Shopping with Old Money

Every time I clean up my house I keep unearthing this same stack of cards that I am terrified to throw away. They are gift cards, ancient gift cards that I am pretty sure are already used, but an inkling of doubt has kept them hanging around. To be completely honest with you, I am not even sure if some of them aren't my late mother's that I found when cleaning the house after her death, but wherever they came from they were really starting to stack up.

As I came across them again, I almost swept them into my drawer again for safe-keeping when I remembered something that I couldn't let stand any longer: two mysterious Apple gift cards in my wallet. These were definitely mine and I had definitely used them both, but had I used them completely? I told my husband we needed to go to the Mall and solve some mysteries!

We didn't get through the entire stack because we didn't have the time, but here are the mysteries that were solved:

The Apple Store
Two cards. One had nothing (no surprise) and the other had nine dollars and change on it! This was excellent news - I bought myself a $15 iTunes gift card which will turn into a digital book before this month is through!

Bath & Body Works
One very old gift card (the cashier even thought so), with $25 on it! A salesperson handed me a coupon, as I entered the store that said, "Get $10 off any purchase of $30 or more." It took us awhile to gather the smell hand soaps, bath salts and lotion to meet our quota - but we had fun and used up our gift card completely, with a $41 purchase minus $10 and my gift card, we spent $6 dollars.

Macy's
One card, nothing left on it. No surprise, it was pretty old. My only fear is that it expired and that's why it was empty!

Borders Book Store
One Christmas themed gift card that had $25 left on it! I was about to hang on to this when a Trader Joe's Cookbook caught my eye.  There is a Trader Joe's being built up the block from me and, even if there was not, the recipes look very simple and they have a great way of categorizing Gluten-free (which is one thing I have to be concerned with) and Vegetarian (which is something I am always curious about) recipes.

All of that shopping, plus a stop off in Hot Topic to get myself a brand new Harry Potter T-shirt (as well as some pretty sweet Harry Potter earrings) and to hook up the hubby with some new cool super hero gear, meant that we were very much out of time and needed to get a move on. It was a really productive trip and I have more gift cards to play with next time: Sears, H&M, Pier1 Imports, Barnes & Noble and some others I can't remember.

I guess, in the end, there is a benefit to being home sick all year and forgetting what goodies you got for birthdays, holidays and the like - it turns out to make for a pretty happy Thursday of "found money"!!