Food Delivery-One year later

 

Today, I am going to follow-up on a subject that I talked about two years ago.  At this time, I was not sure if I like the idea of having meals from my favorite restaurants delivered or not.  My feelings at the time were, if I could take the time to order from them, I could take that same amount of time to go into my kitchen and whip up a meal or two.  After all, there were three advantages of cooking your own meal.  One, I know what goes into my meals, two, I can shop my grocery store for those meals and spend less money on those ingredients that the restaurants have to buy in bulk and keep on hand because the entrée is on the menu, and three, I can portion control my meals.  In order for the person to get their money’s worth out of a meal, restaurants feel that bigger is better.  Not if you are watching calories.

I still have those feelings, but I now have a soft spot for companies like Uber Eats, Postmates, Grub Hub, and DoorDash.  You can read the original post, and see my results.

What’s changed?

Covid-19, that’s all I can say.  Before March 15, I ordered my meals to be delivered every once in a while.  I really did not have an excuse for ordering out. I had two other people living with me at the time.  It was my nephew and his girlfriend, and sometimes we would have a family meal, and sometimes they would have their meal and I would have mine.  We shared the groceries.  On February 23, 2020, they welcomed a baby girl into their lives, and they went to live with my parents while looking for a place of their own. So now, they live 5 minutes from me.  I have their cat, but as soon as they move, the cat goes with them. She is the sweet little thing. I am talking about both the baby and the cat.

When we sheltered in place, I was not sure how I was going to get my groceries.   This was new territory for me.  Luckily, I did start to order out, but I started getting bored with it. By July, when the governor said it was okay to open up the bars and other eating place back up, It was my cue to start getting back to normal. I was getting tired of pulling up the Uber Eats app on my Ipad, then I thought to myself that I really like this.

Uber Eats pros

Naturally, when I start to think about the pros of using Uber Eats (or any other delivery service) is the convenience.  Sure, there is the “I’m too tired to cook”, and when you have to deal with kids all day and you are sick of cleaning, and you feel like unappreciated by these tiny humans, the last you want to do is to cook for them. This option is also a plus if you are a single person like me who has no kids and you now work remotely from home. I usually order something that I would normally not cook in the kitchen like poke or sushi. Both are easy to make (I have made them before) I do not have the proper skills to make them.  After all, it is not easy cutting up raw fish.

The next pro is no cleanup.  It is nice to get out your paper plates or eat right out of the container, with the utensils they provide, then throw away once finished with your meal.

The last tip is to save on gas.  Most of our lives are spent traveling in a car unless you are unable to afford one.   One of the problems I have especially in the winter months is the routine one must do to prepare to go to a simple place a drive-thru.  First, you plan where you want to go, put on shoes, 10 points if it is snowing really badly, then it is booted.  Next, put on the outerwear, another 10 points if what you are wearing is a double-layered parka, I bought one at Costco last year, that thing is so cozy, too bad I cannot drive in it.  I will have to explain to you my whole winter month ritual while driving when January comes around.  If there is snow on the ground and roads, retreat, or risk doing donuts on black ice. Get to the fast food place and you better have exact change or your debit card out.  At the moment, coins are scarce in the United States.  Put in 10 more points if they get your order right, another 10 for a nice teen.

Cons of using food delivery by Uber Eats

I already mentioned two of them:

Not a good choice for calorie counting.  If you are looking to see how many calories your favorite sandwich in your favorite eating place, this is not it.  Even though they are required by law to disclose that information, sometimes they do not. The best place to find out is to go to the restaurant’s website and look around.

Same with Macro counting, which I will be starting next week.

Budget:  Not good.  Listen, if you want to save money, cook it yourself.  Your card gets charged twice.  Once for the food itself, then the fees for the service.  You will see it on your statement.  It is a small charge but added up over time, it can take a chunk out of your budget.

Items can go missing.  Three weeks ago, I order a drink with my meal.  I do not order one that often because I am trying to stay hydrated and have water with my meals.  Not only that, but it is also easier to have this stuff at the house.  Like I said, I only order food that I cannot recreate in my own kitchen.  Anyway, I felt like having some iced tea.  I did not have any in the house, not even a teabag.  I had sugar, but no tea. So, with my poke bowl, I place a bottle of iced tea in my cart and paid for it.  When the meal arrived, no tea.  I stated that on the review site.  I hope I get my $2.00 refunded.  This was the second time this happened.

So, the question remains today, do I still like food delivery despite the pandemic.  Um, yes.  I love it.  Before I can put this post away, I want to talk about the other type of food delivery.

Shopping for groceries…

You heard me right, having your groceries delivered, more important, delivered with other items.

