Bag o’ Clothes July 13, 2011

I am a frequent shopper at Salvation Army thrift stores.  They reward me for my patronage.  I wish other thrift stores would do the same.  At the Salvation Army stores in my area, they offer a Super Shopper Club card.  Basics of the card are for every 10 dollars you spend, you get 1 stamp on your card.  Collect 10 stamps and you can redeem your card for a $5 bag full of clothes. 

 

 

I have been holding onto my full card for several weeks now.  The past few times I have gone to the Salvation Army, I have not found many clothing items, at least not enough to justify the $5 bag.  I did not want to waste my card!  Today my patience paid off.  I stuffed all of the following items into one plastic shopping bag, normal size. 

 

Gifts for Others:

– 1 shirt for my cousin, Wendy

– 2 shirts for my cousin, Bess

– 1 blouse for my Mom

– 1 blouse for my friend, Katie

– 3 dresses, 3 bibs, 1 hat, 4 bloomers, 5 pants, and 11 onesie outfits for my future niece

 

Clothing for Pete:

– 2 t-shirts

 

Clothing for Cason:

– 1 pair of shorts

– 2 onesie outfits

 

Clothing for Me:

– 2 tank tops for exercise/work-outs

– 7 short-sleeve blouses

– 1 pair cargo shorts

– 1 skirt

 

All of those clothes for $5!  Awesome!  If you have a Salvation Army thrift store in your area, find out if they have a Super Shopper card program.  If you are in the Florence, Alabama area, the locations in Florence and Sheffield both honor the cards.  I love the fact they have some type of frequent shopper program and I wish other thrift stores would do the same.

 

I went to the Blue Door Thrift Store on Tuesday.  I do not frequent this thrift store that often (it is on the other side of town), but I try to stop in about once a month.  I bought several items, but the best one was for my baby, Cason.  I have been looking for a walker/bouncer exerciser for him for the past few weeks.  I have seen many, but most have been very dirty and/or missing several pieces.  I came across a Graco Lights and Sound Walker and it was in fabulous condition.  There was a mommy-to-be looking it over as I spotted it from a distance.  She took a few steps past it and I calmly walked swooped in for it.  $15 and it was in great condition!  Yes, I was giddy with excitement and could not wait to get in home, clean it, sanitize it, and try it out with Cason. 

 

He L-O-V-E-D it!!!  Check out a few of his pics in his new apparatus. 

 

Cason and the Lights & Sounds Walker VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

Found anything good at the thrift stores lately?  I would love to hear about it if you have! 

 

Toodles,

 

Do you consign? I do, here’s why. December 8, 2010

Howdy People!

In thinking about what to post this week, I decided to post about being a consignor at a consignment shop. I went today to one of the consignment shops that I consign at to pick up my earnings. I am curious how many of you consign or have tried it before?

We have several consignment stores in my part of the world and this past year I started consigning some of my “gently used” clothing, housewares, jewelry, shoes, purses, and linens at two of the shops. I started off just shopping at the consignment store for clothes and household items. I inquired about the consignment process, since this would be my first time being a consignor. The “setup fee” was $10, make an appointment, they price everything, I make 50% of the sale price, and after 90 days I can either come pick my stuff up or they donate it to a local charity. I thought to myself…hmmmm, minimal input on my part, I get the excess stuff out of my house, and I just may make some $$$ off of this! I have been on a mission to purge our house of its excessive stuff and thought I might as well try the consignment route instead of taking the items directly to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

I made consignment appointments for roughly every 6 weeks so that I would be encouraged to keep going through my excessive stuff and purge, purge, purge. 🙂 I have the option of getting a check cut for my earnings or I can use my account credit earnings to cover my purchases. I have used both options over the past 10 months and LOVE the process. I inquired today at both of the stores on my yearly total earnings and was pleasantly shocked to find out how much I had made over the course of the year from consigning….

Grand total: $289.93!

