not even a week into my year of shopping only in New Westminster and I'm already cheating on you. With a video store in Winnipeg.
"Winn-i-peg!?!" I can hear you saying like those people in the Pace Picante salsa commercials say "New York City?!?"
I suppose that would make New Westminster San Antonio and Winnipeg New York City, which is kind of a strange comparison to mull over in one's mind. But anyway . . . onward to my tale of cheating and betrayal:

I have coffee a few times a week with a group of friends who were not impressed to hear I was keeping my subscription to a mail-order DVD service. My friends, or should I say "friends," called me a cheater and said I should be suffering more for my year of shopping locally.

The service is called Cinemail and it's based in Winnipeg. I order DVDs online and they are delivered by mail. I watch them, put them in an envelope and mail them back. From what I can tell, Cinemail is a made-in-Canada success story, now undoubtedly under pressure from the expansion of Netflix into Canada. Rogers and Blockbuster, my two choices for DVD rental in New Westminster, are also undoubtedly under pressure from Netflix, but I care more about Cinemail than I do about Rogers and Blockbuster. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt either one of them offers 26 films by acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Netflix doesn't either. Cinemail does.

I knew doing this shopping locally thing was going to involve many contradictions. I have dropped using Spud, a grocery delivery service, because it's based in Vancouver. That is despite Spud's commitment to local produce. On my last order, on Sept. 30, my groceries travelled an average of just 73 kilometres to reach SPUD's warehouse. That's compared to the average 2,500 kilometres SPUD says products are transported to a typical grocery store in Canada. The bagels in my order, from fabulous Siegel's Bagels, travelled just seven kilometres to SPUD's warehouse. So, does that mean by shopping "locally" all my produce is going to come from thousands of miles away? (So far, so good: Kin's seems to label the source of most of their produce and much of it is from B.C. I'm going to the New West farmer's market today, where I'm sure I'll find lots of close-to-home options too.)

Being a consumer in the 21st century is all about contradictions. I saw a card kit at a store not long ago that gave you all the pieces to make "handmade" cards; everything was pre-cut, all you had to do was glue. This blog is about me confronting those contradictions and making conscious decisions about them, not necessarily about suffering.

So, call me a cheater, call me a hypocrite; I'm keeping Cinemail. Unless . . . unless you're willing to suffer with me too. Here's the deal coffee ladies: I'll drop Cinemail if you all agree to shop in the cities you live in for one whole year too. Who's in?

Clearing out the (e-mail) clutter

2010-10-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

Since I'll only be shopping in New Westminster for the next year, it seems like a good time to unsubscribe to a bunch of e-newsletters that are no longer relevant to me. I was surprised to find I was subscribed to over 25 retail and travel e-newsletters. It felt good to clear the clutter out of my inbox. I have wasted a lot of time on some of these Web sites; it feels good to know I won't be doing that this year. (I have nothing against these stores and their products and services. It's just that for me the Internet is a black hole and I'm always getting sucked into it.)

I have never bought anything from:
Country Village
Rejuvenation
Stonz Wear
Travelocity
Away Network
Maine Cottage
Travelzoo
TravelAlerts.ca

I rarely bought anything from:
Restoration Hardware
Garnet Hill
Thrifty Car Rental
ClearPoint direct
eBay I used to have an eBay jewellery habit, but I haven't bought anything from them for at least two years.
Amazon.com
Red Envelope
VIFF
Harbour Dance Centre
Showbox Seattle
Living Social
Fruits and Passion
Canon eStore
Bloomex

I sometimes bought from:
RONA
Expedia
Priceline
Allegiant Air
Costco
Toys R Us
Choices Markets I love Choices and since it's right on the border with New West I thought about making an exception for it. But I had to draw the line somewhere, so Choices is out.
Buycostumes.com
Sears
The Shoe Company
Victoria's Secret I like their bras, though they're so pushed up and padded, I told my husband wearing them feels like false advertising. Which led him to make a concerned face and ask, "Um, who are you advertising to?"
Chapters/Indigo
Cineplex Entertainment

Unsubscribed from these because they cover mostly non-New West stores and events:
Yoyomama
SavvyMom.ca

(List updated Oct. 6, 2010)

My 100 Mile Super High Size Not Made in China Year of Living Biblically with no Garbage

2010-10-02T22:42:00.000-07:00

Lifestyle experiments seem awfully popular these days. Why? I'm not sure, but I think that people are starting to notice that while the modern world offers many conveniences, there are one or two drawbacks, such as disconnection from one's community and the degradation of the earth's environment.

