Shop Locally This Season

(especially this season)
Support your hometown businesses

In one week we will gather around our tables, with our family and friends, and celebrate Thanksgiving. This is the time of year it is brought to the forefront of our minds to give thanks and realize how blessed we truly are!

Even through these last eight months, we still need to all realize how blessed we still are; to see, to hear, to touch, to feel, to laugh and to love – those are things that really matter! To have family and friends to spend our lives with is more important than anything else! All too often we all seem to lose sight of what’s really important; for the things we overlook as simple and ordinary, and that we take for granted, are truly the most wondrous things in our lives.

Thanksgiving is often overshadowed by Christmas and Christmas shopping, especially Black Friday shopping. I remember many years ago I would wake up on Friday around 1:00 a.m. in order to head to the stores to stand in line to buy Game Boys, bicycles and a trampoline. But now, the stores are already having their sales by 5:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day!

This year, however, is going to be a lot different! A lot of the big “box-stores” have announced they will not be having Black Friday sales. They are, instead, having sales all month long. This seems to take away from the words Black FRIDAY, but it seems to be the “thing” to do anymore.

This is just one more thing we can mark up to the Coronavirus taking away.
But I would like to remind everyone of something else the Coronavirus is still very capable of taking away … our small businesses.

When the world shut down and everyone had to close their businesses for months and months … it was only the SMALL BUSINESSES that HAD to shut down. All big box-stores were allowed to remain open. It was our friends and neighbors who lost the ability to work and make money to feed their family, while the Walton family (Walmart), Arthur Blank family (Home Depot), and the Dayton Family (Target) were allowed to continue bringing in thousands and millions of dollars. It is still our friends, family and neighbors that are struggling to keep their business alive and prosperous as the Walton, Blank and Dayton families sit back with billions in their checkbooks.

As Christmas shopping begins to consume our lives, these next several weeks, we need to all remember our small businesses and make sure to support them by shopping in their stores.

Living in a small town is awesome! We all love it – that’s why we have chosen to stay here or move here. But I do know, and understand, that by living in a small town there are some things that we have to go out of town for, in order to purchase. There are some things that are just not found in our small towns.

However, there are so many gift ideas that are available in our small hometown: hunting and fishing supplies, jewelry, purses, boutique clothing, cute shoes, monogram clothing/items, picture frames, dinner plate sets, antique furniture and clothing, artwork, theme-related items, knick-knacks, toys, tools, auto parts, lawn and garden items, grills, automobile items and other memorabilia.

Some “non-traditional” ideas for the “hard to buy for” person on your list (or someone who already “has it all”) could be a facial, massage, manicure or hair cut from a local salon; a plant or tree from a local florist; a gift card to a local restaurant, pharmacy, gas station; a home-made cake or a gift card from a local “home-based” independent salesperson (such as Avon, Mary Kay, Tupperware, etc.)

Use your imagination; there are tons of ideas that can be thought up, all while staying within our small community. Go walk around and walk in our home-owned businesses; you might surprise yourself with the amount of gift ideas you will find.
You don’t have to go out of town to a big box-store or order off Amazon. Support your hometown friends and help them feed their families!
The Coronavirus is killing the small businesses of America. As you go shopping, from day to day, remember this is a desperate time that they need everyone’s support more than ever!

So many of our hometown friends have already had to close up their businesses and/or are considering to do so. This is the time to pull together to help all our friends in time of need.

When the Coronavirus is gone and life goes back to “normal” … will our hometown restaurants and businesses still be there?

Only if we support them as much as they need us to!

Think about that!
(And, no matter what you buy – be sure to throw in a one-year subscription to your local newspapers! Your family/friends will thank you for it!)