Dollar Tree -- some of the great deals there

The old maxim, "you get what you pay for" is really true for some things. For instance, Kool-Aid is a pretty cheap beverage. Whereas real fruit juice can be 5, 6, 7 times the cost of the colored water peddled to young families with the thirst of oodles of neighborhood kids to quench. But real fruit juice contains many of the nutrients of the fruit it is extracted from. So, on the one hand, colored water with a bit of ascorbic acid added for the cheapo price of a quarter a packet, or, juice from real fruit, with the nutrients, anti-oxidants and phyto-chemicals from that fruit for a couple of dollars per family-size bottle.

That ramshackle house with broken windows, leaky roof and ancient bathroom fixtures may be priced to move, move, move. But in real estate, they say it's all about location, location, location, and I'd add, maybe also a bit about condition. They don't call them tear-downs for nothing. Meanwhile, a clean, well-kept, modest house, priced moderately higher than the falling apart shack, if chosen, would give you peaceful nights of sleep.

So, you sometimes do get what you pay for. If you're willing to pay more, you may very well get a better outcome on your purchase. But this isn't always the case. I've bought nice clothing for dirt cheap, and had it hold up very well for years, and I've spent what, to me, seemed like a small fortune on a pair of jeans that began to pop rivets on the second wearing (drat on that one, as they were cute, flattering, and bought with a Christmas present gift certificate).

And so it is with shopping for groceries and other household items. Sometimes it's just the luck of finding a good sale that brings you value beyond what you paid, like with loss-leaders at the grocery store. Other times, it's a matter of knowing where to buy certain items. You all know that one of my grocery shopping haunts is Dollar Tree. Some of their items fall into the "get what you pay for" category, with cheap, flimsy craftsmanship. But some items are a real deal, and I use Dollar Tree for my primary source of those items.

I thought that today might be a good day to exchange thoughts about what we've bought from Dollar Tree and found to be great deals. I'll start with my list.

