When I started my year at Bournemouth, the first task at hand was to set up a life. This meant getting basic necessities – kitchen utensils, bedding, toiletries and food. I was quite unsure as to what the best place to get all that was and didn’t know what brands or products I could rely on, with everything being rather new. This blog is a starter guide on the prominent stores here and what you can get in them.

ASDA and Sainsbury’s

ASDA and Sainsbury’s are supermarket chains that you can find virtually everywhere in the UK. They have everything from home essentials, clothes, footwear to food, books and toys. This is a great place to start your home and kitchen collection. The quality is great, and options are aplenty. On a continued basis however, I personally found food shopping here to be rather expensive. This is why, for daily shopping, I prefer other stores.

Wilko

This is the student’s go-to place for setting up your house as well. Wilko has home essentials, gardening tools, school supplies and toiletries. Around the time that colleges and schools open, they run huge discounts for students. This is a great way to shop on a budget and get ready for the school year!

They also have huge candy dispensers, and we all know that’s a life essential!

Aldi and Lidl

These supermarkets are often smaller and focus on food and drinks. They are cheaper and have fresh produce too.  Lidl has something called the ‘pick of the week’ where they have great discounts for certain things like vegetables and fruit. Both Aldi and Lidl do something called the ‘taste of the week’ where they feature food from different parts of the world for a week. I’ve found this to be a great way to switch things up in the kitchen and try out cooking new food!

No reason you can’t enjoy a lovely sunset outside Lidl!

Poundland

As the name suggests, here’s a place where you can get most things in the store for a pound or two. I like to go to Poundland to get dishwashing soap, cleaning products and so on, because while it is important, it’s not something I’m willing to spend a lot on.

Primark

Although this is not a food essentials store, from a student budget point of view, Primark is the place to be. You get very reasonable clothes and fashion accessories here. Being from India where the weather is quite reliable, needing different wardrobes for different weathers was new to me. So, having a store like Primark, where I could buy cheap clothes, was a real help.

At the end of the day, finding the perfect combination of stores for all your needs is a question of preference and budget. It takes a month or so to find make the ultimate shopping map, and once you’ve done that, you’re good to go!