Here's a few, "I'm going to do this or not do that for a month/year" experiments:

Super Size Me: If not the originator of this sort of lifestyle experiment, definitely one of the first. Morgan Spurlock sees what happens to his body when he eats nothing but McDonald's for a month. It's not pretty.

Super High Me: The pot-smoking comic I mentioned before. Worth a watch if only to see just how funny and sad comics are, all at the same time.

The Year of Living Biblically: comic take on trying to follow the Bible as literally as possible for one year. Author A.J. Jacobs says he is Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is Italian. His wife isn't too happy about some of the rules. She sits on every chair in the house during a certain time of the month because she knows, according to the Bible, he won't be able to sit anywhere.

Slow Death by Rubber Duck: two Toronto enviro-dudes see what happens to their bodies when they expose themselves to the potentially toxic chemicals found in everyday products.

No Impact Man: Should really be called No Impact Family. For one year, a New York family try to have no net impact on the environment.

The 100 Mile Diet: Lower Mainland residents Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon eat only the food produced within a 100-mile radius of themselves for a year. They didn't realize how hard it would be until they figured out almost no one grows wheat in the Lower Mainland. A worldwide sensation. Sparked a local food movement that continues to this day.

Green Garbage Project: American couple tries to go a year without throwing anything away.

A Year without "Made in China": American family tries to go a year without buying anything made in China

Makeshift: A Vancouver designer makes everything she needs to wear for one year. Doesn't sound tricky if you know how to sew, but she means everything: shoes, bras, underwear.

Here's a link to a list of 12 more (some repeats from my list): there's a year without plastic, a guy who keeps all his garbage for a year and takes photos of it, a woman who tries to go for a year without buying anything new.

The two that have inspired me most in taking on my modest experiment are The 100 Mile Diet and the Year of Living Biblically. (Took on the local aspect from one, the comic aspect from the other; you figure out which is which.) I can't say I have tons of lofty goals, but I do know that much of what I do every day is through habit. If nothing else, this year will give me lots of opportunity to examine my habits.

New Westminster Swimsuit Store Saves Me Time

2010-10-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Day 1 and I haven't made a break for the Burnaby border yet. Just today, I saved myself about two or three hours in shopping time by sticking to New Westminster.

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a swimming class at the Canada Games Pool. I knew this would require an athletic bathing suit and I figured the chances of finding a good one in New Westminster were zero. Even when I have all options open to me, finding a suit is a challenge. In addition to needing a, let's just say, large size, I also have a long torso.

Summer was over, so Wal-Mart wouldn't be carrying any suits and I couldn't think of anywhere else in town where I could get one. Just for the heck of it, I decided to Google "New Westminster bathing suits." To my surprise, New Westminster not only has a bathing suit store, it has one that carries specialty (meaning big and long torso) sizes: Just Swimwear on Sixth Street.

Here's what I would have done if I wasn't limited to shopping to New Westminster: I would have gone online and tried to find a suit. Would have looked at Land's End, Eddie Bauer, Sears. Would have got distracted by shiny merchandise and spent an hour or so surfing store sites.

Would have been nervous about buying swimwear online, so I would have gone to Swimco in Metrotown to see if they had anything. Would have been depressed about how many suits in that store are meant for skinny people. Would have been depressed about how many skinny people there are at Metrotown in general.

Would have started looking around Metrotown. Would have shifted my hunt from bathing suit to jeans. Would have had a delusional moment and tried on "super skinny" jeans in Old Navy.* Would have been surprised by how comfy they were. Would have considered how much it looked like I was wearing jodhpurs. Would have realized that pants that aren't jodhpurs shouldn't look like jodhpurs. Would have experienced moment of clarity as I realized there is no pair of jeans in the universe that is going to give me back the butt I had when I was 19. Would have got hungry from all the shopping and gone and bought a burrito, something else that is not going to give me back the butt I had when I was 19.

After two or three hours at the mall, I may or may not have gone home with a bathing suit.

Instead, I stopped by Just Swimwear today, picked out two or three likely options, tried them on and bought a suit, all in about 20 minutes. I had lots of time when I got home before I needed to go pick up my son from school.

