Link to Hope
The theme for February on the Link to Hope calendar is Heat and Light. Items to bring hope and light to people’s lives – candles and holders, hot water bottles, torches, socks.
Hopefully you managed to get some of the candle jars from Dunelm I mentioned in my last blog post which were 50p. They still have a set of 3 smaller candles for £2.50 so roughly 84p each but they only have a burn time of 12 hours. They have several candles in jars for £1.00 which vary between 20 and 29 hour burn times.
Ikea have some smaller ribbed candle jars reduced to 50p with a 12 hour burn time. They’ve also got some packs of 30 scented tealights reduced to 50p, but they aren’t available in my local store or for delivery. They also have a couple of candles in tins reduced to £1.00 which have 24hour and 28 hour burn times. Alternatively, you could buy a pack of plain tealights and add 10 or more per shoebox along with a glass jam jar, or dessert jar. Ikea have 100 Glimma 4 hour burn time tealights for £4.00.
Dunelm don’t seem to have reduced their hot water bottles much this year, so my recommendation is to try Proper Job. They still have small 500ml hot water bottles which fit neatly into a smaller shoebox. They don’t come with a cover, but you could include a tea towel to wrap it in or make a simple rectangular cover. Proper Job have full size 2L hot water bottles for £2.50 without a cover. There are also some with a cover for £3.99 but it doesn’t state the size. Personally, I’d rather buy the smaller hot water bottles which fit more easily into standard shoeboxes, you could even put 2 in per box so if the box goes to an elderly couple they each get a hot water bottle 😊. (Or one for the feet and one to keep the body/hands warm). If you don’t have a Proper Job store nearby they do sell online with a delivery charge per order of £3.95.
At the moment I haven’t come across any particular bargains for wind up torches if just need to buy one or two. Amazon have two hand crank and solar charge torches for £7.99 including delivery if you have Prime. If you are packing a lot of shoeboxes or can buy with a group of friends Amazon have 10 Hand Crank torches for £11.68 or 24 Hand Crank torches for £24.99 – there are lots of other combinations, but these seem to be the cheapest per unit.
The other suggestion on the calendar is socks! The cheapest ladies socks I’ve seen recently are in Proper Job – they still have a pack of 5 pairs of ladies trainer socks for £1.00. I’ve ordered 20 pairs of men’s work socks from Temu which were £6.43 plus £2.00 postage. Including postage, they work out at just over 42p a pair. If ordering online double check that the price quoted on the initial advert is for the number, you think you’re buying. Several sites including eBay, Temu and Amazon show a number of items for a certain price, but when you click on the item the price quoted is for a lower number of items. With socks some sellers quote the number of socks not the number of pairs of socks!
Temu often have children’s socks for reasonable prices, and supermarkets such as Asda usually have good offers on packs of school socks. Poundstretcher advertise 3 pairs of men’s sports socks for £1.00 but it can be difficult to find them in store.
This months Bargains
Home Bargains have a few hats and gloves reduced. I bought a sparkly children’s hat reduced to 77p and a pair of children’s fleece lined gloves for 72p. However, they have children’s fluffy gloves at their standard price of 60p. They also had handbag hairbrushes for 79p. Also not reduced but cheaper than a lot of shops, they have 30 felt pens for 99p or 12 felt pens for 59p.
Till next month