Dollar Store deals

I suppose the little stuff first. As the day nears, I don't feel quite as eager to tell my brother that I don't want to see him any more. Also, I was recently told that in the USA, if you negotiate down credit card debts, you have to pay tax on the portion that the credit card company writes off. That sounds a little scary to me. Also, 119 days worked this year and 6/20 night shifts down.
As for the slightly larger item on today's post, I recently ran across two things to do with dollar store items, so I thought I'd do my own. They tend to be fairly low quality in general. Looking though my spending log, I pulled out a couple items that I thought were of particularly good value.
Going backwards, the most recent one was the maple creme cookies, $1/325g, off hand, I don't know what they usually cost, but next time I'm at the grocery store, I'll find out. I'm pretty sure that the unit price is higher though.
Next item is a stapleless stapler. These things are hard enough to find let alone finding a good deal on one. I still find myself using a regular stapler more often, and it's taken me a while to warm up to this one. Also, I seldom find myself stapling things, so maybe it wasn't such a good deal. Though if you only find yourself stapling a few pages every now and then, your stapler doesn't need to be heavy duty and you can get by with a cheap one.
Following that, there's a tuna sauce meal. Very delicious and good shelf life too. Wonderful standby, however it's a discontinued item. I felt that offered good value and deliciousness that I went back to get more before they were all gone.
Last item on my list is a keychain sized 1AA battery to usb/cell phone charger and flash light. The flashlight is actually a tiny LED, not a regular bulb. It's a handy size and the light is not good, but reasonable and I've used it to give my mp3 player a boost every now and then. I'm not really a heavy cell user though so it might be a while till I try that. Also, should I ever get into robotics again, I could see myself testing these out to provide a mobile source of 5V power for my little machines. I wonder how stable they are.
That seems to sum it up. I also got a couple things that I felt really weren't that nice. A couple of containers that were labelled as leak proof but actually leak considerably. I've been tempted to try putting jello in them, but haven't gotten around to it yet. They're still good for storing paper clips, candy and other small items.
Headphones are also a perpetual disappointment, I've been through a lot of those. There's also a number of items that I didn't think were good that I haven't tried and probably won't.