Local Opportunities

You may remember that last year my family went extreme on the Shop Local thing. For three months we shopped from only locally owned stores. The experience may have convinced my children that their mother truly is crazy, but they were relieved to discover that shopping locally didn’t put a huge dent in their lives. They could still purchase their beloved Cheezits from the family owned grocery store and many times the locally owned gifts, food, and entertainment was much better than expected. My husband and I learned that not only is it possible to buy pretty much everything we need locally, we were also delighted to discover that we saved money in the process. Cutting out visits to Target, Walmart, and the Home Depot eliminated impulse buys and streamlined our spending. But the best part was that we were able to support our neighbors, friends, and local economy with our shopping. If you missed last winter's blog posts, take a few minutes and read about my adventures during those three months.

We continue to shop mostly locally. I will confess to the use of Amazon and Drugstore.com more often than necessary, but at least I feel guilty when I shop those sites. We still buy our paper products and get them delivered free from Greenline Paper Company in York. I still travel to the Central Market in York for much of our groceries, and purchase the rest at local family owned Saubels and Sonnewalds. Most of my Christmas shopping was done in the Central Market District of York. We love our excursions to The York Emporium for books (and a plethora of other “finds”). My husband still buys his beer from the brewery half a mile away. And Goodwill is our go-to store for nearly everything.

I’m hopeful that our experience inspired others to look for locally owned businesses first before being suckered in to buying at the bigbox stores. I know it seems contradictory, but you do save money paying a little more at a local store because you buy things you truly want and less of what you don’t need.

This lengthy intro is leading somewhere – promise. I’ve got two upcoming local events to share with my local peeps.

GONE LOCAL Week Twelve: We Did It! (and YOU should too!)

For the past three months I have been buying from strictly locally owned businesses. In the beginning we all thought this was going to be a hardship, each for our own reasons. My kids worried a cheezit would never pass their lips again and I’d feed them a steady diet of kale and whole wheat noodles. My husband worried I’d spend all the money hiding under our mattresses. I mostly worried that I wouldn’t be able to do it.

Putting aside the handful of slip-ups in regards to hairproducts and auto-repair, for the most part we have survived on the goods sold by locally owned businesses exclusively since January 1. And once more, we’ve more than survived, we’ve thrived.

We’ve saved money, time, and gas, made new friends, eaten better in terms of both taste and health, and quite honestly, had a lot of fun. Along the way, I’ve been confronted by people who thought I was just a wee-bit overboard and plenty of skeptical people, but I’ve also been helped by people who shared ideas and local sources.

GONE LOCAL Week Eleven: Lamenting Our Town's Center and a Shout-out to Locals I Love

Buying locally has become second nature for me at this point and I don’t think I can ever set foot in Wal-Mart again. At a meeting last week regarding our “town” someone said they thought that Wal-Mart was our town center. Frightening, but probably accurate. Back when I made several trips to Wal-Mart a month, I always encountered people I knew. On the weekends, there was usually a boy or girl scout troop installed at the entrance selling cookies or popcorn or some other unhealthy product I don’t need, but usually buy, because I know the kids who are doing the selling.

Our town also has a small main street with art galleries, antique stores, and even a farm-to-table restaurant. To my mind, that should be our town center, and probably was once upon a time. Now it is mostly frequented by “tourists” from the Baltimore area. I suppose the reason it’s not our town center is that, other than the restaurant, the other stores are the kind you only frequent when guests are visiting. Plus the parking isn’t very simple, although it’s free. There is a park nearby, but it is hard to find. I lived here nearly a year before I discovered it, and only because the end-of-year kindergarten party was held there.

So, I suppose that the Wal-Mart shopping center is our town center. I wish it weren’t. This is a farming town at its heart. Antiques, farm restaurants, single-shingle shops and offices make a more appropriate town center.