Off my trolley with delight!

Sometimes you just know you’ve made a great purchase. Not immediately, perhaps, but after using/wearing something a few times, you know then. This is the feeling I have about my new shopping trolley. It’s absolutely fab!

When I lived my solitary life in the UK, I used to transport my shopping in a variety of ways. Some days I’d cycle it home (packed in my panniers); other days I’d walk it back packed into bags which I’d carry (and/or in a pack strapped to my back).

It’s rare that I carry groceries on the back of my bike nowadays. For one, I’m shopping for two; and for two, I’m only on the bike for about seven months of the year. I still tend to do the one big shop each week. Up until I moved a few months ago, my local supermarket was only a few minutes away so I was fairly content to take my bags over and walk back with the groceries. However, my new supermarket’s now a good twenty minutes’ walk from home. At first I was walking back with the bags and backpack but then decided that my quality of life would be much improved if I were to get a shopping trolley. And so I did and it has. Actually it was my lovely boyfriend (aka my husband) who bought me the trolley (one reason being that he doesn’t now have to come and meet me after a particularly big shop to help transport the stuff back).

The shopping trolley was a steal at about $22 CAD (which is about £14 – I still can’t believe that!, especially as it’s still in one piece). It’s by Canadian company Kitchen Stuff Plus (although I can’t see any trolleys on their website). I opted for the classic black as I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself (just walking along the streets with a carrier bag around these parts is enough to elicit a few strange looks from people: “That woman’s walking – carrying something.” But I have to say that I feel really quite modern, edgy, and alternative when I’m out with my new shopping trolley. The whole reduce reuse recycle concept is just about making a dent nowadays in the community of Edmonton and I’m probably being seen as some sort of trailblazer no doubt. Maybe I should have got the red one after all.

A one-of-a-kind bargain

I love thrift stores. In the UK we call them charity shops. I have inherited this love from my mum. When I was growing up, most Saturdays I'd accompany my mum to the local jumble sale. Jumble sales are pretty rare nowadays, having been superceded by charity shops and eBay. But when I was a kid, jumble sales were everywhere. Looking back, there's a tendency to romanticise about such things, but I remember the jumble sales I went to as being great things. They were often held in old church halls, run by volunteers, the items having been donated by members of the local community in order to raise funds for the church so they could send a bunch of kids on some or other trip.

Jumble sales always had that sense of wonderment about them. You never knew what you might unearth at a jumble sale. When you shopped in the high street you always had a pretty good idea as to what each shop held, but not a jumble sale. Admittedly, a lot of the stuff I saw at jumble sales I didn't want - and couldn't imagine anyone else wanting either. But every so often, I'd come away with a treasure. For example, the tin of gorgeous smelling tanning butter I bought when I was in my early teens (this was when subathing was still fashionable).

I've never been a great believer in a bargain, and so shopping in charity shops and thrift stores has never been so much about saving money ('getting a bargain') as it has about other things. Similarly, the word recycle wasn't heard that often back in the 1970s. And while I do recycle now and am committed to the whole reduce, reuse, recycle way of living, shopping in thrift stores is about more than just saving money and recycling (as important as these are): although buying something I really like that's recycled does add to the satisfaction I derive from the purchase.

Apart from the hope that I will find something truly wonderful, I just find the whole experience of shopping in thrift stores way more enjoyable than shopping in the mall. I like the idea that there's a story behind everything that's sold in a thrift store. I like the idea that I may find an item of clothing that no one else, or very few other women are going to be wearing (yes, I know there are two ways of looking at that!). But sometimes when shopping in thrift stores you do find a one-of-a-kind. And that's what I did today. I found this lovely cushion cover. There was another smaller one in a similar design, but it was spoiled with paint, not a lot of paint but enough for me to leave it on the rail (something I'm regretting a little now I have to say).

I have a feeling that this cushion cover is hand made. There's no label in it and no sign of there having been one. It's amazing to think that it found its way into the thrift store after someone has obviously put so much effort into it. My husband likes it so much that he's asked me not to put it in the basement, which I'm in the process of kitting out having recently moved into our new house, but to leave it upstairs. "It's cheerful," he says, and he's right.

This cushion cover cost $1.99, and the cushion I found - also in the thrift store - to put inside it also cost $1.99. Maybe there is such a thing as a bargain.