I have used Target’s delivery for two months.  I miss going into the store, but you know, Covid-19.  So far, I love it.  The first two deliveries, I paid $9.99 for the delivery charge, and the third time, I signed up for Shipt.  The one thing that I noticed about Shipt is how inventive the driver is. I had been tempted to use Shipt for a while, but I never had the nerve to use them before now.  The first is free, and then it is $99 annually.

Likewise, I used Kroger’s delivery, and I was not pleased with it at all.  I ordered at the store that I normally shopped at (which was the one near my doctor’s office, while the one near my house sucks), and they switched the order to the one by my house.  They did not get half the items I asked for.  I knew now all stores are the same, even if they are from the same company.  I thought that at least they would have the substitutions, and they did for a few, but not all of the items I asked and paid for.   

One of the food services I did not mention that I used was Walmart.com.  I used them when the pandemic started.  I never got out of my car, and yes, they do deliver, but the store they would have delivered from, is like the Kroger’s close to my home.  It is not in a favorable location, and they do not care about the products that I would be looking for.  The reason I stopped picking up from the location was they too had a lot of substitutions or were out.

I think that most of the time, it was when I had the groceries delivered or when I picked up.  They were later on in the day when products have been picked over.  I work at home and I need my beauty sleep, which is no excuse for not getting the quality of foods that I seek.  This is not a problem for prepared food delivery, but keep in mind if you use Uber Eats that each restaurant does have an inventory of entrees that made for delivery. 

 

Sites mentioned in this post:

 

Uber Eats

Kroger’s

Target

Walmart       

New Name, Same Blog: Home Prep With Tricia

OK, you may have wondered where I have been for the past, oh say, a month or two, maybe three.  I have been thinking.  It all started when I changed this blog’s name from Tricia’s Baskets, home of all things Longaberger, including the products, sales, and whatnot, to At Home with Tricia's Baskets. I had said all this time that the name was a way to transition from the decorating with Longaberger feel about this blog to other brands, decorating with what you have, Ikea, organization, and traveling to name a few.  Well, it is time to abandon Tricia’s Baskets for real this time.  It all started with a journey, a Disney Journey. 

Planning for a change-Photo by
DarkWorkX for Pixabay

Back in September, I believe it was, I set out to talk about how to go from “I’m Going to Disney World with my family” to “We are getting ready to ride Dumbo”.  Let me tell you what a failure that was, and I very rarely admit to failure.  It was a total disaster on my part.  I will write about it later, but the problems stemmed from failure to inform a family member until the last minute and feeling guilty about it to enforce the money paying schedule to members who were paying, to finally swallowing my pride, and calling Disney World reservations to cancel the trip in October.  This to me was no way to do any type of prep, both in the home or getting ready for a trip.

This gave me an idea: Change the Name, again.

I know there are tons of information out there about preparing for something, like finance, Home buying, decorating, and travel, but in one place?  It is possible for me to entertain and to inform.  I have tackled this in the form of Simply Organized Crafts (Now Simply Organized Business on Facebook), where I covered these same topics, except travel, which was in the form of “Traveling to the Mouse’s House”, a blog about traveling to Disney World with a large family.  I really did not want to have 5 blogs also include My Ambiance Life, and P. Lynne Designs (which is becoming a selling website).  So out of the ashes comes Home Prep With Tricia.

Home Prep With Tricia is basically At Home with Tricia's Baskets and Tricia’s Baskets without the Longaberger products.  If you want to learn more about the blog’s purpose, you can read here.

The name is shorter for both me and you, but mainly for you.  I want you to remember the name, and the average human cannot remember a title any more than 4 words, and they have to be short and sweet.  The name gives purpose, even though there is some traveling sprinkled in there.  I will focus on budget decoration, budget organization, working inside the house (I refuse to say the “C” word (cleaning), and traveling.  It sounds like a lot, but really it isn’t.

come and relax a while -Pixabay

The platform is changing, and I have the groundwork for a WordPress platform, which is on the SiteGround hosting site, so that means that the blog is moving.  Yes, I know most people use Bluehost, but this comes highly recommended by one of my mentors, Renae Christine.  As a side note:  I do not recommend HostGator at all.  I had a really bad experience that I will and have talked about over on my other blog, My Ambiance Life.  This resulted in someone stealing my site, placing Malware on it, Google rejecting it, and HostGator not caring.  It was a terrible 5 months back in 2018. I also have some choice words for Google about Blogger, but they are mild in comparison to my choice words about HostGator, and I highly recommend the host site to someone who is just getting started with a website or blog, and they do not want something technical because WordPress can get very technical, and if you are not ready, then again, I recommend this website host. 

Well, I had said that this was going to be a “short and sweet” post.  The blog name will come when I switch over to the new platform.  I am typing after Midnight, Eastern standard time, so I do not have the time to set things up.  I will start placing this week, hopefully, no later than next week.  Once that is done, and the announcement of further changes and additions will be made on Home Prep With Tricia, and there will be some changes in the future as this blog grows in its new home.

