Friday, March 2, 2012

The Importance Of Doing Business Locally

This afternoon we felt the effects of a local, small business closing their doors first hand.

We have not had a toilet that has flushed without the help of a bucket of water for the past few years.  Embarassing when friends would come over, but it is amazing what we get use to when we live with it every day.  But today, today, Dad put in a new toilet that flushes all by itself!!!!

Of course, it wouldn't be a do it yourself project if we didn't run into a little snag.  We chose a taller toilet than what we had before.  All was going well until Dad went to hook up the water line to the tank and realized that the water line was too short.  Until a few months ago, when our local hardware store closed because they didn't get enough business anymore, he would have made a quick trip into our little town and that would be that.  That is not the case anymore.  He had to go to the nearest big box hardware store which took an hour and used about seven dollars worth of gas.  All that for a $5.16 part.

We always bought what we needed at the local hardware store, including our rabbit feed when the local elevator got torn down and they took over the feed sales, but I guess not enough other families did.  For the most part, to make up for the lack of convience, we just make a list and pick what we need when we go into the big town, but when it is something that you can't live without we sure feel the loss of our local stores.

2 comments:

April said...

Our little town is the same way. I pride myself in going to the city to Walmart only 3-4 times a year.

But our little lumber - hardware store almost drives business away sometimes--recently they wanted $23 for a piece of insulation that I could get (and did get as we needed several) at Lowes for $7. It was worth the drive to the city for that.

Amy Dingmann said...

Love local stores and makes me sad when they close. I do what I can to support them and am so very happy every time I DON'T have to run to the local Big Name store!