Someone posted online recently asking where people do their grocery shopping. Simple enough question. The thread ran long and the range of answers was genuinely interesting, not because anyone said anything revolutionary, but because it illustrated just how much cognitive load the average household is quietly carrying around something as mundane as buying butter beans.

The short answer from most people: Aldi for the bulk of it, one of the big two for the gaps. That’s more or less where my household has landed too, though we arrived there slowly and without any particular plan.