I used this time to watch a documentary: Super High Me, the story of what happened when comedian Doug Benson decided to smoke pot every day for a month. It's such a powerful documentary I had to make some nachos while I watched it. Perhaps not the best use of my time, but better than being stuck in a mall for two hours.

The documentary got me thinking, that instead of shopping, maybe there's something else local I could do for a year. Kidding! It really did get me thinking how many people are doing these lifestyle experiments. I'll list some of them in an upcoming post, tentatively titled My 100-Mile Super High Size Not Made in China Year of Living Biblically.

* I actually was this delusional recently, though not while being distracted from bathing suit shopping.

Spend Reports #3 and #4

2010-10-01T00:55:00.000-07:00

I got behind with my spend reports, so I decided to do them all just before I start shopping only in New Westminster. Maybe I got behind because I was traumatized by having to admit how much I spent in a week in Spend Report #2. (I can't even bring myself to type the amount, you'll have to read that post if you want to know.)

Someone, anyone, please tell me you’ve done the same. I did feel a little better when I went to Wal-Mart during its once-a-year anniversary sale. The bargain shoppers were out in full force and some of them were making big impulse purchases. I saw a woman leave the store with a loaded cart and a 40” TV. She said she went in the store to buy a single toy, but couldn’t resist the $398 TV. Then I pondered that while she has a big-screen TV to show for her spending spree, all I have is a duvet and public humiliation.

Spend Report #3

From Sept. 16 to 22, I spent approximately $480.

I spent about $380 in New Westminster on:
A coat, groceries and miscellaneous items* at Wal-Mart
More items at Wal-Mart including Oreos, soap, Froot Loops and a Christmas present for my nephew
Groceries at Safeway
Lunch at Opa
Food and rides at the Queensborough Fall Fair

I spent about $100 on:

Groceries (Richmond)

Lunch (Vancouver)

Deodorant (Kiehl’s, Vancouver)

Eye cream (The Bay, Vancouver)
Metered parking – $11!!! (Vancouver)

* Includes Hot Tub Time Machine DVD. It’s a hot tub and a time machine.

Spend Report #4

From Sept. 23 to 30, I spent approximately $460. This is the week I abandon all pretense of trying to shop normally and do a farewell tour of stores around the Lower Mainland that I won’t be spending money in for the next year.

I spent about $120 in New West on:

Spent. Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior (Just $9.99 at Black Bond Books; would have been $22 at Chapters or $21 at amazon.ca)

Produce, almost all from B.C. (at Kin’s Farm Market)

Coffee and more coffee (at Starbucks)

A DQ Blizzard (Since when do Blizzards cost almost $5!?!)

Shoes for my son (Shoe Warehouse)

I spent about $340 on:

Groceries (Price-Smart in Hamilton, the Richmond neighbourhood that borders Queensborough)
More groceries (delivered by SPUD, which is based in Vancouver)
Gas (Shell in Hamilton)

Shampoo and conditioner (Metrotown, Burnaby)

Parking and ice cream at the Coliseum (Arcade Fire concert, Vancouver)

T-shirt and groceries (Superstore, Coquitlam) **
Various items at IKEA

Sweater, shirt and belt (Marks, Burnaby)

T-shirt (Warehouse One, Burnaby)

** It won’t be hard to stop shopping at Superstore. I only go a few times a year. My husband objects to its mix of merchandise.
“Is the raw meat supposed to go on top of my clothes or do I put the meat in the cart first?” is the kind of thing he says when I tell him I've been there.

Updated Oct. 8, 2010

My Last IKEA Haul for a year

2010-09-29T17:48:00.000-07:00

I made my last trip to IKEA today. I felt a little panicked at first and briefly considered buying the 36-pack of tea lights and/or an entire kitchen. Because over the next year I might become the kind of person who burns candles on a regular basis and my kitchen could collapse. Thankfully, logic prevailed, and I admitted to myself that while those two situations are possible, they aren't very probable. I made it out of the Swedish store in Coquitlam with just 11 items:
3 Graddsas cream sauce mixes, made in Hungary.
Legitim cutting boards (pack of 2), made in India.
3 Slom glass jars, made in China
Sparsam light bulbs (pack of 2), made in China. (At IKEA, even the light bulbs have a name.)
2 Gorm wire baskets, made in China.
Barometer work lamp, made in China.

