Our Dollar Store Challenge

Since we started blogging on the Honey Do List and looking for things to blog about Pinterest has been a new addiction for me.  You can follow the Honey Do List Solutions on Pinterest to see some of the articles we find interesting or helpful. I love all the health challenge pins, but in this post, we want to talk about one of the pins that caught both Marina’s and my attention – Dollar Store Home Hacks, organization, and DIY crafts.

At first, we didn’t see a lot of dollar store challenges and thought it would be fun to create our own based on some of the pins we found.  Later as we were writing this post we found there are already a bunch of Dollar Stores Challenges such as The Dollar Store Survival Challenge, Dollar Store Photography Challenge, and the many other scavenger hunt related challenges.  However, we decided to not just make our own dollar store challenge but turn it into our own dollar date night because who doesn’t need a cheap date night. 

Here were the requirements of our own dollar store challenge

• Find and make one of the DIY Dollar Store Pinterest Crafts (bonus points for selling it higher than costs)
• Not spending more than $20 
• Finding an item to use as one of the Dollar Store Organization Hacks
• Find something useful we could use on its own.

Below is an image of all of the items we bought for our dollar store challenge: 

The dollar store items include:

• 2 candlestick holders
• A glass bowl
• 2 plates
• 3 plastic buckets
• 2 sets of tea candles
• a pack of 2 suction cups
• a small page of white rocks
• 2 small bags of glass rocks
• 2 mini mason charges
• a small flower vase
• 2 sets of fake flowers
• Excercise phone arm band

Here is how we did on our challenge

Find and make one of the DIY Dollar Store Pinterest Crafts (bonus points for selling it higher than costs)

For this one we bought the candlesticks, plates, and possibly the glass bowl.  Here is an image from a DIY Dollar Store Craft pin we found on Pinterest.  

Although we have the items Marina is really busy with other honey-do tasks and making the Jewelry Tray from our dollar store finds is not our highest priority. We hope to write an update to this section as soon as the DIY Jewelry Tray is completed.  Below are the items we found

This is probably where we went overboard in the challenge because Marina found some other crafts she wanted to make that not only would be good for home organization, but great for home decorations here are images of some of the other items she bought and again we will update this section as we use or finish these dollar store crafts. 

Not spending more than $20 

So we failed on this one we spent $28. We rarely go to the dollar store and we were surprised at what we found. We probably will me making more trips there every once and a while. Luckily although we splurged and went over, going that much over in the dollar store isn’t to bad compared to how full an Amazon or grocery cart can get when you splurge. 

Finding an item to use as one of the Dollar Store Organization Hacks

I went in there looking for a specific hack for the out bathroom here is the Dollar Store Organization Picture this item is based on. 

Here is what we found:

Pretty close to the pin. I really was upset that I couldn’t find it in white, but in our situation where we end up rotating which bathrooms we shower in due to the master bathroom being next to our baby’s room and not wanting to wake him up, it should be really helpful. 

If I were to go back I probably would make a list of all of the Dollar Store Organization hacks I liked and made sure they would work for our home. There were some really clever ones, but not all of them would work for our situation. 

Find something useful we could use on its own

We found two things. my favorite was an armband for my phone when I was jogging. Which I have been thinking about buying for a few weeks. Being the penny pincher I am I never went to look online to buy one, so you can imagine my excitement finding one at the dollar store. 

Here is what I would have paid online for this exercise phone armband

Here is the image of what I got

As you can see there probably is a big difference in quality, however I have used it for a few of my runs and it does its job and I am way glad I saved myself $14 on it. 

The second thing was a baby sippy cup. Now for all intensive purposes, this entertained our son during the longer than expected trip at the dollar store.  Unfortunately upon taking it out of the trunk it got smashed and broke, and we didn’t get a picture of it. 

That being said it looks very similar to one Marina was looking at Walmart and we are sure it was a lot cheaper at the dollar store and it still would have done its job.

Closing thoughts on our Dollar Store Challenge:

Marina:

I thought that this experience was so much fun! I don’t often get to go to the store with both my husband and son and I think it was cute to see them entertain each other. I also would never turn away an opportunity to shop. 🙂

Tanner:

This was a fun challenge. After writing this post I want to go back and try some of the other challenges. This also turned out to not only be cheap date night but was a lot more enjoyable and in ways productive. 

What Dollar Store Challenge are you going to do? 

In closing we want to hear your thoughts on trying our Dollar store challenge, another one mentioned in this article or make your own. we would love to hear about it in the comments. 

While you are at it, you want to see any more dollar store hacks or other interesting articles we find but don’t post on our blog follow us on Pinterest.  You can also subscribe to our Honey-Do Newsletter to get monthly honey-do list tips and hear our progress on some of our challenges such as Dave Ramsey’s Total Make Over and more.