What is or is not a “necessity” for you.

Records for my jukebox, difficult to get in shops now

Books or Kindle books.
Plasters and Germolene - DH is on blood thinners and plasters are needed frequently.
Detergent.

Almost every month I order a new iPhone lead - invariably, they are cheap replicas and don’t last long
I have several iPhone/ipad chargers and leads.

I need a new toaster. Otherwise I'm always looking for treatments for my rosacea, and always hoping to find some new, miracle pain killers.

My hair system. Otherwise I wouldn't be going out.

What’s a hair system, please Kate?

Paperback books, but the last one I bought, in a supermarket, was The Siege about the Iranian embasy siege all those years ago.

The retail price was 10.99p but the supermarket was selling it for just 6.00p. Easy to see why so many independent book shops have vanished and even Waterstones is likely struggling against that sort of competition.

Plants for my garden
Books for my kindle

Too much to mention when trying to single one thing out.

Tea and a warm blanket.

watermeadow

There are very few useful shops left in my little town so I have to buy almost everything on line, apart from food.
That’s why I have a too-big kettle, lawn mower, raincoat, Hoover, stock pot, hoe, shoes, wellies. And too-small trousers, skirt, bras, dog harness.
I don’t send things back because the PO is a long way and at the back of a shop so I can’t include it in my obligatory 2 dog walks daily.

Royal Mail collect parcels from your house. A really good service.

Books wool tv.

Books
Yarn

Flippinheck

Books
Yarn

I was going to say the same, but the truth is I buy books on Kindle, or they are one of the very few things I buy after browsing in an actual shop, and 90% of my yarn is also bought online. The rest is bought at yarn festivals, such as Yarndale, where I am going this weekend 🥳.

Neither is essential as I have so many books waiting to be read, and yarn waiting to be knitted that both would probably see me out if I never bought more of either, but they are compulsive purchases that I will probably still be ordering on my deathbed.

Warmth - in every shape and form. One of the things I promised myself as a child was that I would never be cold again. Yep....one of my mothers economies was she simply wouldnt keep the house warm enough (a combination of things - she didnt want to go back to work and I think my father really only got her to do so finally when her youngest child was a teenager and she couldnt reasonably refuse any longer) and she did want to save (to an unreasonable extent). There was also the little point I could have studied much better if I'd had a warm bedroom - rather than giving up the struggle freezing my arse off there trying to study and heading down into the sitting room to get distracted by her always having the tv on and refusing to ever switch it off. All the better to make sure I'd not get many qualifications and wouldn't leave the town when I grew up (cue for 20 years old saw me move to Denmark and 60 years old saw me move to Wales).

So I promised myself - as a child - I would never go short of a decent number of clothes to choose from, a warm enough house, enough bedding on my bed and whatever I needed to get it warm (hot water bottle or whatever else), plenty of fresh fruit once I was an adult and in charge of my own life.

So - basically down to all the promises I made to myself as a child and I've fulfilled them all. So now - I've got loads of bedding on my bed and whatever I've decided on to warm it up, I've got loads of clothes (albeit part of that is I have 3 sizes worth = my own size, the next size and the size I'm currently wearing), fires all round the house to top up the central heating if need be and grow quite a bit of fresh fruit in my garden.

I also have to buy a lot of books - darn it. Reason being because I only bought the books I wanted to keep (ie reference books). Since moving to a small town = I've lost the unofficial arrangement I pretty much had with my last library (ie a decent size city library in a university city). That arrangement was so handy - that any time I wanted to read a book just the once (and it would always be a non-fiction one on a topic that interested me) I would just go to that library and order it. If they didn't have it already (ie because it had usually just come out) - they would usually buy it and I'd be the first borrower of it and then it would be there for anyone else that wanted a read thereafter. That usually included some of the library assistants themselves and I hadnt realised that until one of them commented to me - "Ooh you do pick such interesting books that you want to see - so we often read them after you". Hadn't realised I was pretty much their unofficial "chooser" of non-fiction books LOL. So I only had to buy ones that I wanted to keep as reference books for myself.

Since moving to a small town in Wales = one of the downsides is that they've never ever got any of these books (they put in a Wales wide request - but won't do a countrywide one) and they won't buy any at all for me. So it's so rare for anywhere in the whole of Wales to have/or decide to buy even what I estimate will be quite a popular book - and I land up having to buy a lot of books that I only want for one read....

So - yep.....pretty much every single month I'm having to buy 3 or 4 books - of which I probably only want one to keep as a reference book for myself. Fiction ones - I manage by buying cheapie ones from charity shops, a charity stand in one of the other businesses round here and resign myself to them always being the "lighter weight" fiction. I won't pay more than a couple of £s for a fiction book and I never keep them and they go straight back into the charity shops, etc here when I've read them. Also all the reference books I've decided to read/but not keep head into the charity shops here too.

Nice bread from a well known bakery shop. Sweeties/chocs from co-op.

From the local hardware shop: - glue, bin bags, replacement loo brushes basic nail brushes, batteries, and sometimes small cheap baking or cooking related stuff such as tin foil plastic jugs, fairy cake liners, straws etc. Sometimes bird seed, dog treats.
Town shopping yields very little nowdays as all useful shops have gone!
So everything else that crops up is searched for online to check for relevance and quality and preferably click and collect.