Despite second thoughts, I will shop locally

2010-09-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

Well, there's no getting out of this. There I am, all over the front page of today's New Westminster Record, talking about how I will be shopping locally for one year. I've been having second, third and even fourth thoughts about this whole enterprise, but I guess it's too late to change my mind now.
Thanks to Andrew Fleming of the Record for taking interest in my experiment and to Larry Wright for the wonderful photo.
I'll be interested to see what kind of feedback the story gets. I won't be surprised to get some flack for the comparison made of my experiment to The 100-Mile Diet.
As flattering as it is to be compared to Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, authors of The 100-Mile Diet, I don't think my experiment is anywhere near as ground-breaking or as complicated as theirs. They really suffered for their book. They had to give up sugar, rice, and even bread, at least until they found a local wheat grower.
I must say though, when I tell people what I'm doing, some do react as though I'm likely to endure extreme hardship. I too have moments when I feel a sense of impending doom and deprivation. No Reitmans! No IKEA! No Canadian Tire! No L'Occitane for the best hand cream in the world! Oh, the humanity! How will I ever survive?
When I think about it rationally, I realize how silly my fears are. New Westminster lacks certain stores, but there are plenty of places to shop and all its grocery stores are amply stocked. What is it about our consumer culture that makes people think going without Costco and IKEA for a year will be so difficult? That's the kind of question I will explore starting Oct. 1.

Last Chance for Great Savings

2010-09-16T01:06:00.000-07:00

“Last Chance for Great Savings.” So said the e-mail I received from Garnet Hill late on Sunday.

It’s the kind of e-mail I get from retailers every day, but this one made me anxious. It is almost my last chance, I thought. My last chance to buy anything not in New West! I panicked. I felt I must go online right away and buy something, anything. I wasted two hours online “window” shopping, seeking out bargains—a $29 sundress, $9 sandals, $18 pillowcases—I wanted it all. In the end, I bought none of it. I didn’t need any of it, and thankfully, my rational side prevailed.

I’m trying to shop as normally as possible before Oct. 1. I don’t want to buy a bunch of stuff I usually wouldn’t. But on Wednesday, I could not pass up Living Social’s deal of the day —a microdermabrasion treatment at 61 per cent off. I’ve never tried it before, but as I understand it, microdermabrasion is basically like sandpapering your skin, scraping off the old, sagging, wrinkly layer and revealing the fresh, glowing, youthful layer below. That’s what I’m hoping happens anyway. Besides, it turned into a nice parallel in husband/wife spending—the same day I spend $59 on microdermabrasion, my husband (unbeknownst to me at the time) spends about $59 on Halo Reach.

Here’s my spend report for the past week, without any foolish online purchases, facial sandpapering excepted. I can spend my money foolishly enough without the help of the Internet. That is something I am learning from doing this blog: I spend too much money.

(I can just hear what my husband will say when he reads this. “I could have told you that, you didn’t need to do a blog!” Yeah, yeah, yeah.) This blog just might turn out to be a great budgeting tool. But, as you will see, not yet.

Spend Report #2

From Sept. 8 to 15, I spent approximately $1,100. (Holy crap! I know once my husband reads this post, he’s going to ask me, “Are you independently wealthy and hiding it from me? Or do you have a second and third job I don’t know about?”)

I spent about $350 in New Westminster on:

curling lessons for my son, sushi, coffee, groceries, a birthday present and toiletries at Wal-mart, loading up my New West Fitness card, and more coffee.

The rest, about $750, was spent on: (and in)

carpet cleaning (done in my home, but the cleaner was from Burnaby)

SPUD groceries (delivered to my home, but SPUD is based in Vancouver)

Photos, a duvet and groceries (Costco, Burnaby)

An Editors' Association of Canada seminar (bought online, seminar is in Vancouver)

Halo: Reach (Vancouver)

A gift certificate for microdermabrasion (bought online, will be used in Vancouver)

Raffle tickets supporting KidSport (at an event in Burnaby)

Money: the most taboo topic of all

2010-09-08T00:07:00.000-07:00

“Well, I have to go do my spend report for my blog,” I announce after dinner.

“What?” says my husband and then he gives me a look. Or rather, A Look.

“For the first week of September. What I bought, how much it cost, where I bought it.”

I can tell he is uneasy. He explains he is concerned that people will be able to figure out how much we make if I give such detailed information. This makes me uneasy too. Just writing about this, even just thinking about this—the whole topic of money—is making me twitchy.

