My Recent Scratch and Dent Store Shops

My last trip to the scratch and dent store one ended up amazingly, discovering a great treasure: super frugal gluten free vegan raspberry cookies that my family devoured. I had some free time the other day between errands, so decided to run to the scratch and dent store in the hopes that I'd be able to buy more of those cookies... but unfortunately they only had a few of the packages there, so I emptied out the rest of their very small stock, but some is better than none.

They also had toasted sesame oil, three bottles for $5.71, so I bought three of them, since that is something so extremely expensive locally and this is a better price than I can get anywhere.

There were boxes of coconut cream, something I love but haven't bought lately because its relatively expensive. They had 2 larger 500 ml boxes for $2.85, or 3 smaller 250 ml ones for the same price. While the bigger boxes obviously were the better value, sometimes you only need a bit of coconut cream, and in that instance its better sense frugality speaking to open a smaller shelf stable box and use it up than open a bigger one and need to find a way to use it up.

They also had high quality gluten free pasta for $1.42 a package, which, while more expensive than the gluten free pasta I usually buy at scratch and dent stores, is still much cheaper than the equivalent at the grocery store, and since it was better quality, I wanted to buy some. So I bought 4 of those.

I was going to pay at the register and I noticed some other stuff on display. The scratch and dent stuff doesn't only sell groceries; that's just a small percentage of what they sell; they have a lot of discount products there. I noticed a picnic mat being sold, and I thought about getting one of those, and then I remembered what I was actually looking to buy... a tent. 

Ok, let me change the topic here for a bit. We went camping on the beach last summer and it was really wonderful, and we definitely will be camping there again this summer. However, we learned some lessons from last trip and this time we decided to do it better and make it more comfortable. We need a large shade canopy, which I found on a discount website locally, and we need another tent so we're not so squished, and we needed more sleeping bags. I had looked online attempting to buy tents and sleeping bags, but I wasn't having so much luck finding what I wanted that wasn't really expensive.

So when I was at the scratch and dent store, I just asked one of the workers there, fully expecting a no, if they have any tents. "Of course we do, what size do you want?" They had anywhere from a three person to a six person tent. Oh, and do you want a regular tent or a pop up tent, they also wanted to know. I looked at prices and sizes and decided to go with a three person pop up tent (largely because it was smallest and therefore would be easiest to travel with, both home from the store, and on our camping trip). Pop up tents are super awesome because there are no separate parts: you literally unroll and unfold and your tent is standing. This pop up tent cost only 34 dollars!

And since I struck it rich with the tent, I decided to take a chance and ask them if they had sleeping bags. And surprise surprise, they had three (we needed four) being sold $9.50 each!

Amazing! They also had roll up mats to put under your sleeping bag to make it more comfortable, but at that point I had no room left in my cart, but plan on buying them another time to make the camping more comfortable.

The last thing pictured above is gluten free bread. I was in the same building as the store where they sell discount gluten free bread, so I bought 10 packages of the cheapest gluten free bread they had, at $1.40 a package.

Even though we haven't gone camping yet, we still tried out the tent. I put it up in the living room and the kids had a blast playing in it, with each other and with their friends. It was a cinch to put up and a cinch to put away, so I can see this being a regular thing.

Anneliese and Rose decided to put every single pillow and blanket in the house that they could find in the tent and make it a cozy place and then pillow fight.

Awesome fun.

I am so thrilled by this most recent shop.

Are you campers? If so, what equipment do you bring with you to make your camping as enjoyable and comfortable as possible? Where do you buy it low cost? If you have a local scratch and dent store, do they just sell food or do they sell other things as well?