Mollygo

keepingquiet

I don't look for anything on-line but sometimes I order stuff from Argos and go to collect it.

Otherwise I purchase everything at my local shops.

This isn’t about shopping online or not, it’s about what you think is essential.
e.g. which out of the things that you order from Argos do you consider essential for you?

I misunderstood the intentions of this post. I thought it was about what necessities you prefer to buy in person rather than online.

Depends on your definition of necessity. food, fuel, clothes roof over my head, medical care are the necessities of life, but each means different things to different people. Food and clothes are the only two of those where there is a shop in person/buy online and have delivered choice and, as food is specifically excluded, then clothes are the other item I prefer to buy in person.

M0nica
It was meant as light hearted rather than a debate about which online companies are seen as OK or where what we buy is manufactured which is already on other threads.
Things may suddenly spring to mind or be regular necessities .
E.g. A kettle suddenly became a necessity because mine stopped working.
Books on the other hand are always necessary for my enjoyment of life.

Some things we know are essential and there’s no harm in making it serious -food, warmth, etc. It’s interesting to read reasons why warmth makes your list CariadAgain

I proposed it as an alternative to the I always use local shops or I won’t use this online company. threads, that’s all.

My Smartshow 3d license, I love making slideshows too much to stay without it for too long.

Mollygo

keepingquiet

I don't look for anything on-line but sometimes I order stuff from Argos and go to collect it.

Otherwise I purchase everything at my local shops.

This isn’t about shopping online or not, it’s about what you think is essential.
e.g. which out of the things that you order from Argos do you consider essential for you?

And still people aren’t answering the question!
I honestly can’t think of anything that’s essential, unless you count toiletries and cleaning materials.
Thanks to ipad and Alexa I have books and radio, so maybe I’ll have to admit to wine!

Daddima
Thanks to ipad and Alexa I have books and radio
So your essentials are an iPad and Alexa. 😄

Mollygo

Daddima
Thanks to ipad and Alexa I have books and radio
So your essentials are an iPad and Alexa. 😄

Ah, so I’ve to pretend I haven’t got them already? Got you!

CariadAgain I think you are just describing the decline of the library service . I remember when you (anyone) could get books bought in on request if they couldn't be borrowed from other libraries, but those days are long gone, which is probably what you are seeing in your local library. Many libraries no longer have librarians these days and rely on volunteer helpers, and the libraries themselves have become more like community centres than places people could go for quiet study. IME university libraries are completely separate from public ones, so being in a university city has no bearing on the stock in a local library - in fact, if students can get a book from the university one they are maybe less likely to request it from the local one.

Interestingly (or not😀) when I did a huge overhaul of the books in my house it was the reference ones I realised weren't needed. They go out of date, and there is very little that can't be looked up online. This seemed counter-intuitive, as reference books had often been bought with a view to keeping them for fast access to information, but the reality is that it is fiction that is more likely to be re-read and the reference books just gather dust. My children are a lot further down this road than me, and although they are both readers they keep very few books - just their favourites that they go back to regularly. They don't bother with reference books at all, and pass on fiction books when they've read them, or just get them on Kindle in the first place.

The local library here has got smaller and a few less hours than the (less than full) ones that applied since I moved here. It had and has paid employees still. I was trying to have books bought if need be literally only a couple of months after moving here and it wouldnt have been long since the previous time I'd done so (so not enough time had elapsed that they were all starting to make cuts). So that seemed to be a "going across the border" issue and not a "several years had passed" issue. I was never given a reason why they were only looking around Wales for any book I wanted and not a full look-around (the postage must have been the same from England as it is from elsewhere in Wales). That remains a mystery to me (considering it would have put a lot of libraries out of their "asking distance" by not asking libraries elsewhere.).

Actually older reference books do have their uses - and I have cookery books from every era since turning adult. The 1960's/1970's ones have many fewer ingredients and the recipes are cheaper (we're talking vegetarian ones here) and the more modern ones are more "interesting" and tell me what to do with newer ingredients.

Older DIY books also have their uses - as some of the pages are out-of-date but others have the assumptions of that era and specify how to do stuff pretty clearly (cue for having been handy when wanting to know just how a tradesperson was supposed to be doing a job). Yep....I could even find things like how to mend an umbrella - from the era when people did so.

I also have foraging books from every era too and they tell me things the over safety conscious ones of this era don't - yep....comfrey leaves are edible - but you have to pick the right type....as some are/some arent. Better than the simplistic current era ones that just say no about every type going - because the author doesn't want any responsibility.

So there's a certain element too of wanting to keep books from what I call "Normal Times" - ie up to the late 1980's when lots started going downhill or the last few years (when all sorts of censoring and self-censoring is going on).

Even geography and there are uses for older books - "Where are they talking about? Oh yep....that name they're using = it's part of Yugoslavia or it's Ceylon. Ah - now I know where it is".

Company .. I do not need company to go shopping or spend time ..

I like my time by myself and I never go shopping with a lady friend.

With my husband once in awhile ..

I make a "circuit trip" (coach) alone as well - to unwind and write about for my Magazine and do the photographs.

A MUST IN CASE:
Always even if not used, a men´s umbrella with a wooden handle ( not a Chinese tiny one).