Local Easter Bargains

Patch has an Easter gift for your! Here are 5 great ways to help keep costs down when helping the Easter Bunny fill up your kids' baskets!

Homewood-Flossmoor Freecycle 

Freecycle has been buzzing with lots of Easter freebies, including free Easter baskets and grass. All you have to do is make arrangements to pick them up!  

Dollar Tree has some really cute items for your kids with their favorite characters on them. If you look in the birthday party section, there are multiple small toys for a dollar instead of one. Take a look for Disney items, inexpensive candy, toy cars and much more!

Did you know that you can use coupons on clearance items? Did you also know that you can plan ahead for what will be on clearance? Sites like totallytarget.com will tell you what others have found on clearance, add coupons and often those items will be cheap or free! 

You probably have heard that Menards often has items that are completely free with rebates, but did you know that some of those items would be perfect for an Easter basket? Menards offers school supplies like pencils and pens, candy and different toys that have free rebates. We keep these items in a closet to save for the next holiday. You can't beat free! 

Craigslist: Free

Did you know that Craigslist also has a free section for the south suburbs? You can search for children's toys, outdoor toys like sandboxes and slides and even large swingsets. We found a huge swingset with 2 swings, rings, a slide and a fort last year on Craigslist's free section. All we had to do was take it down and put it up. Imagine your child's face on Easter morning when there is a swingset in the yard! Better yet, imagine your beefy bank account after saving so much cash!

If you use your imagination, and do a little searching online, you can save on money and time and still get a lot of wonderful things for any holiday!