If you live in Central London and don't have a car...

[homeedregret]

How do you do a big shop? What about going to Home Bargains or B & M? (I always end up buying loads of stuff and can't imagine lugging it on public transport). Do you travel out to a Lidl or Aldi?
Or do you just shop in your local Tesco Express?
Sorry for the sort of TAAT, but I wondered this on my latest trip to London and the thread reminded me.

London does have home bargains though... I know of 3...

Quick check shows at least 12 HB stores within the m25 and several more slightly outside. Can't say I have ever felt the desire to visit one though.

Live in zone 1 with husband and toddler. I get a sainsburys delivery once a week and we live 1 block away from our high St so have a big waitrose and little tesco express within 2 min walk which I get fresh things and stuff I've forgotten in the shop.
We don't really ever go to DIY shops, if we need light bulbs or something small there is a really good little hardware store on our high St or I order online from amazon. We are a bit useless at DIY so when we need trees trimming, the fence replacing, things painted we get a handyman in.
I love being able to walk everywhere and just pp to the shops.

We are looking at moving out of London and getting car etc. Think we will need to be super organised as we won't be able to just pop down to the supermarket everyday. I feel like getting in the car will be a faff especially with young kids.

I've never shopped at Home Bargains so googled them out of interest and looks like they deliver anyway, costs £3.49. Although they apparently don't have the full range online. There's plenty of "bargain" shops near me anyway (too many in my opinion!).

Home bargains website doesn't carry a fraction of their everyday stock.

You save a fortune on toothpaste, shower gel, cleaning products etc from there.

@Comefromaway

Home bargains website doesn't carry a fraction of their everyday stock.

You save a fortune on toothpaste, shower gel, cleaning products etc from there.

There are plenty of discount stores in London, I assure you; we have more than adequate access to cheap toothpaste, and vehicles in which to transport it home should we wish to buy a lifetime supply at once.

My daughter says none of the discount stores in London are anything like as good as B & M or Home Bargains. She did visit one just outside of London not long after she moved, but it is a pain to get to.

@Comefromaway

My daughter says none of the discount stores in London are anything like as good as B & M or Home Bargains. She did visit one just outside of London not long after she moved, but it is a pain to get to.

I was so looking forward to the one opening near me but it really isn’t as good as people made out I’ve only been twice and I think it’s been open a year, my mum says it’s no better than Poundland, it’s more like pound stretcher imo and nothing special there that you can’t get from other places.

.Iceland have a thing you can do a big shop pay at check out and they deliver.

.Most people I know use a shopping trolley that you pull behind you from young to old

.Sometimes in a taxi

.There is now even a decent sized Lidl in Tottenham Court Road
There is a Lidl and Aldi in Camden high street

Ocado for big shop and Chop Chop for top ups.

Poundland is a swizz though. You think things are cheap but they are either smaller sizes (manufacturers sometimes make special sizes for Poundland) or you buy something like shower gel that is £1 in Poundland but 89p in Home Bargains.

I’ve never been in Home Bargains but I did go to B&M on the Old Kent Road though and I don’t really see what the fuss is about. It’s all stuff you can find elsewhere, and is it really worth saving 11p on shower gel if you have to trek there in the car and impulse buy £12 of plastic tat you don’t need?

Bike, walking and public transport suit me fine, and for everything else there’s home delivery.

Used to live edge zone 1/2.

Food : Ocado delivery for 95%. Then just walk to get odd bits, butcher, local small supermarket

Home bargains: never been in one or seen one near where we lived

IKEA or the like: either take tube out to Wembley and carry odd bits home or taxi home. Or hire zip car a few hours. Or online delivery

Never needed a car. Now in the countryside and couldn’t survive without a car

Poundland is a swizz though.

All those bargain shops are a swizz. It's all basically not very nice stuff sold really cheap because it is cheap. None of it is what anyone would choose, is it? All the stuff on the Home Bargains website is genuinely horrible.

@BonjourCrisette in an ideal world I'd shop in Fortnum & Mason, but back in the real world my money is a finite resource and HB et al are a must.

@BonjourCrisette

Poundland is a swizz though.

