Garage Sale-ing with a Purpose for Kids Clothes

A while back there was a post on Money Saving Mom about how to garage sale with a purpose to save money and gather supplies with a purpose and a plan. The post was specifically about getting deals at garage sales for kids clothing. While reading the post I had slap-the-forehead moments and I wished I had thought of things years ago! I cringe to think how much money I would have saved. (If I can find the link to the awesome article, I'll add it to this article later.)

The first step is to decide how many of what your child(ren) needs. Depending on where you live, you might need more shorts than pants or vice versa. I decided that I want 10 short sleeved shirts, 10 long sleeved shirts, 5 pants, 5 shorts and church clothing. They need underwear and socks too but I'll buy those new.

Second step is to inventory what you have now. What sizes and what gender do you have in the closet already? Once you have a list, make a spreadsheet on paper or on the computer listing what you need and what you have. When you garage sale, this list is your guide to ensure you get what you need and avoid impulse buying.

So, the above picture is the fruits of my first effort. I did a craig's list search for garage sales in Lincoln that advertised children's clothing. Then I did a search in the Lincoln Journal Star for the same thing. I looked at a map of Lincoln and decided which garage sales I would visit and which I would skip. Basically, I looked for several sales in the same area to maximize my time and efforts.

I didn't stop at all the sales I looked up and not every garage sale I stopped at had anything worth while but I did find some amazing deals. I found one garage sale with size 6 girl's clothing. I checked the Excel sheet and I needed all things in girl's size 6! These were name brand clothes so the asking price was higher than I would normally prefer. In the article I found, it talked about the fact that there isn't anything wrong with asking people to take a lower price.

I grabbed the 5 shirts that were the right size and the total sticker price was $7.75. I pulled out $6.00 cash and gathered my courage. I asked if the gal would take $6.00 for all. After she did the math in her head she said yes! So, 5 shirts marked of my list for $1.20 a shirt. I'm not a label snob or anything but these shirts are high quality material. They aren't going to rip easily like the shirts I find at Walmart and might last long enough that I can resell them once Jazzy has outgrown them!

After many strike outs I found a garage sale where clothes were marked .25 each! The girl's clothes were size 10 which I didn't have and there were boy long sleeved shirts sized 5 and 6 which I needed for Scotty. I grabbed everything that wasn't stained. I spotted some shoes that were $1.00 a pair and thought of my nieces. All told, I spent $7.00 at that garage sale and I basically have Jasmine's wardrobe when she is 10.

I spent a total of $13.00 and walked away with 19 shirts, 5 pants and 2 pairs of shoes. That's .50 a piece of clothing on average! When I consider that I would have paid at least $3.00 each at Walmart, I saved over $65.00 by garage sale-ing with a purpose.

Freezer Meals Check Up

It has been almost a month since I started making freezer meals. I thought I'd let you how our family is taking it.

For convenience, freezer batch baking gets a B+. I haven't had to worry about what I am going to cook for our meals for weeks. It's already in the freezer and simply needs to be reheated. The ding down to a B is because I have to remember to pull the meal out the night before to defrost in the fridge. I have my fingers crossed that it will become routine for me eventually and this will come up to an A again.

Budget-wise this is definitely an A+! I'm not nearly as tempted to throw the kids in the car and drive to a restaurant for meals. It isn't hard to pull out food and throw it in the oven or microwave so even when I'm tired, I am still willing to cook. Now that I'm looking for great deals on foods on a regular basis and our garden is starting to produce, my cost per meal is dropping.

Nutrition-wise I give batch baking an A as well. Since I am cooking everything myself, I know exactly what is going into my meals. I have control over balancing our diets and integrating blends of ingredients that we like to eat. Also, I have been told by several nutritionists and people in the know that food retains its nutritional value longer when frozen over any other preservation technique.

In the end, I am excited to find more and more recipes and expand my knowledge of foods and home projects.

Some Stores Help You Budget

I've been meaning to post for a while about a discovery I made recently. As I have been working on freezer meals and saving money on food, I lamented how I don't receive the paper and thus I cannot shop deals. On a whim I decided to look for my local stores on line. Jackpot!

In my area there is Super Saver (a B&R Store), Walmart, Hy-Vee, Sunmart and several smaller stores. Unfortunately, the closest store is 10 miles away and a small convenience store and very over-priced. The next closest store is Walmart, 20 miles away so popping over to pick up a small item is prohibitive. The next closest store is Super Saver at 30 miles away but where I would prefer to shop.

