Things I Won't Miss about London, #1

As we prepare for our move back to the US, there are many things that I will not miss about London Life. One of the biggest ones will be not having a car.
Now, when you have a car you might not really realize how much it impacts your daily life to not have one at your disposal.
For example, all errands must be accomplished separately. So if I need to go to the dry cleaners, the post office and the drug store, I have to go them all individually, returning home after each stop. This is because I can not carry the clothes, the packages, and the shopping all in one fell swoop. So you might imagine how much of a headache this can be when you are walking to all of these places with 2 small children in tow. The day when I can load the dry cleaning, the diapers, and the packages to be mailed into the car and just set off to efficiently get things done is going to be a fantastic day!!

Here is an example of my weekly "big" shop from the grocery store.

I now employ child labor and bring Kate along so that she can put some of the lighter items in her backpack to carry home. While shopping at the grocery store, I can not use a trolley. I have to load all the items into my carrier bags and lug them around the store so that I can ensure I am not buying more than I can carry. This also means that I can not usually take advantage of the multi-buy specials. So even though it is cheaper to buy 2 cartons of milk for £5, I simply can't carry both. If I need detergent, milk & bananas all on the same day, I'll have to make 2 trips since I can't carry all of those home at the same time. I have to be mindful of how many canned items I buy, as well as large items like cereal boxes.
I go the butcher shop to get all my meat, and to the fishmonger for our fish. I go to a bakery to buy our bread. All our vegetables get delivered, so at least that is a big help. I have to go to the store at least every other day to buy milk and blueberries, since my children go through both of those items like water.
This all amounts to a tremendous amount of work and effort to just keeping our food supplies stocked.




One of the other ramifications of not having a car is that we can not load items to be donated or thrown away up and get rid of them. There are occasional charity collections door to door, but they are usually quite selective on what they will take. One of my favorite things to do is go through old clothes, toys, & household items and get rid of stuff we no longer need or use. The trash collection service is also very selective on what they will pick up. Since we don't have a place (garage or closets) to store things we don't need, it is very frustrating for me. So i can't wait to be able to load up my car with household items and take it to the dumpster and the Salvation Army!!

This is really impacting me now, as I begin sorting through our belongings even more in preparation for our move. I would give anything to have the ability to just easily dispose of so many things. You can rent a dumpster to put outside your house, but it is very expensive. And I can't really just put bags of trash out on the street.