If you’ve been reading and following this blog, you’ll already know that I love shopping for bargains and deals. In addition, you’ll know that one of my favorite stores to find bargains & deals happens to be Big Lots.

When I plan a shopping trip to Big Lots, I plan my trip around their days that they’re offering a Friends & Family discount or I have one of their fabulous coupons in my hands. For example, right before the holidays I used two different $10 off a $50 purchase coupons and two weeks ago I went shopping to their store during their Friends & Family 20% off your entire purchase sale.

To maximize your savings when shopping at Big Lots, you want to go shopping when you have coupons for their store or when they’re running a big sale like the one’s I explained above.

Two weeks ago when I hit up their 20% off entire purchase sale…I mainly wanted to stock up on toilet tissue, facial tissues and dishwasher detergent. My family LOVES the Big Lots brand of quilted toilet tissue that comes 12 double rolls in a pack. Normally it’s priced $5.00 but during during the sale I got it for $3.80 per pack and purchased four of them. Yes, you read that right…I got 12 double rolls of toilet tissue for ONLY $3.80 per pack! My rolls of name brand paper towels came down to .55 cents a roll, so I grabbed 6 of those and my boxes of facial tissues came down to .75 cents a box, grabbed four of those too. I grabbed 2 boxes of Finish Dishwasher Detergent for $2.00 per box.

During this same shopping trip, I snagged up some additional deals and savings too! We love the Huggies brand of baby wipes and normally they sell them for $2.00 a package. During the 20% off sale, I was able to snag 4 packs of them for only $1.60 per package. My aunt loves the Danish Style cookies that come in the tin and those were regularly $2.50 but were marked down (after Christmas) by 50% so that would of came down to $1.25 and guess what? They then gave me 20% off that price too.

I’m working on some organization projects around the house so my next stop was to their home goods department. The clear and white (shoe box size) plastic storage containers are normally priced $1.00 each. During the 20% off sale, I ended up paying .80 cents per storage container, so I picked up 12 of those. They’re perfect for getting my craft items organized, organizing toiletries under the sink vanity, in the linen closet to organize stuff in there and so forth. Then I spotted these adorable liquid hand soaps in a penguin bottle in their left-over Christmas section. They were normally $2.00 each, marked down to $1.50 each. Since they were leftover Christmas items, the sign said take 50% off which brought them down to .75 cents each. At the register, they gave me another 20% off for the Friends & Family sale making each bottle .60 cents each. I had 4 in my cart and sent hubby back to grab the last 6 of them. You can’t beat moisturizing liquid hand soap for .60 cents a bottle!

I got a LOT of stuff and I mean a LOT of stuff and all of it cost me less than $55.00, so I was a really happy camper when I snagged up all of those bargains and deals!!! What kind of bargains and deals have you found lately?