Again, little input on my part, more stuff is gone from my house, and I earned some money. I will definitely be continuing this process next year, though I may try to shop a little less and not use the account credit as much. I think if I held out all year and get one payout check at the end of the year that it would seem a little more rewarding and definitely put a huge dent into the Christmas shopping budget! Or I could decide on one larger item for myself and use my consignment earnings to buy it. Hmmmm…

I know there are many variations of the pricing, % earned, and so on across the consignment shops, but for me the plan I have works great! I just drop the stuff off and they do the rest. Easy Peasy! So now I have a box labeled “Donate” for items that go directly to Salvation Army/Goodwill, one box labeled “Consignment”, and one box labeled trash. Because I have regular appointments the box for consignment items does not build up and become irritating for me. One thing I always hate about putting on a yard sale is having to hold on to so many boxes of stuff in preparation for the big sale. Not to mention the pricing, haggling, early morning, etc that come with a yard sale.

So, readers, do you consign? If so, I hope you have had great success with it like I have. If you have never consigned, you might want to consider it. I am certainly glad I did! 🙂

Here are two items I bought today with some of my consignment earnings.

A cute little stained glass frame for my baby boy’s room:

A cute little necklace for me:

Toodles,
Iris, the Happy Consignor

Monday’s Money Saving Tip – Save your Coins November 15, 2010

Hello Everyone,

Today I am linking up to Homebody, which is one of the blogs that I follow and read almost daily. Holly is featuring a Monday link party special entitled “Monday’s Money-Saving Tips” and I decided I wanted to link up to this party and share one of my money-saving tips.

My money-saving tip is to save your coins. I normally don’t carry a lot of cash so I instead scavenge for my husband’s spare change, check the pockets in the laundry, pick up coins on the sidewalk, etc. 🙂 Ever since I was a kid I have been a scavenger of coins. I used to roll my Dad’s change and loved to play with the money. The desire to collect change has not changed for me over the years and now I have a container that counts the coins as I insert them, but it is not always the most accurate count since I raid it when I go to yard-sales.  Moving on….to the entire point of this post.

I had seen in my local grocery store the green coin counting machines and had checked them out previously and had opted to not use their service since they have a processing fee of $.098 per dollar counted. Basically for every dollar the machine counted, the company got to keep a dime. I know it is not much for a fee, but I did not want to pay it. A few weeks back my coin container was almost full and I really did not want to roll all the coins. My bank, which will remain undisclosed, requires the coins be rolled. I used to be a member of a credit union that did not require rolling and they would do all the counting for you in their machines for free, so that was a good benefit, but no longer available for me. I decided to check out Coinstar again and see what my options were.

As I reviewed the site, I noticed “Free Coin Counting and proceeded to learn more. I found out if you choose to receive a gift certificate to a sponsoring company then the processing fee is waived and your coins are counted for FREE! Some of the sponsoring companies include: Amazon, Lowe’s, iTunes, JCPenney, Old Navy, Starbuck’s, Overstock.com, CSV, among others. WOO HOO!

I decided that day to check out this Free Coin Counting claim and to see how complicated the process was. My local grocery store has the Coinstar machine. I took my container of coins that had to weigh at least 10 pounds. The process of loading the coins was easy, I would recommend to put some of your coins on at a time, not all of them, as I experienced a bit of a snag and overloaded the machine.

For a quick demo of the process, click here. The machine does its counting magic and once it is done it asks you how you want your money – a receipt that you can take to the grocery store clerk to give you the cash (this method involves the $.098 process fee) or in gift certificate form (FREE). I opted for Lowe’s since I knew I had an upcoming office painting project. The receipt printed out and provides you with an itemized count of the number of dollars, half-dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies it counted. My grand total was $92.88.

Here is a picture of a sample receipt.

This past weekend I took my Coinstar receipt with my Lowe’s gift card information printed on it to Lowe’s to redeem it. I was slightly worried there would be a problem with it, but no problems and my loose change bought $92.88 in painting supplies. LOVE IT and no rolling! I highly recommend you check out Coinstar. You can check to find the nearest Coinstar location here. Kids will love this also – encourage them to keep their change, they can help putting the coins into the machine, and then they can buy something they want at a sponsoring store.

I will continue to save my coins and ruthlessly scavenge for loose change and will definitely be using the Coinstar service again. I mentioned the service to my Dad (he still rolls his coins and takes them to the bank) and I think he is going to give it a try. He easily could have $300+ of coins ready to be rolled/counted as I type this and he is a weekly Lowe’s shopper so I know it will come in handy 🙂 Give it a try! Yea for Coinstar!