I do not consider myself a particularly private person. People who know me well would probably say I err on the side of sharing way too much information. However, I’ve always been extremely reticent about telling anyone how much I make. Revealing how I spend my money and how much money I have to spend is just that: revealing. I don’t want to be judged by how much I make or by what I spend my money on. Most people don’t.

But people make judgments based on money all the time. I have scoffed at friends who spend hundreds on designer handbags. I’ve never been into labels. If a brand wants me to wear its logo, I’m advertising, so, the brand should pay me. That’s always been my philosophy. But I know I have made many scoff-worthy purchases myself (hello, $85 jar of face masque in my medicine cabinet).

My husband favours doing a loose summary of expenditures. His argument is that the point of the blog is not exactly how much I’ve spent, it’s whether or not I was able to buy everything in New West. I’m not so sure. After all, one of the things I’m interested in finding out is if shopping locally is cheaper or more expensive and by how much. Of course, at the end of the year, I could just say, “Trust me, it’s cheaper/more expensive!” and never reveal how much I actually spent. But writing is always better when it’s specific.

I don’t think listing every grocery item and its price is necessary, but at some point, some specific numbers are going to need to be involved.

Spend Report #1

While I figure out exactly how much I want to reveal, here’s a somewhat loose/somewhat specific report on how and where I spent my money for the first week of September.

From Sept. 1 to 7, I spent about $620. A little over half (about $327) was spent in New Westminster. I spent money in New West on piano lessons, haircuts for my son and husband, propane, brunch, gas, and groceries.

The rest was spent in Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Vancouver and Richmond. I left New West to buy piano books and to go to Costco, the PNE and to two movies. (There is no Costco or movie theatre in New Westminster.) Almost all my spending from Sept. 1 to 6 was done outside New West. All my Sept. 7 (first day of school) spending was done in New West.

Will less cost more? At least my shoes will match

2010-09-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

My replacement glass storage containers arrived unbroken on Friday, having made only four stops from Secaucus, New Jersey, to my door. (The original shipment started out in Las Vegas and made five stops along its way.) As I unpack them, I say to my husband sadly, "Pretty soon, no more online shopping for me."

My husband does not, I realize, look sad. He looks, in fact, positively gleeful.

"You're hoping this leads to me spending and shopping less, aren't you?" I ask.

He nods eagerly.

"There's no Sephora in town!" he says later, while discussing the same topic.

(I have what you, and definitely my husband, might call an obsession with beauty and skin care products. Shh, nobody tell him that Shoppers Drug Mart carries some products from Benefit, one of my favourite brands. And, there's a Shoppers in New West!)

"We'll probably end up buying less stuff, but it will be more expensive," my husband says.

The less stuff part, I think I'm okay with. The more expensive part will be trickier.

It seems the equation of "local" with "expensive" is a common one. A good friend (@mforbes 37) tweeted about my blog and got this response: "If I could get that 200% raise I've been asking for, I'd only buy local stuff too," said @felixpotvin, (not, according to his Twitter profile, the real Felix Potvin).

I think @felixpotvin may have missed the part where I mention I will still be shopping at big chain stores, as long as they are in the geographic boundaries of New Westminster. But my husband knows that and he still thinks we'll end up spending more money. How much more remains to be seen.

I know I have chased down bargains online that, in the finish, turn out to be no bargain at all. Not long ago, I ordered shoes online from a store that doesn't ship to Canada. But they were so cheap! So sending them to a mail depot in Point Roberts (just over the border in Washington, about 30 minutes from my house) seemed to make sense. It would be easy for me, I thought, to zip over the border and pick them up. Even with the exchange rate and the cost of driving, I figured I would still come out $30 to $40 ahead. And my chances of finding that particular brand and style of shoes at a store closer by were slim to none.

The shoes were delivered to the depot fairly quickly, but with one thing and another, I didn’t pick them up right away. When I finally picked them up, the shoes fit, but while they were both brown, they were two distinctly different shades. Because it had taken me so long to pick them up, it was past the regular return period. I probably still could have returned them because they were defective, but I only looked at and tried on one shoe in Point Roberts. The other stayed nestled in its tissue paper nest because, silly me, I assumed both shoes would be the same colour. I had a post-paid return label, but it was only valid for shipping from the U.S., not Canada. I never did make it back down to Point Roberts to return them. So much for saving money.