For those in the Lincoln and Omaha areas, http://www.super-saver.com/ has the local weekly ads posted online. The best part is if you click on a food item in the ad, it saves it to a shopping list which you can print out when you are done looking at the ad. That is definitely user friendly!

After looking over the ad for the week, I don't see anything that I need for my family or any deals I can't pass up. Now that I know that, I can save myself 4 gallons of gas and skip a trip towing 3 kids. Definitely a win!

After checking out Super Saver, I ventured on over to http://www.hy-vee.com/. Sometimes you can find really good deals at Hy-Vee but generally they charge more. It never hurts to look and if there's a great deal on something, I can print out the page and take it to Walmart where they price match.

To see what deals Walmart has each week, they also post their deals online at http://www.walmart.com/. Unfortunately, my local store has no ads this week.

For those of you close to a CVS or Walgreens, you definitely want to subscribe to Money Saving Mom. She posts a list of deals, coupons you can clip or print out and the bonuses you get for buying each item. For this week, she has a list posted here: http://moneysavingmom.com/2011/07/cvs-deals-for-the-week-of-july-3-9-2011.html. At CVS you can stock up on health and beauty supplies and pay a fourth to half of what you would pay otherwise.

The power at CVS is their Extra Care Bucks program. When you purchase certain items you get a coupon with your receipt for savings on your next purchases. When you plan each week, you match up deals with coupons online and in the paper which reduces the cost per item to the prices at Walmart then you receive a coupon for money off the next shopping trip. When I lived in Lubbock, I planned each week and spent about $25.00 per week on $70 worth of products. When you are a regular shopper, you also build up quarterly bonuses. I received a coupon for an extra $20.00 free at one point.

Because I did that regularly, I purchased enough supplies to last us through most of this next year and I paid around a dollar or less for each item: Toothpaste, floss, shampoo, conditioner, razors, etc.

My advice, for what it's worth, is go find out if your local stores have their deals online. Spending 10 minutes reading can save you a shopping trip and some hard earned coin!

Mind the Pennies

Part of my goal as a stay at home mom is to teach my children the value of money and hard work. Because of that goal, we do chores around the house and the children earn ten pennies for each chore. That probably doesn't seem like much but keep in mind they are 8, 5 and 3. I'm sure inflation will hit our house hard a few years down the road.

Each child has three different containers. When the children earn 10 pennies, they put 1 in a tithing container, 4 in a spending container and 5 in a savings container. Each Sunday they pull out the pennies in the tithing container and bring it to church.

The spending money they save up for different toys they want. For example, Scotty worked very hard earning a lego set. To his five-year-old brain, it took FOREVER! To a proud momma, he worked hard, volunteered to help and I believe he values the set more than if I had thrown it in the shopping cart and bought it with no effort on his part besides begging.

The savings container is what got my juices bubbling today. I have noticed their savings banks becoming heavier and heavier. I also want to take their understanding and appreciation of saving to the next level. I want them to have savings accounts and every week or two deposit the money from their savings and update a register. What a great learning tool!

I called my bank and asked how much it takes to open a youth savings account. It's $25.00. After adding up what they have in savings, we're not close. I still want them to have a bank account but it will take a while for the five pennies per chore to reach that.

Then I gazed at our penny jar. I was curious how many pennies we had in there. This is the jar that after buying something with cash we throw what's left into the jar. The children and I made lots of stacks of pennies and discovered we had over nine dollars!

Around our house, the children earn the pennies and after doing several chores they can trade in the pennies for silver; a.k.a. nickels, dimes and quarters. Since they trade in regularly (which causes them to practice counting and coin recognition -Yes!), I decided we didn't need over 900 pennies. I took out 8 dollars worth and put the rest back in the penny jar. I realized I was 8 dollars closer to the $75 total we need to open three new accounts.

I got really excited! Instead of just magically making the money appear, what if I could gather up more coins and dollars so the kiddos could see how much money it takes to get to $75.00? I became a woman on a mission. I prowled around the house finding pennies, nickels and quarters. We had coins stashed here and there -pocket change really. Once I pulled them together, we actually have quite a bit! To make a long story shorter, the children had about $15.00 in savings, I have $20.00 from the farmer's market on Wednesday and I was able to gather about $30.00 in loose change! We are only $10.00 short and that I feel I can make magically appear and not lose the point for the children.

A lesson I learned from my last job in Texas was mind the pennies and the dollars will follow. While I felt this was common sense and valuable, the true impact did not sink in until today. We held onto the pennies and they grew into dollars.

How do you mind your pennies?