For instance, I called in to the patisserie this morning on a whim to treat myself to a pain au chocolat for breakfast. And I think I fancy cheese for dinner, so after work I'll nip out to the deli for some stilton and the greengrocer for walnuts and figs to go with it. I've already got fancy crackers and some good port from my last online delivery so that's everything I need for dinner.

I'm used to being able to pick stuff up according to what I feel like eating on the day. Yeah, it wouldn't be a huge quality of life reduction to have to plan meals in advance but why bother if I don't have to?

Plus, when I'm working from home, it keeps me from being entirely sedentary on a miserable, drizzly winter's day when I might not otherwise have bothered leaving the house, so it has physical & mental health benefits too.

It's also one of the reasons I don't really like working from home.

When I was young, I worked in a couple of supermarkets. There were a lot of people who came in each day and bought one thing. Not because that's the one thing they needed that day, but because going to the supermarket was their only interaction with other human beings.

I was young, so I thought they were just poor planners. But there was this one guy who I knew would be in the dairy aisle at 4:35pm every day, and I started having his cup of yogurt ready for him when he walked through. It was he who explained to me why certain people were low-volume regulars.

Delivery is for less frequent things that last much longer.

Local ships are for more frequent things that spoil quickly.

And adding the heavier/bulkier things to my local trips, even in smaller quantities, just makes the bags too heavy and unwieldy in the end. I only have two hands. Plus it's way more expensive to buy paper towels as individual rolls than in packs of six.