Prices keep climbing, so I’m trying to pick my battles in the supermarket. Which items do you refuse to cheap out on, and why? Taste, health, longevity, peace of mind… I’d love to hear what’s worth the few extra dollars for you.
For me, it’s honey from local beekeepers—supermarket brands locally are known to sell fake or adulterated sugar syrup as honey.
Honestly a lot of stuff I like to get the nice version. Most packaged products you can get away with cheaper, but paper products you wanna splurge on, and produce you wanna get from a local store with good stuff rather than your local megamart when possible. A farmer’s market or even just a neighborhood grocery store is usually gonna have fresher, tastier veggies in my experience. A little more expensive, but worth it.
The paper thing stopped being true in the past year around here. Name brand paper towels are now so thin, store brand is thicker at half the price. Q-Tips don’t have the same cardboard in the middle, less cotton Kroger brand is closer to the old q-tips (but still a step down from what I grew up with).
Toilet paper is basically a toss-up, the nicer store brands are about comparable to the non-specialty name brands now. For the extra strong or extra soft, name brand still wins, but it’s changing.