Overwhelmed by Choice

While choice is good, sometimes I think we have too many choices. Take the grocery store for example.

Here in the southwest, normal grocery stores carry literally thousands of different items. And for each type of item, there’s usually a multitude of sub-choices. (Even for simple things like grapes, there are choices: green grapes or red? Seedless or with seeds? What about organic?) The stores themselves are huge. They’re so big that they’re often filled with non-grocery items as well, like outdoor patio furniture and DVD players. (Why would I need to buy a DVD player while I’m grocery shopping? Of course, I wouldn’t. But they’re hoping that I’ll buy one anyway.)

A simple, well-planned grocery shopping trip takes an average of an hour, if the store hasn’t rearranged anything. It’s because there are all those little decisions to be made, and items to sift through. What’s silly is that sometimes, despite all those choices, they don’t have what I want. So I drive to a second store that does carry the exact item I want. (I do this to buy Old London roasted garlic bread crumbs, which I use to make chicken parmesan.) How can there be both too many choices, and yet at the same time not enough of them?

The answer came to me while we were grocery shopping in Italy. It’s different there. We went to two different grocery stores in Rome, and they were both tiny. One was a “supermarket” that was about the size of a convenience store here. It had one big aisle that wound around through the store, and a bakery department. For grapes, we had a choice of…grapes. For lunch meats, we could choose from prosciutto, turkey, and some type of sausage. (Not prosciutto, honey-cured ham, black forest ham, plain ham, spiral sliced ham, and an equal number of different types of turkey, beefs, and sausages.) The other was a corner store that was even smaller. There, we bought toothpaste and toilet paper. I believe they had two choices of each of those. And you know what? It was plenty.

And I think that’s the answer. When we only have a few choices, and we’re used to it, it’s enough. We’re content. We spend our time ENJOYING the grapes or ham. (And Rome!) When we have a multitude of choices, we want more more more. We’re discontent. We spend our time driving to different grocery stores to get just the right flavor of breadcrumbs. Sure, they taste good, but how much more time could I have if I were content with oh, say, normal breadcrumbs that I add a little garlic to? More isn’t always better. Sometimes a few things is just right. Isn’t being content the real definition of plenty?

View Comments (8)
  • I’m with you here. I hate the big super stores. If it wasn’t for the low cost of bulk items, I would never, ever go there. I prefer my little towns grocer. I get in, get what I want and get out.

  • Choice is good for some things – jobs, cars, stocks, vacation spots, music …

    Agree that we don’t need 50 different kinds of toilet paper.

    -Mark

  • This is a good post for me today as I spent about 20 minutes in a tiny supermarket trying to decide what to have for dinner. More is not always better.

  • D, we don’t have small grocer’s here, at least not that I’ve found. The closest thing is Whole Foods. These are just stores like the Kroger chains.

  • Excellent write-up. I live in the Dominican Republic(I’m a resident here, but a U.S. citizen) and I’ve noticed the same thing. Less choices and less worry over here, to have your head spinning in order to figure out what’s the greatest combination of things to throw money at is such a distraction that we don’t enjoy what we have. In the DR, things are much simpler and you just enjoy what you have. In the states there is a lot of paralysis through analysis.

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