Sunday, January 10, 2016

Dollar Tree Find!

Anyone who knows me well will tell you about my love/hate relationship with Dollar Tree. There are so many awesome things to buy that I spend WAY too much time and money in DT. I'm a teacher, so of course I buy items for my classroom to organize books and other materials.

In my quest for an organized house, I've gotten bins for the bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchen and other areas of the house which have made a few improvements overall. My DT doesn't always have the best selection of items and sometimes they are behind the times on getting certain items in stock unfortunately. But yesterday afternoon (with 2 tired kids in tow), I hit the jackpot! I found the vacuum-sealed storage bags (like Space Bags). I remember trying out Space Bags with my mom back when I lived at home, but they didn't work well. I've had some bad luck with buying some generic things from the DT, so I googled to see if anyone had tried them before. Apparently they've been carrying them for 2 years or more :/ My DT just got them in within the last couple weeks or so for the first time. I read reviews from a few people saying that they worked, so I bought 6 large bags.

I was researching other vacuum space saving bags on Amazon recently and I had an idea of where I'd like to use them. My son has an abundance of blankets he has received over the years. It seems like every Christmas (except this one), he gets a blanket from someone as a gift. He's also claimed several of my "fuzzy" fleece blankets as his own. I've been storing them on the top shelf in his bathroom linen closet for lack of space in his room, but they were almost up to the ceiling. I took them out of the closet, piled them on the couch in the living room, and got to work. I refolded them to fit them in the bags and was able to fit 3 medium sized blankets in each bag. I left room near the seal, so they were relatively easy to close. Once I vacuumed the bags, each one was about 2-3 inches thick. A big improvement! I was so excited. I ended up using 3 of the bags I purchased, sealing up 9 blankets that were previously taking up at least 2-3 feet (in height) of space in the closet. I'm going to check back in a week or so to make sure they aren't leaking air back in, but I'm feeling pretty great about my find!