Step 2, a step above the rest!

I was going to save this for my Friday Five post, where I’ll write about the top 5 products or activities I’ve used or done this week, but I just couldn’t wait. Plus, I have to tell ya’ll about every little detail, so it’s going to be waaaay too long for the Friday Five.

I have a confession to make ya’ll. Being the fourth generation super-frugal mom that I am, I like to occasionally peruse the furniture, toy, book, and video aisles of our local resale shops. The last big score at a resale shop was a 5 year old King size hide-a-bed couch for $48. It was in pristine shape and I don’t think the hide-a-bed part had ever even been opened. It was a little dusty smelling from being in storage somewhere, but still a great find! We spent another $25 to rent a cleaning machine to clean it up and came in with a grand total of $73 to replace our crummy pseudo-couch from IKEA. It was a sweet deal, ya’ll, sugary sweet.

Yesterday, well let me tell you, I scored even bigger I think! The last couple months I’ve been watching garage sales, craigslist.org, freecycle.org, and the occasional resale shop for a kitchen for my little helper. I hadn’t found anything, but I hadn’t really been looking that hard either. Anyway, I got the inkling to head over to Goodwill, where I found a Step 2 Little Helpers Complete Kitchen for a whopping $7.99! It was in dire need of a good cleaning, but all the stickers and parts were in tact except for the little pretend phone. For $7.99 I figured we could live without the little pink phone. So I lugged that 33 lb thing up to the front of the store with it in one hand and L on my hip. Along the way to the cashier I also grabbed a couple of 8 episode Caillou DVD’s. If ya’ll haven’t heard of Caillou, well he is just the cutest little cartoon boy ever, and I highly recommend his antics for your preschool watching pleasure. My entire purchase wound up being $12.86.

After spending a good 39.5 minutes trying to puzzle our new kitchen into my little compact Hyundai in the 182 degree Texas heat, we were all sweaty, secure and headed home. I cleaned it up last night after putting L down, and let me tell you ya’ll we have already got our $7.99 worth of entertainment out of this sweet little find. In fact, the nanosecond L was fed and dressed we loaded it up with her dishes and play food and almost 4 hours of playing later, I’m typing to the sound of her fervently washing dishes in that little purple sink.

So I got to thinking this morning it really would be nice to have that little pink phone to complete our Little Helpers Complete Kitchen. I figured after only spending $7.99 on it, I could afford sending another $5 to some ebay seller for the phone. To my dismay, there was no such little pink phone on ebay, so I did what any good mother would do, I called the number on the back of the toy. I thought, even if I had to pay $10 to order it from the company, it would still be worth it, so a dialing I did go.

After explaining to the lady on the phone that I bought it second hand so I didn’t know how old it was, she figured out what model I had by the color of the counter top and the phone holder. She took down all my information, and then, (here it comes ya’ll-it’s the best part-) she told me I should receive the phone, FREE OF CHARGE, in about a week!

What? Seriously? No charge. That’s right, I said NO CHARGE! I couldn’t believe it either, so the folks at Step 2 have a HUGE four thumbs up from this super-frugal mom and her very own little helper!

Did I mention the kitchen retails for $119.99?

For those of you that are little rusty at math (which would normally include me, but for some reason when it comes to dollars and cents I have no trouble at all), that is a savings of $112.00. Whoa! Throw the DVD’s in which retail at Wal-Mart for $12.99 each, and that is total savings of $134.00! Sa-weet!

Dave Ramsey would be so proud.