Winter Stock-up - Preparation

Driving in the winter is one of my least favorite things. It's icy, it's cold, the visibility is bad, you have to scrape your windows, the streets are lined with snow-drifts, and well, it's just miserable. Even though we have access to a car year-round through Calgary Carshare, my goal each winter is to drive as little as possible. This means doing as much grocery shopping pre-winter as I can.

Our dry-good supplies have dwindled since our last shopping trip. It's so bad, in fact, that there is nothing left in the basement storage room except for popcorn, arborio rice, and sushi rice.

We knew that we were getting to this this point and have been talking about doing a trip to Superstore to bulk up. Bulk bins have been a blessing and a curse to me in the past. When I shop at Sunnyside Market for bulk goods, I use some cotton bags that I bought there so that I don't have to use plastic bags. They work well for pasta, beans, flour, sugar... all the good stuff, but I've been nervous about taking them to conventional grocery stores because the staff there might not be comfortable with them. Since you can't see through the bags, I worried that the check-out staff would want to open all the bags, or worse, tell me I can't buy the products that way, causing some sort of scene at the teller.

Well, not anymore! I did some web searching and stumbled on these beauties. I did some additional web searching to see if I could find a Canadian source for them, but didn't have any luck. I ordered three packages of them and waited SO impatiently for them to arrive. After three gruelling weeks, having come to the conclusion that my package had been lost in the mail, I finally found it in my mailbox.



I liked these bags for a few reasons. First of all, this website has a lot of reviews and I really didn't find any negative ones. Second, they're very light, so I don't have to worry much about the weight of them costing me money at the scale. Third, you can see through them well enough that the check-out staff should be able to see what's in the bag, minimising awkward moments at the till. Fourth, the mesh is small enough I should be able to buy most non-powder items. They're also washable and actually intended for produce, so I can use them for things like jalapenos, green beans, fruits, lettuce, and other items that would often end up in a plastic bag.

I haven't taken them for a spin yet, but feel pretty good about using them at Superstore and Bulk Barn. I will surely let you know how it goes!

Have you ever used your own bulk bags at conventional grocery stores? How did it go?

Comments

  1. Hey – great blog, just looking around some blogs, seems a really nice platform you are using. I’m currently using WordPress for a few of my blogs but looking to change one of them over to a platform similar to yours as a trial run. Anything in particular you would recommend about it? find bulk bags

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    1. Hi Calvin, this is just an out-of-the-box Google Blogger template. Thanks!

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