Maybe shopping locally for a year will cost more, maybe it won't. I know one thing: even if I don't save money, I won't end up with a pair of different coloured shoes.

Where's the hardware store?

2010-09-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

When I told my husband I wanted to shop locally for one year and blog about it, he said, "Okay." That's about all the discussion we had on the topic.

Last night, I asked him, "Does New West have a hardware store?"

For the first time, he expressed trepidation about this project.

"Uhh, you might have to expand the boundaries a bit."

I'm not going to do that, but it did make me wonder, why doesn't New West have a hardware store? And, if there is one, why is it so well-hidden, I don't know about it?

There used to be a Canadian Tire in town; that's gone now and there's a big, new one on Marine Way in Burnaby. Close to, but not in New West.
There's a Rona on Edmonds. Again, close to, but not in New West.
There's a Home Depot in Surrey, just over the Patullo Bridge. You should know the refrain by now: close to, but not in New West.

Considering there's so many hardware stores so close to New West, does it really matter that New West itself doesn't have one? Are there any other cities in Canada with 60,000 people that don't have a hardware store?

When I lived in Pemberton, the population was well under 1,000 and it had a hardware store. When I lived along Commercial Drive, there was a hardware store. (Even hipsters and hippies need hammers.)

The first Lowe's in B.C. is supposed to be coming to Queensborough, but I'm not sure how soon it will be built. Probably not by the end of September, which means if I want to get that much-needed replacement for our kitchen faucet, I've got less than 30 days to do it!

Why do this and how is this going to work?

2010-09-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

First off, the obvious question: why do this? Why, when living in such a large, urban area, would I want to restrict all my shopping to New Westminster?

I've always been the kind of person who wants to shop locally. My desire stems from vague notions that shopping locally is good for the community, the local economy and the environment, though I really don't know that much about exactly how local economies work. I want to find out whether and how my actions as a consumer effect the local economy. You see, despite my desire, the reality is, I don't really shop locally all that much.

Most of the shopping I do in New Westminster is usually at chain stores and it's mostly for groceries or food. I go to Safeway, Walmart, Starbucks, Boston Pizza and White Spot. For most other items, including clothing, furniture, hardware, and shoes, I leave New Westminster and drive to another community to do my shopping.

The reason I leave town to shop is the same reason I think New Westminster is uniquely suited for this experiment. It's in the middle of a large urban area, but it's really just a small town (population 60,000) in many ways. But, unlike towns with similar populations NOT in the middle of a urban area, New Westminster seems to be missing certain kinds of stores and services that drives me, and has me driving, to other communities to shop. One reason I want to do this experiment is to see just what retailers and services are missing from New Westminster, as well as to find out what is here. (I've heard there are interesting stores in New West, even interesting clothing stores, but I've never set foot in one.)

I’m increasingly shopping online and a recent online purchase, along with a recent local purchase I didn't make, also helped inspire this blog. I ordered some glass food storage containers online from Bed, Bath and Beyond. My e-receipt came with a UPS tracking number and I was stunned by the circuitous route my containers took. They started out in Las Vegas, went to Salt Lake City, then Hermiston, Oregon, then to Redmond, Washington, where they finally crossed the border to Richmond and made one last stop at Annacis Island before being delivered to my house. Two of the seven containers arrived broken. I was able to return them to the Bed, Bath and Beyond in Coquitlam and the helpful staff there re-ordered the two broken containers for me. The replacement containers started out in Seacaucus, New Jersey, and, according to the UPS Website, arrived in Spokane, Washington, at exactly 2:41 a.m. this morning.

There's a little farm in my neighbourhood that sells flowers, vegetables and fruit. I have stopped there maybe twice this summer and one day, I noticed they were selling big, gorgeous heads of leaf lettuce for 79 cents. I didn't need lettuce that day (because I had a $1.25 head of lettuce from Safeway in my fridge), but thought I should stop in one day and get some. That day never came.

There's something about these scenarios that strikes me as deeply strange and wrong. Somehow, my shopping habits have become completely disconnected from my local community. It's somehow more "convenient" for me to get storage containers from Vegas than it is for me to get lettuce from just down my street. I love the idea of local shopping, but haven't gotten around to the reality of actually doing it. I hope this experiment helps me shake up my habits and, in the process, re-connects me to my community.

