Bring a Smaller Bag

In general, you should bring a slightly larger bag than you think you need. The marginal cost of using larger bags is negligible, but the cost of not having quite enough bag space is either getting another bag, or worse, carrying something without a bag to wrangle it. For grocery shopping though, I use a smaller bag than the ones typically provided.

Why?

I buy too much otherwise. I'm also near grocery stores and have reason to pass near them frequently, so it's better for me to buy a few things immediately before I eat them than plan days in advance. But, I routinely go grocery shopping while hungry, mostly due to being off-cycle somehow.¹

When I'm hungry, I tend to evaluate each item individually on whether it'll make me full, not consider if the total amount of food makes sense, and then I end up with a week's worth of food best eaten in the next three days.

It also keeps me from bingeing. Unhealthy foods, puffy bags of snacks and big bottles of sugar, takes up lots of space. I don't have the room for more than an extra item or two if I still want a filling meal, so I naturally get less unhealthy food. The smaller bag reminds me what a reasonable grocery trip looks like.

I can always bail myself out and use a larger bag if I need it, but it becomes a deliberate choice.

- Rew

Nightly Notes

Released yesterday's post with the wrong title, the correct title is another bag, not minimize packaging. I typically don't go back to edit posts on principle, though I've spotted a fair few typos, but a wrong title and slug seemed big enough to be worth fixing.

Anyway.

I had forgotten how silly I was feeling when I wrote the original bring a bag.

Now I'm tempted to write bring a larger bag to round out the set, though what about I cannot fathom. I'm sure I'll find some way to justify it.

Not like half my titles have made sense to begin with.

- Rew