In the meantime, thank you for being patient with me and this blog.  If you read my other blog, My Ambiance Life, I made the announcement of things to come on that blog as well.  Also, come and leave a comment or two.

Planning to Shop for Your Room

Image by P. Lynne Designs

In my previous blog post, I started talking about the art of organizing your room, by first decluttering to get rid of the stuff.  I also mentioned that recycling it the best way to go, and you can do that by re-purposing or make someone else happy with it.  You can also toss it if torn beyond repair. 

Once you are done with decluttering, you can determine this, start organizing. 

The Main Thing that Needs to be Organized…

My craft room is a hot mess.  I can work in it, but I need to put things in drawers, shelves, and make cubbyholes (more on that in a moment).

My craft room is actually the dining room.  I decided when I moved in that it was to be a home office, and then the crafts started coming downstairs. One. At. A. Time.  Soon my computer table doubled as a crafting room/filming room/eating room (because I like to eat while I work).  My dining table got pushed up towards the sliding door, making that the eating area.  My living room became this mixture of living room/storage area for the crafts and baskets.  Yes, this is my bottom half of the condo.

Make a plan

This is one of the first things I do when getting ready to organize a space.  Using my Craftroom as an example, I am going to go through this process. 

1)      Determine what is the space is being used for.  Even if you are remodeling the area, writing down this is part of your plans for this space helps you focus on what needs to go in that space.  In my case, this space will still be a craft room/home office.  Since I have occupants, this is the only space to put it.  Before, I could have transferred it to my second bedroom.

2)      Make a detailed plan for what this space is used for.  Why did I repeat what I just said?  Because sometimes, people are funny in saying, “I am making a craft room, and turn it into a laundry room. So, my detailed plan for my room is to “make and product crafts for myself and others (both paid and gifts), writing (freelance and blog post), stationery products, and to relax on the computer at the end of the day”.  Now, experts say that you cannot relax in the same room you work in.  I do not have that luxury to do what the experts say, even before the occupants.  Why?  Because my second bedroom was not set up that way, and when the new carpet was put in 2013, I tried to get my parents (who are the owners of the condo) to see it that way, but they talked me out of it.  My mom said that I would not like it. At the time, I could keep the security system on, and I would have more walls. Do not listen to others when you know what’s right.  Make these plans, ask people what they think, but it up to you to make that decision.  You have lived with that decision unless you have money to blow, and I do not think that most of us have that decision.

Work with your favorites

1)      What are your favorite stores?  What stores speak to you.  This is a general question to answer.  My favorites are (keep in mind that most are U.S. based stores):

a.       Target.  That bullseye gets me all the time.  I love the layout and the prices (when they are on sale). You can find bargains if know where to look.

                                                               i.      Ikea.  I know it is now a United States based store, but I feel like it.  The store with the funny sounding name and brands that you need a translator for has gotten me with their prices (yesterday I walked out with 7 items under $20). 

b.       Any craft store like Hobby Lobby, Joanne’s, or Michaels.  You know I craft, but in the last few years, the craft stores have been increasing in Home décor and organizational items.  

c.       Walmart.  I do not like them then the way I used to when they sold Cricut machines, but for home décor and organizational items, I still love them.

d.       The Container Store.

e.       Amazon.  Enough said.

2)      Go online, not to the store.  All the stores I mentioned above are online, so go online to shop, but put them in Wishlist form.  Go wild, but not too wild.  Still, check prices, but places like Amazon will tell you when the price has gone down, increased, or go on sale when you register to get notices.

3)      Now go Shopping.   With list in hand, go to the brick and mortar store (yes even with the Amazon list), check to see if that same item can be purchased for less.  You may find a better price.  Sometimes it is higher.  Sometimes they may beat the competitor’s pricing.  You will never know until you go. Take your budget with you.  Do not buy anything with a credit card, if you do not have to.  Debit cards are different.

Takeaway moment:  Just like in the My Ambiance Life blog, I will give you a summary or little bit of takeaway moments.  This takeaway moment is brought to you by the words “plan and shop”.  (Sorry for the Sesame Street take on it).

• Plan your organization.  Know what the room is used for and why is it being used that way.  Plan your furniture and other things to go into the room.  Now is a good time to plan your budget.
• Shop.  Pick your favorite store.  One store I forgot to mention is your own home.  You may already have a piece of furniture that might look better in the room you are organizing than another room. It saves you time and money.  Go online and make a wish list.  Finally, go shopping WITH YOUR LIST AND BUDGET.

Once you do all of that, you are ready to get to organizing and decorating.  Good luck.