My Broken Cow Handles: Milking Cheap Ceramic for Frugal Lessons

Those are my broken cow handles (left) posed on a kitchen counter top. Made from ceramic, the broken handles were once attached to dollar store coffee mugs. As such, the story about the broken handles has provided me with insights about frugal living, smart purchases and preservation of possessions.

About two days ago, I found the broken cow handles when I cleaned the kitchen counter tops. Tidy counter tops are linked to increased wealth, according to Feng Shui Principles about space clearning and energy work. I've been on a campaign to boost my bank account by de-cluttering my home. (My new wealth-building program.)

Beyond the lessons of tidiness and order, this is what I've learned from the broken mugs:

• Shop Carefully: At a buck each, the cow mugs -- so cute, so different, so cheap -- came from a dollar store in our area. Shortly after we bought them, the handles fell off the cow mugs. Were we careless? Was the merchandise faulty? Should we be more careful about buying items from dollar stores? Those are a few of the questions that are now on my mind.


• Preserve Possessions: Most of our coffee mugs are in decent shape, albeit with a few chips here and there. And clearly, the cows mugs suffered the greatest damage in record time. But honesty prompts me to confess that other mugs (not many) in my home are missing handles. Are we careless with our possessions? Do we let our dishes pile up too often? Are we mugging our coffee mugs (and bank accounts) with careless housekeeping?


• Make Repairs Wisely: We tried to repair the cow mugs. (Super glue does not hold up in the dishwasher.) But what is the value of repairs? Does it make sense in terms of time, effort and resources? What are the risks? What if the repaired handles break while we're holding hot tea or coffee and our frugal repairs lead --heaven forbid--to an expensive emergency room visit?


• Stay Neat: It's taken me a while to track down all of the cow handles. And I think at least one handle is still missing in action. Why are my kitchen counter tops so messy? Why did it take me so long to find the missing cow handles and why have I held onto useless handles and so much junk?

Those are a few of the questions that are running around my head as I look at the broken cow handles. I still don't know what to do with cows or the handle-less mugs. Letting go of clutter and even useless ceramic cows can be difficult.

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Bad Vitamins & Other Dollar Store Duds to Avoid

I like dollar stores, but there are some real duds in the bargain bins. In the Aug./Sept. issue of ShopSmart, a Consumer Reports publication, there is an informative list of items to avoid at dollar stores:

• Vitamins: Consumer Reports found that some of the dollar store vitamins had truth gaps. Not every ingredient listed on the label was actually used and the vitamins weren't properly absorbed in a test. Best Buy: ShopSmart recommends name brands: Bayer One A Day or Centrum. "In our tests, those brands dissolved properly and had all the claimed nutrients," ShopSmart said. Or read labels for verification from U.S. Pharmacepia and NSF International.

My personal pet peeves: vitamins with artificial colors. I purchased one drug store brand and was surprised and annoyed to find Yellow and Red dyes on the label. Yuck. Now, I look for brands with no dyes or harmful chemicals. So it pays to read labels at standard stores as well.

• Electrical Products: At some dollar stores there are electrical products (holiday lights, fans, and extension cords) with bogus safety labels. That's dangerous because "undersized wiring" could spark electrical fires. Look for: certification from Underwriters Laboratories and make sure the certification is real by checking for a hologram on the UL logo. UL also has a link (http://www.ul.com/) where we can check out product certifications.


• Toddler Toys: Beware of imported items with small or sharp parts.


• Name Confusions: For example, beware of "Dinacell" batteries, which are packaged like name brand Duracell. Bogus or almost-name brand products are usually counterfeits. And it's more than a name game, ShopSmart found some bogus batteries that leaked acid.


• Vinyl lunch sacks: Some dollar AND DEPARTMENT STORES sell vinyl lunch boxes with traces of lead. Best Buy: soft sacks lined with nylon instead of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), ShopSmart recommended.

I highly recommend ShopSmart. It's a smart read and very entertaining.

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How To Find Groceries at Dollar Stores & The Top 10 Items for a Buck

We buy some of our groceries from the dollar store and we're not alone. Many dollar stores have an interesting assortment of food items and I know of at least one dollar store that sells fresh produce also.

From our local dollar stores, we have purchased Kedem Grape Juice for 50 cents (full price about $3.), chips, cookies, canned goods and bottled water.

Here's how we do it:

• Check dates. I look for expiration dates, sell-by dates and best-if-used-by dates.
• Study the packaging: If the item looks "gently worn," we put it back on the shelf.
• Know the actual price at a grocery store. Not all $1 deals are really deals. Sometimes the unit price is actually the same or higher than the grocery store.
• Buy-one/try-one: After being burned by a batch of stale snacks, we taste-test dollar store deals first. We buy a sample. If it's either stale or hated by the family, we don't purchase more.
• Need-based test: If we need snacks for a party or grape juice for a Friday night meal ritual, then we'll buy the item on sale at the dollar store. But if we're just spending money on empty calories (more junk), we'll cut back on our dollar store deals.
• Stock up: When my husband found our brand of kosher grape juice for 50 cents (down from $3), he really stocked up and brought $40 worth, which lasted us for a year.

I've had bad luck buying water at one dollar store. The water bottles were super cheap, but I could taste the plastic in the water. Maybe the bottles were on the shelf too long. We try to avoid bottled water anyway and now have a cool filter on our kitchen faucet.

We've also picked up stale chips, but we've fixed that error by crisping up the chips in the microwave. We did not, however, stock up on the stale chips.

Meanwhile, from the book Treasure Hunt by Michael J. Silverstein here is a list of the

Top 10 Items Purchased at Dollar Stores:

1. Cleaning Supplies for the home.
2. Decorations for different holidays and seasons
3. Gift wrapping supplies (paper & bags)
4. Paper goods
5. Supplies for the laundry
6. Dishes and housewares
7. Containers for storage
8. Batteries
9. Beauty & Health Supplies
10. Dry goods

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