Joy in Routine

 

Who said there is no joy in routine?

One of the things I look forward to during the weekend is our Saturday weekly shopping: a short walk from our street to the rows of independent stores along Middlewood Road that sells everything from meat to electrical equipment.

Just a bit further down Hillsborough Park, the road is always abuzz with life, at any day and any season. Dragging our zebra-lined shopping trolley, we rub shoulders with the rest of the local community: families with children, pensioners and groups of teenagers. Sometimes we also share the pavements with the dogs.

Food shopping, which used to be a chore has become an experience in itself. It’s a chance of getting to know other people living nearby: exchanging pleasantries with the butchers, talking about the weather with the owner of the vegetable stall and asking the fishmonger how to cook the fish. It was how I imagined England from Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.

The great thing is we don’t even live in a far-off village like St. Mary Mead. Our neighbourhood is composed of rows of Victorian terraces which used to be homes of industrial workers during Sheffield’s heyday as the ‘City of Steel’ which has now turned into dwellings of the city’s working class, IT and medical professionals. If you hop in the yellow and blue route tram, you will be in the city centre in 10 minutes.

But the sense of local community is as alive today as it was a century ago. Residents are supporting their local traders rather than the homogenous big name retail stores that are slowly killing the small and medium enterprises elsewhere.

So every Saturday morning, we take our shopping trolley down the road, walk along the park and meet our neighbours in the local shops. Shopping has never been more satisfying and personal. This particular routine has never been joyless.  

Shop and Change Lives

Nothing beats a good dose of retail therapy and I get my fix by hitting the charity shops!

Nowhere else can I leave £10 poorer with a big happy smile on my face, the look of a shopper who has just purchased 5 pieces of branded items that would have cost me ten times more from a high street retail giant. But more than clothes, I get my books from there too, loads of them (some already shipped home while the rest still sits in the shelves waiting to be read). Occasionally I would find some treasures like Miss Piggy Wiggy who grows chunkier with every coin we feed her and Mr Elephant who keeps our books in tact.  

The charity shops are a unique British institution and the public loves them, with half the population having purchased something from among the 5,500 shops across the country since June last year. Like the Filipino 'ukay-ukay', they sell second hand items but the British twist is that the merchandise on offer are donated unwanted clothes and household goods, a perfect example of reuse and recycle. The staff are mainly unpaid volunteers, usually students during the summer period and pensioners with a bit of time to spare. The proceeds are then used to fund charitable works not only in the UK but throughout the world. 

The first charity shop in the UK, Oxfam, has in fact been working in the Philippines since 1987, focusing on increasing opportunities for women dealing with disasters and lobbying for change. It would be very interesting to read about the work they have been doing in the country and the amount of people they have been able to help in developing a sustainable way of making a living. 

So the benefits of charity shopping is quite profound. Not only do I get retail therapy, I am also saving the planet through recycling and reusing items. But most importantly, I have also indirectly been able to help my countrymen in a more sustainable way.