Wal~Mart

Spent a few days with my sister last week. My sister is wonderful, and my family always looks forward to spending time with their aunt and uncle. However, just as I have realized how different each of my children are, it is evident to me how different we are. But one of the areas I would not have expected us to be different is shopping.

We began to talk about Wal~Mart. I am really a pretty big fan about the store. Not necessarily because I feel some unsung loyalty, but because you can buy anything there, and you can do it all in one stop. My sister would rather make a trip to several stores to buy from a variety of stores.

When she first stated that she disliked Wal~Mart, I was ready to hear the Target propaganda. But, as I soon found out, she doesn't like Wal~Mart, largely because she feels like they do not reward good products. As someone who makes a high-quality soap and has hundreds of recipes that she tweaks to have the best product possible, she sees that they generally have lower quality stuff. Of course, the argument can be almost duplicated for Target, so she's not really a fan of them either.

To me, I just want the cheapest product that I can use for anything. Of course, that is the mindset that she is largely against. So, we have a difference in philosophy, I assume. As we continued to speak, however, I learned that our philosophies are more similar than I realized, it is our values that are different.

While she is concerned about soap and clothes, I learned that I have a similar philosophy for food. She's writing a blog about creating all her food herself and then she's further complicating that by being on a juice diet, where she only drinks freshly ground veggies. Needless to say that is nowhere on my radar. The funny thing to me, though, is that she will buy most of her meats at Wal~Mart.

I, on the other hand, buy my meats very strategically. I have certain places where I buy certain items, and I have been known to cook a meal with ingredients from three stores. Something my sister is not as prone to do. Which made me think, do I really like Wal~Mart or am I just drawn to the stuff they have there, where I don't care about the quality?