Shopping without a car - Part 1

The idea of shopping without a car was making me particularly stressed. With both of us working full-time, shopping consisted of one major buy up on the weekend, consisting of a supermarket stop, the deli, greengrocers and the butchers, supplemented by trips for forgotten items throughout the week. Neither of us have the luxury of time to make daily trips down the street to meet our household needs.

How could we carry all the groceries home without a car? I pondered this question for a while. What did my mother do? She didn't drive, still doesn't. Neither does my grandmother. How was the shopping done when I was young? Visions of their shopping jeeps seeped out of my memory. They weren't good. It was hard work pushing that very full jeep up the hill on Haley Street with three young children in tow. Shopping jeeps are not glamorous, at least not in my mind, no matter how hard manufacturers try to glam them up and make them fashionable. Oh, look, here's a documentary on shopping jeeps Kitty and the Cartwheelers Shopping Jeep Bonanza.

Then I remembered home delivery. Good old home delivery - do your shopping, pay the fee and the bags get loaded onto trolleys ready for collection by the person with the van. Go and have a cuppa before catching the train home. Did supermarkets still offer it? I didn't know, I wasn't looking for this service anymore, until now.

Last Saturday I decided to inquire at my local (preferred) supermarket about home delivery. Yes they had it, with a fee of $7.50. They even delivered on Saturdays, I just had to finish my shopping by 1pm. One stress eliminated.

When I was young, we had milk delivered. I'm sure most people aged up to and including the Gen X cohort will remember this. I seem to remember bread being delivered too, from my very, very early years (I am talking about being under four years of age here). Delivery of these items seems to be making a comeback. There are a couple of companies around who have gotten into the home delivery market for these products. Last September we signed up with Aussie Farmers Direct . We let the deliveries go by the wayside at the beginning of the year as we were not around (renovations, holidays) but now it's time to start them again. They have a huge range of products: dairy, fruit & vegies, bread, juices and meat. We've returned to getting our milk, bread, butter and cheese delivered, so these are a few items that we don't have to worry about getting from the shops. I may have a look at their fruit and vegies again, they now offer a 'pick and pack' service, which basically means you get to choose what you want instead of receiving a surprise box each week (it wasn't too bad actually).

Some other items we are getting home delivered include olive oil. Strange one I know but we bought some Mount Zero olive oil on our trip to Dunkeld in April and have gone completely gaga over it. It has convinced me that good quality olive oil really does make a taste difference to your cooking, even for the most simplest of dishes that we make such as a barley and vegetable soup. It's pricey but worth it. Suffice to say, they do mail order deliveries. You can purchase a number of items from their range, including the olives (no surprise there), lentils and condiments such as the beetroot and orange relish (Yum!).

If you're interested in home delivery of food a couple of other places to check include:
Melbourne Butcher. They also do fruit & vegies, milk and bread.
The Green Line. Organic fruit and vegies.
Organic Angels. Organic fruit and vegies, pantry items, bread, milk, chocolate (What! Home delivered chocolate. Where have you been all my life?).

The interesting thing about this exercise is once you start looking, you realise there are many companies out there doing home deliveries of food and household items, which can eliminate trips down the street using the car. It takes a bit of planning. We are becoming more vigilant in our list writing, trying not to leave anything off to do away with the need for a trip down the street. But if we have to go, it's doing us good anyway because we are walking. We are also tending to use the local milk bar more, which is eliminating those impulse buys in the supermarket and saving us money.

Now finally, some of my favourite wineries that home deliver. The fact that wineries home deliver is not new, I am sure you are all aware of this service that many fine places offer. But maybe you don't know about these wineries. They are all excellent and offer online and mail order services.

Bests Wines. Lovely old vines make for yummy reds.
Bochara Wines. Very drinkable reds and whites, lovely sparkles and good prices. The rose is a favourite in our household, very light and very drinkable, perfect for summer.
Grampians Estate. Love, love, love their sparkling shiraz.
Rees Miller Estate. Biodynamic, vegan and vegetarian friendly (warm inner glow). These wines taste great. We first had this wine at the The Tea Rooms at Yarck. After lunch we proceeded to the cellar door and bought a dozen bottles. The Shiraz is excellent.

Stay tuned for 'Shopping without a car - Part 2: Gardening'.

The first day of the rest of our lives?...

A car like our car, but not our car

Over the last couple of months, our car (a 1991 Subaru Liberty GX) has been having some fairly serious mechanical problems, culminating with what appears to be a blown head gasket. Faced with a steep bill to replace the engine and with renewal of registration at the end of July, we decided to stop throwing good money after bad and try and live without a car.

If the truth be told, the decision was fairly easy to make. We both work in the Melbourne CBD, use public transport to go to and from work on weekdays, live in an area with good radial (one train line and two tram routes) and orbital (four good frequency, 7-day-a-week bus routes) public transport links within 10-15 minutes walk from our house. The majority of our car use was at nights and weekends, largely because of psychological factors that made the car easier to use than walking, cycling or using public transport.

Our car use was on average about 10,000 kilometres a year, with the majority of the distance travelled taken up with driving holidays and the odd weekend tour beyond Melbourne. The majority of trips on the other hand were fairly short, most of them among the 60% of motorised trips less than 5 kilometres in length that could be done using other means.

We did try to use the car responsibly, which meant trying to minimise single-occupant trips in the car, or to plan our car use in a trip chain to avoid lots of point-to-point single purpose journeys, as well as trying to use our car to full capacity carrying both passengers and freight, althoguh a lot of times there were still lots of single occupant journeys, mostly 'hauling air'.

Of course, going without the car will mean some changes to how we live our lives. The convenience of having the car to pick up things you can't take on public transport, like the fortnightly runs to pick up mushroom compost, manure or hay for the garden (that we could fit in the back of the car) is one example of a benefit we'll forego along with the car. But most of the problems from not having a car will be psychological rather than physical. Being practical people, we'll find a way or make a way and no doubt share it with you along the way.