Mighty Bargain Hunter

Yard sale shopping with my daughter

June 29th, 2008 | by mbhunter |

My wife was at a quilting bee today so I got to spend the day with my three-year-old daughter. After we went to a park near the Potomac River we stopped at a community yard sale in one of the bigger subdivisions nearby.

It’s a lot easier to say “yes” when we’re “shopping” at yard sales. Maybe this is weak parenting but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to encourage or reinforce that you can get more for your money (or more for my money) at yard sales than in other stores. I only rarely splurge in retail stores but often splurge at yard sales.

Here’s what we got:

• Four basically unworn shirts for my daughter: 25 cents each. She informed me that she didn’t need more shirts but she’ll grow into these. I even managed to find shirts without licensed characters on them.
• Marbled sidewalk chalk: 25 cents for a package of four. This was pretty cool-looking sidewalk chalk.
• Blade-type scooter: $1. Ok, this one had Barbie on it but my wife said that this wasn’t quite as bad as wearing Barbie.
• Seven bouncy balls: a nickel each. Two of them flashed when we bounced them.
• Puppy Racers game for 75 cents. This one’s pretty amusing. It’s vaguely reminiscent of Hungry Hungry Hippos but two dogs “fetch” plastic balls by pushing them with their noses.
• Small craft soap-making kit for a buck.
• A sand art kit for $2.
• A cement mixer for $1. This was one of the better deals. It’s black with a green top on it, and it’s handy for mixing up a small amount of Quikrete. If nothing else we can use it to store rice or something like that.

Have you had any good finds at yard sales recently?