If you like shopping, there’s almost nowhere you can have as much fun with a few dollars in your pocket as the dollar store. You’ve just got to love a place where every item is a dollar or less!
It’s a particularly good place to take young children for a treat. Imagine how you’d feel if you were a kid and your parent told you that you could buy “anything in the store”!
Dollar stores are also a great place to buy items for the house, the yard and the car.
In fact, I make it a rule when going out on Saturdays to run errands (which includes buying items on my “to do” list) to stop at the dollar store if there’s any chance at all that items on the list might be found there. If they’re not available there, then I go to a nearby discount store for them.
Dollar stores have brand-name medicines, foods and beauty products; household needs; office supplies; gardening tools and seeds; kitchen gadgets; greeting cards; cleaning supplies; drinks; health products; frames and much more.
Dollar stores also have party supplies — and they are, without a doubt, the absolute cheapest place to buy helium balloons. And the balloons often last for weeks! You can show up at a party or to celebrate someone’s birthday with a bundle of five big, colorful balloons, and look very generous for a mere $5.
I’m kind of particular about the safety of health and beauty products, and food (anything that goes in or on my body) and won’t normally buy anything at a dollar store that isn’t produced by a well-known manufacturer, to avoid any potential problems with items produced in foreign countries that don’t regulate or inspect things the way the United States does. But there are plenty of name-brand items available.
If you’re planning a low-cost or do-it-yourself wedding, dollar stores are a great place to buy items for the reception. I planned and coordinated my son and daughter-in-law’s wedding and wrote a Kindle ebook called “How to Have a $30,000 Wedding for Less Than $10,000” — and a number of tips involve dollar store purchases.
After buying items at the local dollar store, I almost always search for the same items at a discount store like Walmart as well as other stores, to make sure I truly saved money. And inevitably, the same items cost two or three times more elsewhere. Yesterday, I bought several pieces of foam-core posterboard at the dollar store for $1 each and saw it right next door at the Michael’s craft store for $2.97, and also saw it at another store a week earlier for $4.98. That’s a pretty good savings!
I regularly stock up on Wyler’s Lite drink mix packages, and they can sell for as much as $3.98 each at area grocery stores. The local dollar store sells brand-name bread, too, which is much less expensive that buying it at a grocery store.
Over the years, I only remember two or three times when items I bought at the dollar store could’ve been purchased at another store for less than $1. The enormous savings over time definitely outweigh a few
cents in losses!
Other money-saving posts:
Where to Get the Best Price Possible on Cottonelle TP
You Can Make Someone You Love the Best Gift Ever — at No Cost
How to Decorate Your Home with Extremely Low-Cost Framed Prints
Decorating Your Home with Extremely Low Cost Framed Prints – Part #2
Money Saving Gift Idea #2 – Zip it Drain Cleaner
Money Saving Gift Idea #1 – Extend Your Beauty Tool
How to Add a Low-Cost Reading Rack to a Treadmill to Make Walking More Fun
Things NOT to Sell at a Yard Sale
Thrift Store Treasures #2: Bare Trap Sandals — Love Them!
The Sisterhood of Thrift Store Shoppers
Thrift Store Treasures: What I Did NOT Buy
Thrift Store Adventures Save Big Bucks and Count as Retail Therapy, Too
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I notice some are better than others. I think I will re-check my local one out again! Thanks much!
I love the dollar store, and am also a huge fan of the helium balloons.
That being said, when I shop there I have to be careful that I truly need the items I purchase and not get caught up on impulse buys (which is so easy to do since everything’s $1).
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