The Art of Shopping with a Gift Card

After yesterday's incident, I decided a lidded cup was in order. Because I am only buying essentials this month, I hit up Home Goods with a $25.00 gift card from my last year's students.

There were two objectives to the trip:
1. Leave with a travel mug.
2. Don't spend any actual money.

I found the cup pretty quickly and it was only $3.99! I then set out to spend the remainder of the gift card without going over and without buying random stuff that would add to the clutter that I am constantly trying to declutter.

Home Goods has LOTS of random stuff. Exhibit A, B, C and D.

I did not need random animals, picture frames, pillows, candles, giant vases, or clocks. I scoured the store and eventually brought home three things:

A lidded cup, a new cupcake pan to replace the old rusty one I have, and a new hairbrush!  I know it's super random but tell me, when was the last time you bought a new hair brush?  For me it was about 10 years ago and it was time!

I carefully priced items and the total ended up being $23.34! Bad new, sad news...they wouldn't cash out the remaining $1.66 so I'm stuck with a gift card that can't actually buy anything. Next time I'll just pass it off to the person behind me in line.