BEFORE kids, I loved shopping. I loved the whole experience of going out, trying things on and being able to see, touch and not to mention fall in love with and immediately purchase this or that.

Shopping was often accompanied by coffee, lunch and various other civilised diversions. It was all part of the joy of the consumer experience.

But it’s different when you’ve got a family and kids in tow. There’s the hunting around for a convenient parking spot, dragging the kids from pillar to post and making them try on this and that article of clothing. Time is always short, the range of merchandise is often limited and assistance hard to find.

Before the beginning of the current school term there was a search for navy coloured socks and long-sleeved, white school shirts that no department store or shop seemed to stock. There were plenty of short-sleeved shirts, but it’s autumn and winter is coming.

There are also numerous demands from the kids for junk food, toys and other distractions. All in all, enough to turn even the most devout of shopaholic shoppers phobic.

But in recent years, online shopping has become especially effective for those difficult niche items – in our case, it’s ice-skating outfits for my daughter, hard-to-get Lego kits for my son and obscure books on Russian history for my other half.

Bizarrely, I’ve found it cheaper to buy school clothing from the UK, and with better quality than what’s on offer locally. In any case, it’s much cheaper than the added costs that mount up when you’re shopping with kids in tow.

So, once a week we do our food shopping, but for just about everything else, I let my fingers do the walking.