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Catherine Gardner, a low-income woman living in Ottawa, is lobbying to have thrift stores declared essential:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/open-letter-thrift-stores-essential-ontario-1.5904854

Sounds like a great idea to me. You may be familiar with the anti-Walmart slogan "The high cost of low price" but even Walmart's supposedly low prices may be out of reach for many. Thrift store prices are typically even lower and the merchandise, while pre-owned, is often more durable and of better overall quality than that sold in big-box stores. I really believe there's something in that old adage that they don't make things the way they used to. Moreover, being much more environmentally sustainable, thrift store shopping, at least for some products, is really a win/win solution: low cost, low environmental footprint.

Is it easier or harder to be thrifty during a pandemic? I suppose it depends on a number of things. Staying at home, you probably spend far less even on local travel, whether by private car, public transit, bicycle, sled or even just on foot. And that's before you consider inter-city or international travel of any kind.

Day-to-day shopping like groceries? Well, we're more organized about it these days, generally shopping only on alternate Mondays. We don't eat out any more and haven't been getting take-out meals but when it comes to the food we buy at the grocery store, I'd say we've definitely been spending more. Part of it is an overall increase in food prices; another tendency I have, with certain shelves at the supermarket being quite depleted, is to shift spending towards a pricier alternative - for example, fruits and vegetables that are marked organic or heritage, or the Amy's soups which are tasty and fairly healthy, but more expensive than Campbell's or President's Choice. Although we don't buy meat, the plant-based alternatives tend to cost just as much, if not more. Then there's the mode of payment: pre-pandemic, we always used cash so if we didn't have enough with us for certain extras, we did without or went back later; or we waited till we found the item on special. But since Covid struck, cash purchases are not widely accepted, and certainly are discouraged. So except for the summer farmers' markets, I've been using a credit card for everything, whether on line or off. That does tend to encourage more spending at any one time, as well as feeling a little less "real" and conscious than cash.

With more time on my hands, I find I've been sorting through stuff a lot more, which I guess is good. I'm finding stuff I'd like to donate, like clothing, books and unneeded household goods. But then, with thrift stores closed, there's no place to take the surplus stuff. Pickups have been cancelled as have city-wide giveaway weekends where you can put unwanted items out by the curb and let people help themselves if they're interested.

Speaking of books, I'm buying a lot more of them online now that libraries are closed; I'm more likely to take a chance on buying something I'm slightly interested in and will probably read only once, whereas before I would have just gotten it from the library (or one of those fabulous second-hand book sales at a much lower price). On a more positive note, I AM getting around to reading some of those books in my collection that I could never get around to before!

I was musing today about Girl Guides and thrift badges, wondering whether they were still a Thing. While there have been numerous changes to Guiding over the years, it seems Guides do still work towards earning their stripes when it comes to money management. Here are a couple of links I found interesting, from U.K. and Canadian Guiding sites:

http://guidebadgesuk.com/Thrift.htm

https://www.girlguides.ca/WEB/Documents/GGC/programs/Deep_Dive_BuildSkills.pdf