My syndicated Super-Couponing Tips column for the week is entitled “‘Shoppers wonder about safety during COVID-19.“
Here’s an excerpt:
“I haven’t been to a supermarket since the first week of March. That’s been a huge change for me, as I used to shop at one or two different stores each week! All of that changed when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Feb. 25 that ‘disruption to everyday life may be severe’ due to the coronavirus.“
Read this entire column at the Napa Valley Register.
My Super-Couponing Tips column appears in newspapers around the country to a weekly readership of over 20 million people! Learn more about my column’s syndication at this link.
Miss a column? Here’s an archive of all of my past columns I’ve shared on the blog.
wolverine70 says
I had no idea your household was under such a severe restriction. So glad you’ve found a way to get the supplies you need. Does your boys school have a decent online instruction program?
Coupon Maven says
Our restriction is self-imposed — we are all healthy, but we have someone in our extended family who is immunocompromised, and we would rather be available to see, help, & visit our family during this time versus going to the store. My sister’s family has done the same thing and has exclusively used grocery delivery since March too. We don’t see anyone else or go anywhere else, but everyone in the family can still all go see each other.
Thanks for asking about the boys! One is in middle school and one is in high school. My high-schooler’s school was already set up for distance learning prior to the stay-at-home order. He was disappointed that he could not take advantage of that as a freshman, and then… watch what you wish for! The Corona hit, and everyone went to distance learning. He’s done really well with it and has said many times that he wishes he could just finish high school this way, all the time. He’s a very good student and great at working independently, so it has worked out well for him.
My younger son really misses in-class instruction. He just prefers having a teacher to talk to and ask questions of. Only one of his teachers is using Zoom once a week for in-class conversation. His math teacher has made little videos each day to go over the lessons, which helps. I have also found myself teaching 7th grade geometry multiple days each week since this all began :)
J.R. says
I live in your neighborhood, and shop some of the same stores you do.
I had no idea you’d not been out for so long. Aside from our age, we have a high risk family member as well. I still don’t trust others to shop for me, but shop much less often than before. Shopping is no longer an enjoyable activity. It’s now high stress. And I’ve already had one close call that had nothing to do with shopping. When I get home, it’s full on decontamination.
What disappoints me most, is how many people, both shoppers and store employees still don’t understand the proper use of mask and gloves.
Wearing one pair of gloves for your whole trip, while touching your face, phone, car steering wheel, cart, et al is useless. It keeps your hands clean, but does nothing to prevent the spread of germs. Ask your doctor how many times an hour they change gloves, even before COVID19.
In one store I know you’ve shopped that I was at this morning, I saw at least half a dozen employees with their nozes not covered by their masks. Last week on a quick dash through another store, I saw 2 behind the deli counter. And customers are still refusing to wear masks.
Coupon Maven says
J.R., I know we live in the same area :) I do think this is the longest stretch I’ve ever had in my entire life (including childhood!) where I didn’t go to a store. I understand about not trusting others to shop for you, but it’s something we have had to get used to during this time as we decided that going out was not an option. Even with grocery delivery and pickup, we still use our garage as a staging area, and everything gets wiped down with disinfecting wipes before it’s brought into the house.
I write and submit my columns one month before they’re published, so since the time I wrote this one (which was about Fresh Market and Mariano’s in Crystal Lake) we have tried grocery delivery too. Initially, we could not get any kind of delivery slot or curbside pickup at all from Jewel, Woodman’s, or others in our area. It would show weeks of calendar dates with zero availability.
Last month we were able to get a Woodman’s curbside pickup order, and everything went really smoothly there. What I liked about Woodman’s is that once you secure a delivery time, you can keep adding to your order right up until the day of delivery. Our Woodman’s pickup date was more than two weeks out from the day we secured the timeslot, so we just kept logging in and adding random things as we thought of them. (Goldfish food! Panda licorice!)
Thanks to Woodman’s, I learned of a product I had never purchased before and never knew existed: Bacon Ends and Pieces:
https://shopwoodmans.com/carpentersville#/product/90321
We had these substituted when the bacon we wanted was sold out. It’s exactly what it says it is: a big bunch of random-sized pieces of bacon. We make omelets almost every day, so having bacon arrive already in pieces to fry up was pretty fantastic :)
About two weeks ago, Jewel was finally showing available delivery dates, so we have ordered three times. Jewel has now partnered with DoorDash to deliver orders, but we have not had the best luck with this. I did not know DoorDash was going to fulfill them, as I placed the orders right from Jewel’s site, but when my driver was approaching, I got a notification from DoorDash.
Obviously, there are sold-out items and substituted items, which we accept. The first order had a lot of items that just weren’t available. The second order was missing an $11 package of ground beef that we were charged for. I called Jewel to have it credited – I understand that things happen.
However, the next Jewel delivery order was abysmal. We were missing $29 worth of items that we were charged for: Four cases of Coke, five bottles of apple juice, and a bag of onions! I couldn’t believe it. Where did all of these items go?! I also noticed that all three of our orders were fulfilled at the Elgin Summit Ave. Jewel-Osco — it seems like a long way to go from there to where we live when there are 4-5 other Jewel locations closer to our home than that one.
This week, we used Shipt to get a Meijer delivery, and everything was perfect. Our daughter has a subscription for Shipt ($15/month unlimited deliveries from Meijer, Target, CVS) and placed the order for us. We’ll probably keep using that going forward.
From what you said about the lax masks, etc. in stores, I’m not in a hurry to get back to the store anytime soon.