It's Thursday – Shop

The traditional Thursday in a homemaker’s week was focused on shopping. That doesn’t mean she was going to roam around the mall looking for something cute or sophisticated to wear, but that she was out purchasing the necessities for her household – basic food supplies from the grocery store, some nails from the hardware store, or a length of dress material from the dry goods store.

I heartily endorse her kind of shopping and, in fact, I practice that myself. I visit grocery stores, the hardware store, the feed store, and the drug store. Occasionally I hit the office supply store or the modern equivalent of a dry goods store.

A dry goods store, as opposed to a hardware store or a grocery store, sold soft things and shoes. Soft things included clothing, linens, towels, and fabric, as I remember. Today fabric has split off into separate fabric stores, but department stores have taken over everything else, with the addition of cosmetics, jewelry, luggage, dishes, pots and pans, and a myriad of other things.

The only shopping I truly enjoy is at a grocery store and I do it, not necessarily on Thursday, but on any day of the week when I happen to be in town or when I make a special trip because I need to re-stock supplies. I mostly shop the perimeter and the baking aisle somewhere near the center of any grocery store. I don't buy the processed foods that didn't even exist in the traditional homemaker's day. I don’t carry a shopping basket like the traditional homemaker, but I do take two or three fabric bags with me when I shop. At the bottom line there’s not a lot of difference between me and the traditional homemaker, except that my life it a lot easier than hers.

Copyright 2014 by Shirley Domer