Of course it's relevant. Household sizes have also been trending down in Europe and Asia. But even for small households, if you need to drive >20min to buy milk, bread, eggs and unprocessed veggies, you only do that once per week or two weeks and need a bigger fridge. OTOH if you you have a big supermarket in the same building or block, you barely need any fridge at all.

> OTOH if you you have a big supermarket in the same building or block, you barely need any fridge at all.

I don't agree. Case in point: a friend of mine grew up without a fridge in her household and it's a massive pain, because now you have to shop daily and frozen goods are of course out of the picture entirely.

All that additional time spent going back and forth and standing in line adds up.

My personal experience is that replacing the fridge from one that keeps four days worth of groceries to one that can hold a week's was a massive improvement in quality of life.

For one it gives you a buffer should the shops be closed or out of the goods you currently require.

And, mind you, I've always lived less than 600m from a supermarket with fresh produce etc.

We shop daily for a family of three. I’ve never had to stand in line either. I walk in, grab what I need, scanning as I go on my phone, then walk out. It’s that easy. Sure, occasionally they want to check my backpack to see if I missed scanning some items, but that’s only once every few weeks.

To be clear, I would like to see more mixed use, walkable neighborhoods in the US. I have lived without a car for more than a decade in the US. I've been extremely poor and living in small spaces and spent some years homeless.

You're theorizing. I'm speaking from firsthand experience (plus substantial research).

I'm not theorizing, I'm relaying experience from visiting relatives in San Francisco and NJ, and from staying with friends or for work in DC, Chicago, and Austin at various points. There is of course variety in all those places, but grocery shopping was always a lot less frequent and longer distance that what I was used to (with the exception of a friend who lived alone in DC about 10min walking from a Target).

If you have relatives living in housing in San Francisco etc, those are probably not the kind of housing or demographic or lifestyle I'm trying to talk about here. And if your well heeled relatives can shop infrequently and fill a big fridge and it's an asset to them to have that big fridge, they aren't the demographic I'm talking about.

Please do not tell me what solutions I'm allowed to desire for my country. I don't tell you how you should run things in the Netherlands.

What was actually "told to you"?

Where in Chicago because I've got like 7 grocery stores within a 20 minute walk + 3 targets and a Walmart I can also get groceries at.