What is a monkeybox?

When I was a little girl, we had a pet monkey named Amanda. My Dad worked in the produce business, so each night he brought home that days culls in a big box - spotty cucumbers, pithy apples, limp celery, moldy oranges and the like. We called it a monkeybox. It was really just trash, but my Mom would take each piece of fruit and trim it, pare it and cut it up to make a beautiful fruit platter for Amanda. Even though it was deemed trash by one, it still had life left in it and was good for the purpose we needed it. That's how I live my life - thrifting, yard saling, looking for another's trash to be my treasure.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

ToysRUs 90% Off Finds


Every year my family looks forward to the big Toys R Us 90% off sale. We make it a family event! My husband, son and I go armed with a list that I have printed out from Centsible Chat, a bottle of water and our comfortable shoes. We go to each individual section and follow these guidelines. First, we look for any green tagged items on the shelf. Then we go through the list looking for any items in that area. After that, we look for any one of a kind items, items without shelf tags or items with dusty, dented or faded packaging. We gather any items up that meet these qualifications and head to the self-scanners. My son scans the items while I take note of what scans at the 90% off price and place it in the cart. My husband takes the rest of the items back to the shelf and we go on to the next section to start over. We have so much fun with this and like to share our finds with people shopping on the aisle with us. Sometimes they are excited and very thankful to have found a deal. But, more times than not, they look at us like we are from Mars and they just don't get it. Oh well, their loss! This year we were lucky to find the Etch-a-Sketch Plug and Play Video games for $2.50, the inflatable SpongeBob Squarepants Birthday Decoration for $1.49, Hot Wheels Battle X Arena for $1.49, Hot Wheels Battle Weapons for 35¢ each, Barbie Kareoke Cartridges for 15¢, Spiderman Icee Pops for 15¢, two different Leap Pad Mind Games for $1.99 each, stickers for 15¢ and some SMAX figures for 59¢. We have found more in past years, but that didn't stop us from having fun on the "hunt"! When we checked out the checker told us that our total was $174.xx before discounts" and then he pressed the discount button on the register and said, "And now your total is $18.74!" I think he was even surprised at that total! It would have been a bit less, but DH threw in a Pepsi at the last minute! My son will keep the Battle X Arena, one of the Leap Pad Mind Games and one of the Etch-A-Sketch Plug-In Plays. A few of the items are for upcoming birthdays too. The Icee Pops and Inflatable SpongeBob will will go to my son's birthday party this year. I will list the Barbie Kareoke Cartridges on ebay next Christmas. Here's a picture of DS in front of all the goodies. Not surewhy he looks so glum. He's used to Mom photographing him in front of odd things like mounds of Pop-Tarts and piles of Glade Candles!

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:25 PM

    After reading your post, I checked on Centsible Chat which led me to redundcents.com. I read some of the articles and was wondering if you think it is worth the money to join. I do refunding already, so do you subscribe to just the online part or do you get the printed newsletter also?

    Sounds like you had a great time at Toys R Us.

    Libby

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't see anything with "green tags" at my TRU. Are they on the shelf or on the items? Or are they the marked clearance items? TIA!

    ReplyDelete

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