Monday, July 07, 2008

No Longer a Redbox Virgin


Jacob started a summer day camp (for the first time ever) so I had some free time today. I know what you're thinking - "She probably ran straight to Vintage Value". Ha - you would be wrong.

I went straight to Staples and THEN to Vintage Value, so there. I would have ran to Smile, but they aren't open on Mondays. I spent .14 at Staples. Got the two teeny tiny .01 Purell bottles on sale this week along with the 2 packages of pencils (.01 per package) and ten .01 folders. For a whopping .14 total. And no sales tax since the total didn't get high enough for any sales tax.

Bought a few .35 shirts at VV. For Jacob I bought a Nautica polo type shirt, a never used plain white dress shirt, and an Old Navy sweater that had a dry cleaning ticket stapled to the label. Do some people really dry clean Old Navy brand stuff for kids??? Apparently some do. Needless to say, the sweater was in great condition. I haven't been to the dry cleaners in years. When I am thrift shopping for clothes, if I see a "dry clean only" label on it, I put it back. This was just a regular machine wash sweater but was dry cleaned instead.

And as the title says above, I am no longer a Redbox virgin. In case you don't know what Redbox is - it's a vending machine for cheap $1-a-day DVD rentals. I saw them years ago and wished we would have one nearby. Now we do. A few months ago, a new grocery store opened in our town and they have Redbox.

A buck per rental is cheap, but free is better. Months ago, I signed up at Inside Redbox and every Monday and Wednesday they email you a code to use for a free rental. But since I didn't get the emails until early afternoon, I never had a chance to use them since I normally don't go to that grocery store in the afternoon.

Until now. Now that I have to pick up Jacob in the afternoon at the end of day camp, I can swing by on Monday and Wednesday and pick out a movie for free using the codes.

And remember the other day when I mentioned how some people just toss aside those computer generated coupons that the grocery store cashier hands you? Well when I went to the grocery store where the Redbox is today, I chose a cart that had some papers/receipts laying in the bottom. One coupon was to save $2 off any soap, and the other coupon was to save $2 off any shampoo. I bought a bottle of shampoo on sale for 2.29 (.29 after coupon) and a bottle of men's body wash for $2.50 (.50 after coupon).

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I've found you can often get away with washing dry clean only garments. I accidentally washed a silk Liz Claiborne dress I bought because I forgot to check the tag and thought it was rayon (I bought it for $1, can you blame me?).

Using Woolite on the gentle cycle in my front-loading washer then hung to dry, the dress suffered no damage. You can even wash cashmere sweaters the same way - just use a sweater bag for more delicate garments.