Shopping online

Most of our shopping is done online now and there's no way we'd go back to weekly walking round a loud, bright supermarket or browsing though retail stores if we didn't have too.

Sainsbury's for food and general grocery deliveries - but Tesco, Ocado and others all have good delivery services now.

Amazon for pretty much everything else - all the odds and ends of house and work consumables and basically everything else. 

We also have a few good independent online retailers we use for speciality things like spices and ingredients.

Most major outlets have dedicated online stores via their web site or dedicated apps for your mobile device and most of these are pretty good now. 

Purchasing online is very secure and returning goods for refunds is generally a pretty easy process - mostly just dropping it to a local post office or collection spot. 

The service of couriers working for smaller delivery companies that some smaller online retailers outsource to can still be a bit frustrating but I feel like that is improving all the time.

We do still try to visit some of the local cafes and food stores but that's as much about treating ourselves as it is about supporting small local business.

I hope some of that helps! 

Thank you for sharing, this was very helpful. I'm glad you find it a positive thing to do. I'm sure I will as well in the end :) 

If you've never ordered online before and you're just looking to take one small step towards it - consider registering on Amazon and buying something cheap and small and simple that should fit in an envelope that can go through your letterbox.

My partner just bought a little note pad that we use for writing down shopping items when we use the last one of something and to keep score when we play scrabble - that arrived next day and got poked through the letterbox and we didn't even have to open the door to the delivery driver.

If you've never ordered online before and you're just looking to take one small step towards it - consider registering on Amazon and buying something cheap and small and simple that should fit in an envelope that can go through your letterbox.

My partner just bought a little note pad that we use for writing down shopping items when we use the last one of something and to keep score when we play scrabble - that arrived next day and got poked through the letterbox and we didn't even have to open the door to the delivery driver.

Thanks that's a great idea! I'll probably do that, just to start with, order some clothing maybe and see how the experience goes. Do food later when I've got the hang of it.