The Chronic Consumer

I usually LOVE shopping, and have never met a sale that I didn’t take advantage of. But Black Friday is one tradition that I simply cannot get behind. I don’t understand the point of camping out in front of stores at 2am in freezing cold temperatures and then subject yourself to the overwhelming crowds and constant jostling just to get a cheap TV or MP3 player. I mean, what’s the point?

So… I’ll just stay in today, thank you very much, and browse my online options!

I think Krispy Kreme doughnuts taste great, but after finding out that they’re like 600 calories each, I stopped going there. I might just let myself backslide a little bit tomorrow, though, as June 3 is National Doughnut Day. Krispy Kreme will be giving away free doughnuts at most their locations (don’t they always do that????), with no purchase necessary. Dunkin’ Donuts is also giving away freebies, but you have to buy a beverage in order to get your doughnut.

Anyway, more details are available on the Krispy Kreme Facebook page if you’re interested!

I recently read the awesome book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. In it, he mentioned that members of the Tarahumara tribe, who are some of the legendary runners that he profiles in the book, eat chia seeds as part of their ultra-lean, efficient diet. Ever since then, I’ve kind of wanted to try some chia for myself, so I was thrilled to come across this offer for a free sample of Greens+ Omega 3 Chia Seeds. If you want a free sample, all you have to do is fill out the online form right here at the Greens Plus blog. They only ship to the U.S. though, so everyone else is out of luck.

Can’t wait to get mine!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any free offers on this blog, so here’s something I came across while browsing the web today. It’s been mentioned and linked on a ton of other blogs, as well as mentioned on Facebook and Twitter, so I’m by no means taking credit for the find. Just passing it along.

Anyway, if you want a Free Tylenol Sleep Kit, which includes a sleep guide with tips for getting better sleep, a satin sleep mask, a CD of soothing sounds, chamomile lotion, and $12 of coupons, then go to the page I linked to and fill out the online form. Easy as that!

Supplies are limited, so better act quickly if you want in on this free offer.

I don’t know what took me so long to discover Amazon’s FREE Kindle books, but now I check the list every single day. I think the reason I never bothered much before was that most of the free books were either classics/public domain stuff that’s already available on hundreds of other sites or were crappy, self-published titles from authors trying to break into the biz.

But now that I’ve been scanning the lists fairly regularly, I see that Amazon occasionally offers more “mainstream” titles. To be sure, there’s still a fair share of romances and sci-fi stuff that I would never touch, but I’ve grabbed about 5 books that sound fairly interesting.

Anyway, if you’re looking for books for your Kindle but don’t want to keep paying $9.99 and up for each title, be sure to check the free offerings from Amazon!

If you’re anything like me, then you love shopping online, but hate paying shipping fees. I have been known to scrap potential purchases if the shipping fees are too high. For instance, I cannot understand the logic of paying $8 for shipping on a $20 t-shirt. That’s 40% of the cost of the product! This mostly happens when places only offer UPS as an option, and I HATE it!

Anyway, I know I’m late to the party, but I’ll be using FreeShipping.org from now on. They specialize in offering free shipping codes for a variety of websites, which gives me a better chance of not having to pay ridiculous fees. I just found them and haven’t had the opportunity to try out any of the codes yet, but I definitely will!!

Today is 7/11, which means that it’s the day the 7-Eleven chain observes its “birthday”. There won’t be any cake and ice cream, but participating locations will be giving away free Slurpees while supplies last. This has been going on since 2002, but I’ve never participated because I do not like Slurpees at all. I’ll be skipping this year’s “celebration” as well, but I do know a lot of folks — particularly the kids — love Slurpees, so I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you to go and get your free one today!

I couldn’t sleep much last night, so I checked out a couple of websites devoted to alerting readers of free promotional items and other goodies and spent a good hour or two filling out forms for swag. I occasionally do this, especially when I see something useful — such as water bottles, key chains, pens, and calendars. I also love getting free samples of food products and coupons for $1 or $2 off. At first it kinda feels like a waste of time, but once the items start coming in the mail, the effort is definitely worth it!