All those bargain shops are a swizz. It's all basically not very nice stuff sold really cheap because it is cheap. None of it is what anyone would choose, is it? All the stuff on the Home Bargains website is genuinely horrible.

Everything I buy from Home Bargains & B & M is branded apart from basic bleach etc.

Morning Fresh washing up liquid, Crest toothpaste, Carex hand wash,, Lynx shower gel (don’t judge I have a teen boy), Nivea shower gel, Simple soap, generic paracetamol & antihistamines, branded mouthwash, Fairy washing powder. Viakal. Toilet rolls are not branded but they are good quality. Volvic strawberry water (Ds drinks a bottle a day), multi packs of crisps, Heinz baked beans, teabags, coffee, pasta sauce etc etc.

Pound land makes money. The way they do is by having some items selling for more than else where ie some food item 89p in supermarket are £1 in pound land. They also sell different sized bottles or quantities. So a 240ml shampoo for £1 isn’t cheaper than a 900ml shampoo from supermarket at £3, as even with buying three of them you would only get 720ml. Those washing powders you have to compare like for like in powder weight, as often the box is the same size but less powder.

Lived zone 1 until rrlatively recently. I used to stick all my shoping in a black cab which was about a £5ride away, if that. Never went to home bargains etc. Ikea etc deliverd..

Big weekly shops get delivered. If I am buying lots from a place like B&Q and I can't carry it by bus, I get an uber/ taxi.

I think there might be a HB or B&M in docklands? It doesn't save you money if you have to run a car to go there though, does it? How many household cleaning products do people actually get through...?!

There are big supermarkets in Central London. There's a big sainsbury's near Victoria. We're zone 3 so not 'central' but we just don't do a big shop. We have a lidl on our high street, a zillion Turkish grocers, a Saturday Market etc. We also get a veg box delivery. If we need a lot of heavy stuff we just order online.

Ikea deliver what you've just bought for £16 that day and I can sit on the tram home eating mini daim bars. Result.

We have Home Bargains and B & M in the town I live in and agree once you get through the aisles of sugary snacks and tat there are a few cheaper items to be found, the question is how much money are you really saving if you factor in the driving/parking and time spent to get there and back?

Ikea London delivery is a lot cheaper than the rest of the country, but I suppose that is due to higher demand from people who don't have cars.

Here it is from about £40 even if you live very close by, most people would drive there so take just about everything including smaller furniture items away with them and only really get sofas, wardrobes, beds, kitchens etc delivered.

But most people who live in Central London will be better off and the answers here reflect that. People on a budget can't just get everything delivered or use Ocado and Amazon for everything, they have to shop around and use cheaper shops.

Plus in other places where the public transport isn't as frequent and affordable, (believe it or not, London public transport is a steal compared with a lot of places, the £1.50 bus journey I took last week was about half the cheapest bus fare in my area) a car is actually a money saver for most people, as well as being a huge time saver as it gives you the freedom to shop around and go to the cheaper shops that take too long and cost too much to get to on public transport.

@Ifailed

We have Home Bargains and B & M in the town I live in and agree once you get through the aisles of sugary snacks and tat there are a few cheaper items to be found, the question is how much money are you really saving if you factor in the driving/parking and time spent to get there and back?

We have a large selection of shops like that 1.5 to 2 miles from us. Parking is free, petrol might be about 50 pence, but I'd only go when going anyway, eg for supermarket shop and if I only want a few things (eg we used to buy softer (real) butter for £1.29 a pack and get a few at a time, but they seem to have stopped selling it) I'd go there for a walk as I try to walk for an hour each day for exercise/to get out of the house, so it's going there when I'm going out anyway.

The main difference is that, in Central London, few people have cars, they're inconvenient due to traffic/parking and less necessary because more things closer together and public transport that works.

Elsewhere, people are far more likely to need a car for work and social life, because public transport is much less frequent and once you have the car, you've paid most of the costs of running it because most of the costs are the same no matter how much you use it, so the marginal cost of petrol is usually cheaper than public transport and, apart from cities and larger towns, parking is usually available and free or very cheap.