Not long after buying the glass containers, I was reading a blog post by Briana Tomkinson on Tenth to the Fraser.

She was expressing woe about the poor mix of retailers in New Westminster.

"I want New West to have a more varied, and well, ambitious, mix of retailers and restaurants. I want our city to stop being such an economic underachiever and create shopping districts for real shoppers."

This comment really resonated with me. If I'm typical of New Westminster residents, leaving town to buy most goods and services, that diverse and ambitious mix of retailers will never be attracted here. If the retailers aren't here, residents will keep leaving town to shop. It's a vicious, but predictable, cycle.

The sad thing is, from what I have heard, New Westminster used to be a shopping mecca. (I plan to outline this history in a future post.) I would think its central location played a big part in that, but now, ironically, its central location may work against it. It's just so easy to get everywhere from here, that people don't see the need for all kinds of stores right in town. People don't mind jumping in their cars or on the SkyTrain to head to the malls and shopping districts of Burnaby, Richmond, Coquitlam, Surrey and Vancouver.

I know I will be eliminating a lot of choices by eliminating other communities, as well as online shopping, but I'm pretty sure less choice will actually turn out to be a good thing. You see, I have a love/hate relationship with shopping. (This will come as news to my husband, who I’m sure would say I am not only in love with shopping, but in the midst of a torrid, passionate affair with it.)

Everyone knows the thrill of finding just the right item, for just the right price. But shopping can be tedious and time-consuming too. While I love my new glass storage containers, they were kinda a pain to buy. I spent a long time online looking for just the right ones. When two of them arrived broken, I had to drive over to Coquitlam to return them. Bed, Bath and Beyond is behind all the construction on the Lougheed Highway, so I had to navigate a maze to get there. The people at Bed, Bath and Beyond are extremely (almost eerily) helpful, but the return process took a long time. I find I have this kind of shopping experience fairly often, where the amount of time it takes to find, buy and, God forbid, return an item hardly makes a "bargain" a bargain.

The bottom line? When I look back on my life, I want to say a lot more about what I accomplished than, "Wow, was I ever a good shopper."

How will this work?
Pretty simple. I'll do all my shopping in New Westminster for one year, starting Oct. 1.

Why Oct. 1? While I have a pretty good idea what my shopping habits are, I want to keep track of them before I make the switch to local shopping. So for the month of September, I'll document my usual shopping habits on this blog.

After Sept. 30, it's all local, all the time.

I do not intend to exclude any stores that are in New Westminster city limits and that includes chain stores and restaurants. However, wherever possible, I will seek out locally owned alternatives before hitting a big chain. My big grocery shops are always done at Safeway and I will continue, for the most part, to do them there.

A word about Walmart: living in Queensborough means not only living near Walmart, but having my neighbourhood defined to an extent by Walmart. Often times people don't know where Queensborough is (even people from New West who should know better). Saying, "I live in Queensborough," often gets blank looks. "Near the new Walmart," gets the dawn of recognition.

I'm the kind of person who likes to deny shopping at Walmart. "Oh, it's in our neighbourhood, but we don't really shop there much," I say.

Reality check: I pop in there all the time. Our last vacuum cleaner was purchased there. Just bought a mirror there. When our son is invited to a birthday party, the present often comes from there. Cards, milk, magazines; Walmart, Walmart, Walmart.

There's been lots of writing done about Walmart's effect on communities. There's even a PBS special. But, for now, Walmart is a reality in my community, so I'm not going to stop shopping there completely.

Any exceptions?

Queensborough borders Hamilton, a neighbourhood in Richmond, and there is a PriceSmart grocery store there. The store has been struggling in the past few years and local residents have been trying to shop there as much as possible to keep the only true grocery store in the area alive. It's in Richmond, but I consider it a part of my neighbourhood, so I'll keep shopping there.

Under the category of, More Information Than Anyone Wants to Know, another exception is my deodorant. I am super-sensitive to most deodorants and antiperspirants and pretty much the only thing I can use is made by Kiehl's. They have a store in downtown Vancouver and unless I can find it locally (doubtful), I will continue to buy it there. I'm committed to shopping locally, but that doesn't extend to a willingness to walk around either smelly (no deodorant) or with itchy pits (using some other deodorant) all year.

2010-08-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

For one year, I will buy everything I need to buy in the city I live in, New Westminster, B.C. Sounds simple.

I will blog about how simple (or complicated) it turns out to be.