• macaroni and spaghetti pasta (Pegasa brand), 24 oz bags, this works out to 66 cents/lb. For me that's a good price on white flour pasta.
• toothbrushes, 4-pack, soft, they wear out in about a month, but that's when I feel like I want a new/fresh one anyway.
• toothpaste -- sometimes this is a good deal, $1 for a tube of Aim, if I'm out. However, I find larger tubes of Colgate, on sale at Fred Meyer about 2 times per year, and for less (usually 89 cents/tube with coupon, but always a limit)
• bar soap, 3-pack of Dial basics -- again, sometimes I do find it on sale at Fred Meyer, but FM regular price is $1.50 for that same 3-pack.
• automatic dishwashing detergent, Sun brand, a powder -- this is one of my favorite items from Dollar Tree, because in my dishwasher, it works as well as Cascade did for me. (DT liquid automatic dishwashing detergent is horrible, though.) I'm not the only one who buys the Sun brand of auto-dish detergent, apparently, as they sell out frequently. So when I'm at Dollar Tree, if they have any in stock, I buy several boxes at a time.
• liquid dish hand-washing detergent, lemon-scented, LA's Totally Awesome brand, 50 oz -- it's not super great at really greasy pans, but good enough for most hand-washing, and doesn't strip the oils from my hands, AND 50 ounces for $1, that's pretty cheap. For some reason, the other scents have not been nearly as good at cleaning as the lemon scent, for us. Go figure.
• at back to school time, the student planner notebooks. Target sells student planners for about $4-$5 each. The DT ones may not be as "cute" but are a lot cheaper, at a dollar a pop. But the rest of the back-to-school stuff is overpriced at DT.
• pantyhose, my daughter is trying out a pair this week. I'll get her opinion -- oops, she said they tore/got a run on the first day of wearing them
• plastic hangers, when they have a bonus pack of 8 hangers, I buy them. I use plastic hangers not just in closets, but we use about a dozen for hanging dry laundry.
• moisture absorbing crystals (the kind to remove humidity from the air), this is another favorite Dollar Tree item of mine. DampRid is the familiar name brand. Dollar Tree carries the "home Store" brand. I buy these and use in bathrooms, bedrooms and closets. They do help with the mold/mildew from dampness, here.
• bathroom tile/grout cleaner. It has bleach in it. I use it on the kitchen sink, once per month (scrub with baking soda the rest of the month), and I use it on tile/grout for combo bath/shower, and bathroom sinks/toilets, weekly. I do water it down a little, so it's not so strong smelling. Once watered down, it's better for "maintenance" spraying (every few days, to keep mold at bay), rather than deep cleaning. But I prefer using it this way. Before buying the Dollar Tree tile/grout cleaner, I bought Target's Up and Up brand of the same thing for about $3 per same size bottle as Dollar Tree's cleaner.
• kitchen sponges, these are the kind with the green scrubbing side. They come 6 to a package. I cut each of mine in half, giving me 12 scrubbing sponges for $1. Good deal.
• those little felt things that you put under chair legs to help chairs slide on hard floors silently, and w/o scratching a wood floor, a package of 8 for $1, compared to buying a similar item at Target for $4 or $5.
• epsom salt, when they have plain epsom salt, I buy those bags, several at a time (they keep for years). The scented epsom salts are not as good a value, as the bags are much, much smaller than the plain, and the scents are not essential oils (which I prefer for scenting bath products).
• baking soda (I bought a case of baking soda last spring, for 59 cents per box). You can do better at a drug store, like Walgreen's, when they have an in-ad coupon, often at 50 cents/box. But I haven't seen that coupon in a year or two.
• poster board for school projects 50 cents a sheet. This is a great price. We had to buy poster board one year at a local drug store, and spent $1.50 per sheet!
• greeting cards, yet another huge favorite Dollar Tree item of mine. Most of DT greeting cards are 50 cents each. Some are $1, so you have to check for the 50-cent brand. But for 50 cents, I can send my non-frugal (and so would not appreciate my handmade cards) nieces and nephews a "real" birthday card with a couple of bills in it, and have the card not eat up my gift budget for them. In addition to individual greeting cards, you can buy packages of correspondence note cards. My daughter bought 10-packs of cute cards to send to her Sunday school class, announcing the beginning of the fall quarter. That was 10 cents per card!
• votive candles, 4-pack for $1. The best time/place to buy votives is after Christmas, at local drug stores, often for 10 to 15 cents each. But if I don't buy enough for summer candles or next holiday season, I can always pick up a 4-pack at Dollar Tree.
• crackers, savory types, as well as graham crackers and animal crackers, pretzels and rice cakes. I don't buy crackers, pretzels, rice cakes all that often. Those are special treat items for us. But when I do, I always buy them at Dollar Tree. Ritz-type crackers go on sale near the holidays for just under $2 a box at a regular grocery store. I buy the same sort of cracker, in about the same size package, for $1 at Dollar Tree. More elegant-looking crackers (for swankier shindigs), the large, circular crackers (Monet-brand at Dollar Tree), that you might use for making appetizers are also sold at Dollar Tree. When I'm babysitting, I bring little baggies of animal crackers, which I get at Dollar Tree, then portion out into small baggies. Rice cakes are over-priced (for what you get) in regular grocery stores. But at Dollar Tree, they're worth the splurge to me. 
• Dove chocolate bars, individual bars, 79 cents each. Dove chocolate bars are more expensive than the rest of the candy bars in grocery stores, usually 99 cents to $1.19 in a traditional grocery store, but only 79 cents at Dollar Tree.
• paper coffee filters -- I use these, as is, in the large coffee maker, made smaller as an individual cup coffee filter (for an old 1 cup at a time coffee maker, the washable filter is torn, and can't be replaced any longer), and sewn into tea bags for loose leaf tea.
• soy milk, comes in a 1-quart, shelf stable carton. I rarely see soy milk on sale below a dollar any more, so Dollar Tree's price is the best around. The brand is West Soy, a regular supermarket brand.
• kitchen washcloths. I actually buy these in 2-packs in the bath towel section. I buy the white ones, and use for wiping down counters in the kitchen. This is Dollar Tree, so you can imagine that these are not luxury, plush washcloths, but very lightweight, all-cotton cloths that are perfect for kitchen use. (I'd be disappointed in them if I was using them in the bath, though, way too thin.) 2/$1 is a pretty decent price for kitchen washcloths. And when they start to look dingy, I spread them out in the kitchen sink and spray the tile/grout cleaner on them, and allow to sit for a couple of hours. The sink and the cloths come out clean and white, once again.

Perhaps the worst deal at Dollar Tree is found in the home improvement/automotive section. It's the duct tape. You get hardly any tape on the roll, 10 yards. It's mostly cardboard roll. Whereas, at Home Depot, you can buy 55 yards of general purpose duct tape for $3.98. That's 5 & 1/2 times the duct tape for only 4 times the price, or like getting 15 yards of duct tape for free by buying it at Home Depot.

So, tell me, what are your favorite Dollar Tree items?