Backyard Play Areas Before building a backyard play are, ask around. Often, parents with older children will give one away if you remove. You could run an ad in the paper offering to buy one. Also, before you build, see what your children play with at the big public playgrounds and see if you can incorporate this in your structure.
Julie

Two-fer Most grocery stores start their weekly specials on Sundays. They set up the specials on Saturday. If you shop on Saturday evening, you can take advantage of both that week’s specials and the ones for the following week.
Kathy W.

All Year Long My husband and I are into things that require notebooks, glue sticks, etc. We use back-to-school sales to stock up. At K- Mart, we found 70-page, single subject notebooks at 10 for a $1 and glue sticks with two in a pack for 5 packs for $1. Markers and pens are also on sale. We are 50 and 56 years out of school, but we sure do stock up on these “back-to-school bargains” for the year.
Tricia F.

A Tot’s Toy Tip This is a dollar stretcher tip from my 8-year-old. When it comes to buying toys for your children, if you spend more time playing with your children and the toys they already have, there won’t be a need to buy so many new ones. Children want you to spend time with them more than they want you to spend money on them.
Denise D.

Free Container Gardens In the fall, I look at the side of the streets for discarded kid’s swimming pools to use as container gardens. You need to put some holes in the bottom for drainage. Set next to the water hose if possible and fill with compost from your city’s leaf distribution that has composted for years. Now you are ready to plant or sow seeds. Don’t forget to do a fall garden. Remember not to get too close with the weed eater because this will cut your pool sides off.

You can do a salad garden, herb garden, flower garden, or kid’s garden, and when you get tired of it, just dump the dirt and discard the pool. Have fun!
Mildred L.

Picture This! I just got out of college and have started to pay off student loans. Therefore, I do not have much money to invest in decorating my place. What I ended up doing was going to the dollar store, buying linoleum tiles (they sold them 3 for $1 where I went), and used them as frames for pictures. I put one picture in the middle of each one, and hung them either in a normal square shape or turned them a bit so that they would look like a diamond. I then used some nails and hung them on my wall. I used tiles that had patterns with some really funky designs, and those “picture frames” only cost me 33 cents each!
Charlene C.

Sandwich Wrap Make your plastic wrap go twice as far by cutting the roll in half. It’s the perfect size for sandwiches and other small items.
Carol in PA

A Friendly Reminder I was complaining to a friend that I was just going to take some clothes over to the nearby thrift store to donate because selling them in the consignment shop was too much work because I’d have to iron them. She replied, “So, you don’t want to do the work to make the money.” Her comment stopped me in my tracks and has changed the way I look at a lot of things. Since then, I have “done the work” of showing up at a city park for the chance of winning (and I did win) concert tickets through a local radio station. I have “done the work” of driving to a re-sale bookshop and sold unwanted books and CDs. And yes, I have “done the work” of ironing my clothes and putting them on consignment.
Mary in Madison, WI

Damage = Discount I recently went looking for tomato cages. At Menards, I discovered a “four panel” tomato cage. It has three sides and “hooks” the third to the first panel. They only had two left, and the cost was $2.79 each. When I got up to the cashier, I asked if he could show me how they worked. We discovered that one of them was damaged (one of the three hooks was broken off). I asked if I could purchase the damaged one at a reduced price. I offered $1.50 for it. The manager had to be called to decide this. He told the cashier to charge me a $1 for each of them as they were the last of that kind. For $2, I got two cages that would cost $5.58 normally and the only thing wrong was one hook was missing! I guess it pays to ask about purchasing damaged goods as long as you can still use it they way it is.
Vicki in WI

Garden Veggie Tracking In my garden this year, I planted veggies. I found that in a really small area, I can grow a lot of food! We’ve got a mix of veggies and fruits, and most nights, we have veggies straight from the garden! One thing that I’m doing this year that I never did before is to try and keep track of everything that comes out of the garden. I keep a piece of paper taped to the back of a cabinet, and every time I harvest something, I note it on the chart. It’s really interesting to see how the produce is rolling in, and I can compare how much I am saving by gardening versus purchasing in the supermarket.
Sandy V.

 

Gary Foreman
The Dollar Stretcher
gary@stretcher.com