For my birthday this year my dad got me this set of teal rocking chairs that had been made over by a little secondhand store I love to visit. Many of our mornings are spent on the front porch, where I sip coffee and work while Scarlette plays with her blocks or paints. I don’t make her wear my sun hat, by the way. She just decided that she wanted to “be a fancy cowgirl” that morning.
I had been waiting until the summer clearance at Target hit 90% off to grab some pillows and other things for the porch and while I missed out on my favorite outdoor pillows, I managed to snag a few cute ones + this rug. Y’all. I paid $2.99 for that rug. This is why I am a clearance stalker.
And that reminded me that I wanted to talk a little about the upcoming unadvertised Target Toy Sale, where they mark down a ton of toys to 70% off. They don’t announce this sale at all, it usually happens the last Thursday of the month in July and is my favorite sale of the year.
Why I Shop The Target Toy Sale
This year I have the honor and privilege of serving as an ambassador for Operation Christmas Child. Every year people can pack a shoebox full of gifts and then Operation Christmas Child delivers those shoeboxes to children in need around the world. Many of the boxes go to orphanages and I got involved with Operation Christmas Child after meeting a young man who had grown up in one of those orphanages. He told us that he still had his shoebox, because it was the only gift he had received as a child after losing his family and that it gave him hope that someone, somewhere cared about him.
Now we pack boxes as a family tradition each year. Shopping the Target toy sale for items to include allows me to stretch my OCC box budget much further and if you’re planning on shopping the sale this month, I would love for you to consider picking up some items for your own Operation Christmas Child box/boxes!
(Here’s Scarlette with one of last year’s boxes. You can read more about how our family incorporates this tradition here)
I buy a lot of our Christmas gifts during the sale, so it is literally like Christmas in July. Maybe this year I’ll wear a Christmas sweater while I shop. Just kidding. It’s like 90+ degrees here and my car has no air conditioning. I’ll wear, like, a bathing suit maybe.
If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, might you know that our family tries to have a mostly non-toy Christmas so you’re probably wondering how the Target sale fits in to that. We’re not anti-toy though, so I normally pick up one or two bigger gifts for her birthday or Christmas during the sale. Typically I scour the sale for things like blocks, board games, play dough, craft sets and Leapfrog reading books.
I also keep a gift closet stocked with potential gifts for kid’s birthday parties through the year. That way I always have something on hand for classmate’s parties so I don’t have to run to the store at the last minute and it keeps my gifts budget way down. I typically pick up Melissa & Doug sets, Matchbox cars, board games and dress up clothes for those.
You can usually get a good idea of what toys will be in the 70% off sale by watching the clearance in the weeks before. Here are a few things marked to 50% off at my store right now:
We have that LeapReader and LOVE it so if you can grab that even at 50% it’s a great deal. The Duplo blocks will be a great deal and I’m hoping to snag those magnetic blocks, since Scarlette loves building with blocks, and those Frozen dress-up shoes because she begged me for them when I was taking this picture.
That book is not 50% off but I took a picture with it because my friend Jess wrote it and just had it picked up by Target to be carried in store! That is a huge deal for any author and I was so excited to find The Fringe Hours on the shelf that I took a picture. And then Scarlette wanted to be in the picture with me and also she was still dressed like a minion. That’s basically her every day outfit now. (Edit! Actually, I forgot that Target will price match Amazon and The Fringe Hours is on sale 50% off on Amazon so you can totally show them on your phone and it get for that price in store. Yes, I am that girl when it comes to good deals.)
Jess and I became friends when we both lived in Nashville and it’s been really just so fun to experience releasing our first books together. She sent me these cookies to celebrate and I took a picture before we ate them because I spend a lot of my fringe hours stalking the Target clearance section so it seemed fitting for this post, lol! So that’s a fun gift you can pick up for yourself while you’re toy sale shopping.
(I would be a way better blogger if I had taken a picture of the book WITH THIS PHOTO but Bread & Wine is what I am currently in the middle of reading that happened to be sitting on my porch. Real life, y’all. But you can read my review of The Fringe Hours here!)
Must Read Tips For Shopping The Target Toy Sale
Here are all my must-read tips for shopping the not-so-secret-anymore Target Toy Sale – like get there early because it’s not such a secret anymore (I used to be one of like, two people shopping it at my store!), how to find out when your store has marked down, how to use my two favorite apps to score coupons + target gift cards while shopping the sale, and the secret trick of the scanners.
Trust me, if you (like me) love really good deals and (also like me) shop for Christmas and birthday gifts year round, this is such a great way to shop on a budget. Also, it’s a great time to sing Macklemore, on account of how one year after we moved into our first home I found garden hoses for 99 cents. And then I was all “BUT IT WAS 99 CENTS, BAG IT!”
*Disclosure: This post is not sponsored, I just really enjoy saving money. Posts may include affiliate links.
