Safety matches, the big ones for lighting my cantankerous stove, 3 big boxes for a buck. Cheap gift bags. Hair catchers for the drains-so I don’t clean them when they get bad, I just toss them out. Hangers-they have these “felt-” or something covered ones (probably asbestos covered ) that are great for sweaters or blouses with wide necklines. Cheap crap plastic dishes for taking a dish somewhere–then I just leave it and don’t care. Sticky lint rollers. Colored paper plates, napkins and plastic table covers for parties.
Four gallon scented trash bags, spatulas, baskets, cards, seasonal items (like decorations for the Christmas tree or Halloween), giant crossword puzzle books, flower pot “rocks” to make the stems stay steady, the occasional pet collar. And back in the day, a first line of defense pregnancy test.
Haven’t been in a while, until yesterday. I bought:
A “cupcake stand centerpiece” - essentially a few pieces of cardboard with slide together to make a two tiered cupcake stand. Printed in Valentine themed pink and red hearts. Perfect for my daughter’s 8th birthday party today. I intended to throw it out, instead of bringing it home from the art center where we had her party, but at the last minute I decided to break it down and pack it for home. I have no idea what I’ll do with it.
Heart patterned cupcake liners with matching heart toothpicks. There are benefits to having a little girl’s birthday falling so close to V-Day.
Reese’s peanut butter cups to go into the cupcakes.
Paper plates and cups, pink. You can probably figure out what for.
Couple of cans of soup. One was Campbell’s brand name, and one some brand I’ve never heard of. sniff Perfect comfort food while I have a cold.
Cough drops. Again, cold.
Bottle of bath gel. Total crap, mostly water and thickeners, but a scent my daughter loves (“Red Apple”). Since she’s incapable of using only a small amount of bath gel anyhow, I’d rather she waste the cheap stuff.
When we stayed in Tokyo, the very best thing was that our hotel was two doors down from The 100-Yen Store. At the time, that was roughly the 87-Cent Store, and it was full of cheap ‘n’ crazy stuff.
Birthday cards, wrapping paper, pot scourers, sticky-tape, plastic take-away containers, and anything else I see that I go, “Oooh, ooh, I FORGOT I needed that as well”.
On the street where I work there are six (we call them $2 stores here) dollar stores. I have no shortage of opportunity to add more crap to my life.
I buy gift bags too, I love Dollar Tree’s gift bags. I also buy shower poofs and when paranoid, pregnancy tests. And I just got some hair detangler for my kid which might suck but if it’s good I’ll buy it regularly too.
I always buy trash bags from the dollar store and search for the name brand items they have. They always have some name brand overstock. Oh yes cooking utensils and dinnerware.
Pregnancy tests, as noted above. Work like a charm. Good for if you’re trying to get pregnant and you want to test a lot without spending $20 every time. Gift bags.
Velcro cable wraps (lazy, but they come in colors).
Batteries (crummy but cheap).
Mechanical pencils, gel-ink pens.
Random stuff for somebody’s birthday I almost forgot: “Hey! Loose-leaf paper and some hole-punch reinforcers!” --“You’re welcome, buddy – you think I’d forget you?”
Also good for if you don’t want to get pregnant and are just really irresponsible :smack:
But yeah, I’ll never understand people buying expensive pregnancy test, like that “digital” bullshit. If you can’t interpret one line or two lines then I really hope it’s just one line. And all pregnancy tests work the exact same way (albeit with different levels of sensitivity, but that’s not based on price at all).
Unlined notebooks. Notebooks with the squares covering the whole page (in Spain class notebooks have squares 4mm to the side). Erasers.
Also off-brand “ironfix”, decorated self-adhesive plastic sheeting, which I’ve used to decorate a shelf in my kitchen that had some too-obvious holes (ironfix would be the actual good brand for the stuff, but it’s become hard to find). Sometimes kitchen gizmos which I haven’t been able to find in other stores, or tools of the kind that don’t need to be “good” (who cares if the screwdriver is tungsten or steel).
Oh man, tell me about it! I lived off of those during my year in Japan. They had some surprisingly good stuff in their dollar stores. When I have my dreams about going to Japan, those are always the first place I head to.
As for the ones here, I’ll get some gift bags when needed, cheaper than any other place. I also go there for cheap toys for my kid client that I’m doing speech therapy with. I can’t afford to break the bank so it’s usually my go to place for ideas and materials. For the most part the stuff has been useful, though I have taken a couple of gambles and lost on some pretty shoddily-made toys.
The only real dollar store around here is Dollar Tree. Family Dollar and Dollar General are the stupid kind of store where things are randomly price, always more than a dollar for something. How can they call themselves a dollar store at that point?
) that are great for sweaters or blouses with wide necklines. Cheap crap plastic dishes for taking a dish somewhere–then I just leave it and don’t care. Sticky lint rollers. Colored paper plates, napkins and plastic table covers for parties.