Paper Plate Crafts

I like to do crafts with my kiddos. They love it, I enjoy it, and we have good times together. There are so many things you can do with el cheapo paper plates. You can cut a triangle out of it for a fish mouth and put that piece on the end for the tail. You can staple two plates together with noodles in the middle for a shaker instrument.  You can glue noodles on them. You can make masks out of them.  And the list goes on and on. AND you can get a BIG stack of them at the dollar store.

Scrubbers

When I'm not crocheting my dish scrubber I buy them from the dollar store.  To make these last longer I cut them in half (because really, how much of it are you using at one time?).  Makes my $0.50 scrubber a $0.25 scrubber and I end up with 4 scrubbers instead of 2.  Yeah!

Dollar Store

A word about dollar stores.  They are not all created equal.  Some are, what I refer to as, the dollar plus store because you may be hard pressed to actually find anything in there that is a dollar.  In fact, the only thing that I like from our local "dollar plus" store are the baby wipes.  Cheapest around.

One dollar store will not be carrying what the dollar store down the street is carrying.  So check them out and see what they have.  I have found that a store tends to carry a "theme" of items.  Perhaps they specialize in crafts, or greeting cards, or house hold items, or car gear, or groceries, etc.  I know which dollar store I need to go to for certain items.

Also, if you're going to a dollar store or a big lots or whatever type of discount store is by you, don't assume it's a good price!  Know your prices.  And if you buy food there, check the expiration dates.

Inexpensive Decorating

I felt like decorating my kitchen.  So I headed to one of my dollar stores, and I picked up some wall decals.  For $3 I got a great looking kitchen!  And I can change it whenever I want.

 

I have also done stenciling in my house.  This was fun to do and all I did was simply talked around and made it known that I wanted to stencil.  I then got offers from people "oh I have some stencils you can borrow."  Which is great, because the actual stencils are expensive.  So I got to stencil for next to nothing.  I gave the person some money to pay for the paints I used.  No overhead cost to me!

Soap

If you air out your soap it will harden and last longer. I have a mesh bag under my sink with soap. The mesh is small enough to keep the soap clean too.

When you get to the end of a bar of soap, what do you do with it? I like to put it in a sponge. Get a bath sponge at the dollar store, cut a slit in it, put the soap fragments in it, and use it in the shower. It lathers us nicely.