In my last post, I listed the first six lessons I learned from living unchained. Here are the last four.
I think it was Stan Luxenberg in Roadside Empires: How the Chains Franchised America who said that fast food chains guarantee a consistent level of mediocrity.
[caption id=”attachment_1569″ align=”alignleft” width=”288″ caption=”Appleebee's "Neighborhood"… Continue reading | 3 Comments
Well, Lisa’s and my experiment in living an unchained life for a year ended on December 31, 2009. Now we can return — if we want — to shopping at chain stores and eating at chain restaurants. Did I gain any insights from that year year of “sacrifice”? Did I learn any lessons?
Actually, I learned quite a few lessons.
In an earlier post, I explained why I threw out my Gillette shaving cream. I also mentioned that I’ve been making my own bay rum aftershave for the past several years. So I thought you might like to know how to make bay rum aftershave. After all, you can’t get any more local than making your own shave lotion!
Making your own aftershave is really economical. For the… Continue reading | 5 Comments
While living unchained in America, Lisa and I have been reading a lot of books about consumerism, chain stores, food, and other related subjects. We’ve been learning a lot from the books and thought you might be interested in reading them too. But we wanted to give you the opportunity to buy them from independent booksellers at independent bookstores — not from chain bookstores. So we became IndieBound affiliates… Continue reading
This week I threw out my Gillette shaving cream. Why? Because I’ve gone back to the old-fashioned method of using a shaving mug, shaving soap, and a shaving brush.
The idea struck me a week ago when Lisa and I went to the Chattanooga Market in downtown Chattanooga. The Chattanooga Market is a huge outdoor market in which… Continue reading | 11 Comments
Last winter, our dehumidifier broke. We had bought it from Sears when we were living in Ticonderoga, New York, back in 2003. Now that Lisa and I were shopping local, we decided to buy a dehumidifier from a local store,. So last May we went looking for one in a local store in Cleveland, Tennessee, where we live.
Lisa has… Continue reading | 1 Comment
One thing I’ve noticed since going chain free is that independent stores tend to have too few choices and chain stores tend to have too many choices.
For example, take cheddar cheese.
Before I stopped shopping at chain grocery stores, I used to buy a wonderful English Cheddar cheese from the BI-LO
Recently, I bought an air filter for my lawn mower at Lowes. Why? The reason is simple: The only place I could buy one was at a chain store. I had four choices of chains: Home Depot, where I’d bought the lawn mower, Lowes, the local Ace Hardware, or the local True Value.
To be truthful, the True Value store should… Continue reading | 1 Comment
Why did I stop shopping at chain stores? The reason is simple. Because my wife, Lisa, asked me to.
Actually, it wasn’t quite that simple. At the beginning of January, Lisa asked if I’d be interested in doing an experiment: spend a year not shopping at chain stores or eating at… Continue reading | 1 Comment
