It is hard to believe sometimes, how people come back into your life in the oddest ways. Elise and I both went to junior high and high school together, but lost touch after graduation. Thanks to Facebook, and now Ravelry and blogging, we’ve re-connected over a love of yarn and swapping! Check out her blog, Miscellaneous Meanderings. I hope you’ll enjoy her post as much as I did!
First, I have to say that I was flattered that Amy asked me to guest-blog! Amy and I have known each other since middle school, and even though we live hundreds of miles apart now, we’ve reconnected over our love of fiber crafts (and blogging!). Amy runs some awesome swaps on Ravelry, and one that I’ve done twice with her is the Recession swap. It’s all about being thrifty while also spoiling your swap partner.
Being thrifty and stretching my dollars is something that comes naturally to me. At the same time, I also love the recent movement to shop, spend, and eat locally. Unfortunately, many times these two aims are not compatible.
In college and immediately after, I was all about getting the lowest price possible for whatever I was buying. I didn’t care where I shopped or where the item came from, as long as it was at rock-bottom prices. But as I read more, and began to earn a bit more money, I became more discerning about where I shopped. Soon after I moved to Chicago, I read “The United States of Walmart” by John Dicker. I’d never been a huge fan of Walmart, but after reading about their buying and labour practises, I actively decided not to shop there. That was relatively easy to do, as there is only one Walmart in Chicago proper (although this is going to change soon).
As I started to do more crafting, I found myself more interested in supporting small business and local companies. How is crafting related to that interest? For me, as I started to make things by hand, I started to see how undervalued the finished products were. I saw the difficulties that fellow handcrafters had selling their wares for fair prices. At the same time, I needed supplies for crafting, and saw the array of different places to purchase: large chain store, locally-owned store, or even from another crafter online. This lead to more reading—specifically, the book “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture,” by Ellen Ruppel Shell. Shell talks about how our relentless pursuit of the best price has impacted the choices we have and the quality of goods we can obtain.
All of this left me with a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, I want to support small and/or local businesses. On the other, not only do I not like to spend a whole bunch of money, but like many people I am constricted by my budget. I am lucky that I have the luxury of choosing not to shop at Walmart—because I can both afford it and I have ample other shopping choices in my geographic location—but the bottom line is that small local stores are often costlier than a large chain, and I just can’t afford to go completely local.
So what to do? For me, the answer was compromise. Take, for example, the farmer’s market. I love farmers’ markets, and whenever I have the money, I do try to buy at least some of my produce there. For the rest of our fruits and veggies, though, I shop at the grocery store—not a national chain, though, but a small local chain that specialises in produce. The prices there are better than even the big grocery stores, but at the same time, I am giving my money to a company that originated in my community and maintains only about five area stores.
Another recent example was my roller derby gear purchases. Derby gear is pretty expensive, and can be hard to come by locally. I needed better knee pads, and I knew it was going to run me about $60 for a good pair. The local rink had some, but the price was a little higher than I could get them for online. For me, at this point, it became about weighing the cost savings with the convenience and positive impact of having a roller rink by my house. The price difference, once shipping was factored, was going to be less than $5—a pretty small percentage of the total purchase price. For me, having a rink nearby and having a local place to purchase gear was worth an extra $5. And then, happily, I found that the rink offers a derby discount, which ended up making the pads a little cheaper than online.
I think too often saving money and shopping locally are pitted as polar opposites, and people on a budget may feel–as I used to–that I just couldn’t afford to buy locally because I couldn’t afford to shop in a boutique or buy a $3 tomato from a farmer. But it’s not all or nothing, nor is the definition of “local” as rigid and upscale as it is often presented. With a bit of compromise and creative thinking, you may find that you can support your community more than you thought.
