Dollar Tree Love

Against everything I've been pre-programmed to believe, I have fallen in love with the dollar store.  I always believed it was dirty, cheap and overall a waist of time and money.  But with Josh's paycut last fall and a new baby and just trying to cut costs wherever possible, we've started shopping at the Dollar Tree.

Yes, there are some really cheap items there.  And we know those and stay away from those.  But some things are just as good as at the grocery store.  Candy, soda, etc.  Those are awesome at the dollar store.  We've also started to get dumb toys and trinkets for Audrey there.  The best find of all, though, has to be Dishwasher detergent.  We started getting it there when we were desperate and low on funds.  And we love it.  The dollar store Sun Sations dishwasher detergent actually works BETTER than the Safeway generic Cascade stuff.  Maybe even better than Cascade.  

We've found that most things are of the same quality, just lower volume/smaller packages.  So if we don't need a whole bunch at once, it's a great place to get something.  For instance, oxy clean.  WE don't use much, so getting it at the Dollar store really does save us money when we need to buy it.  In fact, it's even cheaper per oz than the name brand at Safeway.   Frozen fruit.  $1/bag.  I get 3 bags.  It lasts me 2 weeks usually for smoothies.  Same quality fruit as at Safeway and like 1/3 the price.  

I often will get ziplock bags and lunch bags at the Dollar store.  Buy shopping for these items at Dollar Tree, we've probably cut $20/week out of our grocery budget.  (We don't buy those items every week, but a combination of all our items probably is that much.)

However, not all things are as good at the Dollar store.  I bought a couple oven mitts there.  I figured a cheap oven mitt was better than our holey mitts we had at home.  I brought them home and pulled dinner out of the oven and burned my hand.   Ok.  Lesson learned.  I'll buy those at Target next time.