I’ve talked before about taking your unwanted items either to a thrift store or some other non-profit organization for donation. Not only does donating your items to these organizations save you money on your taxes when you file the following year, it can also give you either much needed space in your house, or a less cluttered environment to live in.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to take eight bags of stuff that we no longer needed and an old ironing board to our local thrift store. I had been putting the task off, but all of the bags sitting in various spots in my house really began to get on my nerves.

Not only was I able to take items to our thrift store, but our local Pass It On consignment sale drop off day was yesterday as well, which gave me the opportunity to clean some stuff out of my kids’ closets and make a little extra money as well. This is my first time to participate in a consignment sale, and it wasn’t difficult at all, but does require some preparation prior to the sale. If you’ve never participated in a consignment sale, check another article I wrote about preparing your items.

The Pass It On consignment as well as other consignment sales are fairly automated and allow the consignor the ability to view an online list of items that have been sold at the sale. I am grateful that there are consignment sales to sell my kids’ old toys and clothing, it saves me a lot of time since I don’t have to have a garage sale, I only wish I had known about them years earlier.

Every week I scour the ads and determine the items that not only my family can use, but how I can get them inexpensively. I then match the items that I want to purchase with the coupons that I have available which gives me an even better price. By purchasing these loss leaders every week, or purchasing items that will be very inexpensive with a coupon, it allows me to use my savings on other items that my family needs. This week I made a stop at our local Homeland grocery store, and our Super Target.

The Homeland grocery store isn’t where I typically purchase our groceries, their prices are a bit higher on everyday items so I normally purchase their loss leaders. Homeland does double coupons up to $1.00, but they only double one like coupon and you cannot do a back-to-back transaction.

I like shopping at Super Target because they usually have decent prices on every day items, and they also have Target coupons that can be paired with a manufacturer coupon for even greater savings. Target only allows one like coupon per transaction of their Target coupons, but will take multiple manufacturer coupons provided that you have a product to match each coupon. On my trip today I actually forgot about the one like Target coupon policy which made my total a littler higher than I wanted, but I’ll chalk it up to a learning experience. I normally print my Target coupons from our local library at $.10 a page (prints 5 coupons per page), but you can also print them at Target from their kiosks, or from home on your own computer.

Target has a great deal going right now on Glade candle tins. The tins are priced at 3 for $5 and their are $1.50 coupons inside the tins (if someone hasn’t already taken them), making each tin $.16 each. These make great teacher gifts or to throw in a gift basket with some other items. In addition to the Glade candle tins there are also coupons for a free package of refills when you purchase three Glade tins which makes for really inexpensive candles.

My Target total came up to $17.24 and my two Homeland trips totalled $6.32 for a grand total of $23.56. In addition to the good Target total I also received a $5.00 Target gift card for purchasing the four Special K products. Not pictured are a loaf of bread and a half gallon of milk. While these trips aren’t intended to provide groceries for our family for a long period of time, the intent is to purchase items at their lowest price allowing us to purchase other items that go on sale infrequently or not at all.

The key to really good savings is to watch the sales, gather coupons from any source that is available to you, and combine your coupon with the sale price to make it a really great deal.