Christmas in October

I am pleased to announce that for once, I am ahead of the game when it comes to Christmas shopping. I started this weekend, and with the exception of one item, albeit a large one, I've pretty much finished Matthew's stuff. I still have some to do for Luke, but I think his will be easy. I don't have to worry about making sure I have the important things on his list, since he's too little to make one, and he likes everything.

Let me share with you my secret. K-Mart layaway. To be honest, I never even considered layaway as an option until after Matthew was born. I'm ashamed to admit this, but before I was adult, paying my own bills, etc., I thought layaway was just an option for people who couldn't afford to buy anything. I am so ashamed that I thought bad of people who used the layaway option. That was before I realized how much it could cost to buy Christmas presents for kids! A cousin told me about it, and said she puts her kids' stuff on layaway every year. Y'all, it's fantastic! You go to the store two or three months before Christmas, select out your toys before they're picked over, pay 10% up front, and then make payments every two weeks for 8 weeks. They only charge you a couple of dollars as a fee, and you get to pay for your items a little at a time, instead of putting it on a credit card. But the best part of all....you don't have figure out a place to hide the loot for months! I can hide stuff for a couple of weeks, but I can already tell that the older the kids get, the harder it's going to be to hide things from them!

Unfortunately, the only store that still offers layaway is K-Mart. Wal-mart stopped a couple of years ago, and I'm not sure if Toys R Us ever had it or not. I don't regularly shop K-Mart, because it's not that convenient for me, and admittedly, they don't have as good a selection as some of the other stores, but anything I can find there, I'll put it on layaway. We weren't the only ones doing it either. There wasn't a huge amount of traffic there, but there was another couple with a buggy full of toys at the layaway desk in front of us.

And now, I'm sure that I have those hot items that will be hard to find after Thanksgiving!


***I've found out that Toys R Us does offer layaway, but it's only on certain items, and only if that certain item is out of stock in the store. You're actually putting it on layaway with their distribution center.