The dollar store is not a bad place by any means. You can find significantly lower prices on items like gift bags and greeting cards (which can be as much as $5 each at other stores), and plenty of party favors no matter the occasion, from 4th of July to St. Patrick’s Day, to birthday balloons. While it can be great for some items, there are some that you should really stay away from and spend the extra few dollars to buy name-brand or at least generic brands that will be quality enough for your family.
Cleaning Products
When it comes to quality, it can’t be more important when it comes to cleaning products, especially soaps and detergents. You don’t want to be washing your clothes, or your face and body for that matter, with cheap soaps that can give you a rash. Especially for children and babies that have more sensitive skin than we do, you want to at least give them quality items, where if you don’t want to spend top dollar for, say, Tide, but the Kirkland or Target brand is perfectly fine, the dollar store brand would fall further below, probably expiring, and of a brand that no one has heard of, that you would never see in other stores.
Toys
Speaking of children, you may be going up and down the aisles at the dollar store and want to get something for your kids while you are there, after all, they have cheap toys. Well you may want to pass when it comes to bringing home these toys, as you don’t know where they came from or what they are made of for that matter, so going onto your child’s hands is one thing, but if/when it goes in the mouth is when it will be a problem, with probably plenty of toxins in the cheap plastic material.
Personal Products
Continuing the topic of rashes and questionable ingredients, you don’t want to wash your clothes or your body with cheap products, but you also do not want to add them to your skin as well. Makeup is cheap enough at stores like Target that you should opt for those products instead, especially when it comes to medicines, because let’s face it, if it’s a dollar, you probably do not want to be ingesting it into your body unless it’s a gummy worm candy, which is at least probably a name-brand.
Food Storage
Saving leftovers and having for lunch the next day is a great money saving tip, but you have to heat up your lunch at some point, not to mention wash the container after use, and a dollar store food storage container is not of the best quality where it starts to melt with hot water. So, if you are lucky enough to survive the microwave, you probably won’t have the same luck when you put in the dishwasher, so if it melts there, what kind of toxins go into your food when you put it in the microwave?