Super Savings in the Bathroom

Working on the finances and saving money is a pretty common January goal. I got a couple of nice little boosts on that in the past week. First, I finally received the Disney bath products package I won through 5MinutesForMom (I also won the Disney cold and flu pack giveaway over there, so maybe that's why it took two and a half months to ship stuff, hmm?)

This worked out well, because we had been running low on kid bath soap. We do like to use "kid stuff" separate from the adult stuff (it just makes it nicer and more fun for everyone in our family if we have separate bath products) -- but I seem to have a heck of a time finding it my regular shopping stops. Now, we're set for quite a while on both soap and shampoo, and we used the Disney Princess strawberry-scented bubble bath right away for a weekend bathtime. (I don't think there were any branding conflicts with the Barbie Puppy Swim School Pool being in the same tub ...)

We've also tried out the Mickey Mouse apple juice as the send-along beverage for an ice skating excursion. The taste got good reviews, but it seems harder to open for a young kid than it first looked.

I also had one of those "once in a while" great deals days at CVS: My favorite brand of toothpaste and DH's favorite brand of soap were both on sale, as was liquid hand soap. The toothpaste came with an Extra Care Bucks deal, and so did three Hallmark cards -- such as the 99¢ ones. Plus, I had coupons for the toothpaste and the hand soap, and I had previous Extra Care Bucks on hand.

So, I purchased:

1 tube of Colgate at $2.77
1 package of Irish Spring at 99¢
1 container of Softsoap at 99¢
3 kids' birthday cards* at 99¢ apiece
- $1,00 coupon for Colgate
- 40¢ coupon for Softsoap
- $4.00 ECBs
Total Out of Pocket: $2.88
plus, gained $1.00 ECB on Colgate and $3.00 ECBs on cards
With the ECBs, I came out $1.12 ahead on the deal

(By the way, regarding the title of this post: thank you so much, Magic School Bus DVD, for avoiding the explanation of the normal final stops in the human digestive system, so that I then have to tackle the topic during bathtime for my little tactless scientist. That was sarcasm. We shall see if similar thanks are in order to The Read-Aloud Handbook's science recommendation
on the topic.)


*(A category in my "cards on hand" that was running dangerously low. The other category that needs replenishing is, sadly, sympathy cards.)