Barnardo’s

Huge shop.
The funtirure bit is immense, the clothing and books are though the wall and well stocked. Upstairs there is a big bit with various media videos etc. Nice staff too.

This is a great charity shop and wherever you look as you go round you’ll find reasonable prices for good items. The range of items covered here is very inclusive and other than electrical items it has all the bases covered.
Much of the shop is devoted to a furniture section, but unfortunately for this shop there’s the best charity shop for furniture just up the road (the British Heart Foundation) which makes this section which would normally be very impressive not quite as good as it would be considered to be.
Generally visit here for the usual charity shop items as you’ll find a good range of these at good prices.

I don’t think I’ve seen a charity shop with as much as Barnardo’s on Gorgie Road. There are three parts to this shop — the normal store, the furniture section and a wedding section as well. I went in to the normal part of the store this morning, primarily to have a browse of their DVD section.
I’m so often guilty of bypassing charity shops to find my bargains elsewhere. There’s always the worry that you never quite know what you’re buying in terms of quality. While this may be the case, you can’t knock this shop for its range of stock. You may find that you have to hunt the DVD section for a while to find what you’re after, as they didn’t seem to be in any sort of order, but there was a good selection of older films right up to more recent ones as well.
The shop has much else besides DVDs. There’s a healthy collection of books that fill a large number of shelves, as well as clothes. I didn’t have time to investigate the other two sections of the shop, but they too seem to be well-​stocked. This shop probably does great business, and you can shop here with the knowledge that you’re helping out a worthy cause.

This branch of Barnardos is so good that I always pop in when I am walking past. Located on the busy Gorgie Road, it sells your usual charity shop stock as well as furniture. The furniture here sells like hot cakes as the stock always seems to be displaying «Sold» tickets. The furniture can be a bit pricey for second hand, but some of it is in really great condition. I have no idea where it comes from. I like to think that rich people around Edinburgh get bored of their furniture very easily so donate it here.
The non-​furniture part of the store has a great book selection which is usually my reason for going in. There is a «classics» section which stocks authors such as Dickens, Jane Austin etc. They also sell textbooks which came in quite handy when I happened to pop by and they had my course text book for a fiver as opposed to £45 on Amazon. I don’t really do charity shop clothes as I always find it is generally middle aged, plump women who donate and being neither of these things I don’t find anything I like. This shop hasn’t jumped on the vintage bandwagon yet, but I am sure this will come.
I panicked the day before New Years Eve because I realised I didn’t have champagne glasses for our party. Instead of paying £10 in Sainsburys I picked some up in here for 29p each. Bargain!