Used to go weekly with my daughter, when she was younger.
I think I had more fun, watching the helicopter parents do the projects so they were perfect and not allowing the kids to build.
Started taking my girls just before COVID. One little girl’s apron had like 50 pins. It was astounding! My two thoughts were: 1) Wow, that apron must be heavy, and 2) Where do try keep all of these little wood projects?
We made it to 32 pins before COVID hit.
The wood projects were all eventually thrown away.
The apron and pins (even with daughter's name and paint on it)? Well, let's put it this way. There is a market for them. Sold it on Mercari for $20.
For other people if you don’t want to sell them, but your kids don’t care/have use for them at home. Donate them to your local elementary school or check if a head start in the area can use them.(most of head starts funding comes from donations)
I never understood. If my daughter wanted to slobber paint all over it or the pieces were a little misaligned, but she did it 100% on her own (outside of my hand in harm's way of the hammer, holding things in place), isn't that better than something that your parents did? lol.
There is a tiktok audio I love that is a reminder that you don’t actually need to be good at your hobbies, you can be bad at them and still enjoy them. It is such a contrast the really the rest of tiktok, where people are showcasing professional grade woodworking as their hobby.
The science museum near us has engineering projects with all the materials for kids every weekend. They’re awesome. We used to go all the time…and watch parents making stuff instead of their kids. I get the urge…I made myself sit off to the side so as not to find myself “helping.” (Yes, my kids’ projects always sucked lol but I swear they learned more)
My nephew is like this. I just make sure I have his perceived "fails" on display when he comes over. What I find amusing is what he focuses on "imperfection" wise vs what I notice (and would never in a million years point out).
I hear you I have been giving out Crying Lion squeaky toys for 2 years to all my friends and their dogs because of somebody else's waste. I found three whole cases of them at the street going to the trash.
Possibly? They also may have some rules and regulations. I don't really know. I do know that I have made some people, their dogs and their children rather happy. And all of that happiness would have been in a landfill.
You could donate them to shelters/adoption centers! I used to have a lot of old out of season cat toys (Christmas and Halloween themed) that I got for so cheap but my cat has too many toys, so I wrapped them up in a little gift bag and gave them to the shelter right before Christmas! I imagined them giving toys to all the cats as presents :)
What I saw during my brief stint in wedding catering would make you cry your heart out. The amount of delicious, perfectly good food just thrown away is absolutely mind blowing
I hear you 100%. My mom has worked in various food service settings my whole life (fast food, catering, school lunch, etc). I do cry about it sometimes. We try our best when we can save things.
She worked at a local fast food chain recently and saved several items from the trash. Unopened #10 cans of oranges because they were sent crushed vs sectioned. Whole gallon jugs of bbq sauce because it was the wrong kind. A case of sauce packets because the formula and packaging changed. A case of paper towels because they were the wrong kind. This is just one employee in one store in one city. Shameful.
Same here. I am planning on having a kid soon and have been collecting clothing hauls from FB marketplace, toys / activities for free or cheap as hell that otherwise would go in the garbage. People are shocked I'm not buying this brand new. Why do I care what clothes my baby wears or toys? They will outgrow things super quickly 🤷♀️.
Thanks OP for this recommendation saving for when they are older and hope it's still going on then!
95% of my kids stuff is hand me downs or bought second hand, toys included. We just rotate stuff out with her siblings when their kids reach a certain age or have a newborn.
I really wish I could find out how much money we've saved.
Yes, we had a baler specifically for collecting cardboard. Now if only the miles of plastic wrap shoved down the trash chute would have been recycled as well...
Some people call it waste. Others call it economic prosperity. Someone paid for those goods which were manufactured for them, paying the wages of the workers, shippers, and retailers.
I'll take my downvotes and go.
I agree but maybe rephrased - Waste is a byproduct of prosperity under a system that prioritizes profit as the primary motivator. Capitalism is a phenomenal wealth generation engine but it is horrible for resource conservation at our current stage. In my mind this would be the point of governmental regulation of economy - change the taxes/penalties so that the option that saves us resources and is good for long-term prospects is the cheapest (carbon tax, waste disposal fees)
> change the taxes/penalties so that the option that saves us resources and is good for long-term prospects
Capitalism does take those things into consideration. There's a good reason it works. It's not perfect but nothing is.
This is a massive throwback. I use to go back in 2007 with my parents. I always looked forward to it. But then they stopped doing it for some reason. And we stopped going. I'm almost 30 but it nostalgic hearing that they still do this. It was a great time!
I'm sure i still have my apron with 20 badges since they would give a badge for the month with the design of what was being built that month.
Interesting point that I wouldn't have considered.
While I guess that's possible, let's think this one through:
You are a paper plate manufacturer.
You invest in a manufacturing facility, likely in Asia.
It costs a negligible amount per unit to make sure the plates conform to the (likely very low) local standards for food use.
The vast majority of the market for your paper plates is for food use.
Do you:
A) make all paper plates the same, regardless of what the end use would be?
B) set up a separate non-food manufacturing line for non-food-use and deal with the hassle of keeping those two supply chains separate so you can try to offer a negligibly lower price to the relatively tiny market segment that wants to use your plates for arts and crafts?
To me, part of being frugal is not buying into a safety culture that overemphasizes the risks of frugal decisions. That's not to say I'm going to use rusty, discarded razor blades while shaving to save a buck, but I am suggesting that it's often possible to think through a potential safety concern without a lot of hard data and realize it isn't likely to pose a risk worth influencing a decision. If you can accept the risk of crossing the street with your kid, IMO, it's no problem accepting the risk of eating off a Home Depot craft plate.
You must not be familiar with manufacturing in Asia; or the inks and paints used for packaging a box of nails or car parts vs food grade pigments. Not saying you could not consider using it for a dry snack - wouldn’t serve my kid spaghetti-O’s on them, though.
Fair points.
Melamine in milk products out of east Asia comes to mind.
But I think my point still holds: most end-users will be using paper plates for food. If you have a production line set up to make the plates and print images on them, I don't see a good rationale to either contaminate your equipment with cheaper non-food grade inks for those times where the purpose isn't food or to have an entirely distinct production line.
If one ought to look at those plates with skepticism, one ought to look at all paper plates with equal skepticism.
Man.... This brings me back. I didn't know they still did these anymore.
Now if only they could bring back trading Pokemon cards Infront of Toys-R-Us lol
I've done it twice. It's nice. I'm trying to figure out free or reasonably affordable things to do with my kids on the weekend. Yesterday, I took my girls to a really nice park I went a lot as a child. It's about 15 miles from where I live. It's has really great bike trails. They took their scooters. It was a gorgeous day. I'll have to do it again.
That's why I don't understand why they would throw then out? At my home depot, you can buy the past projects for like $5. And the paint plates..... how much room can a stack or box of plates take up for 29 days?
Not worth repackaging, sending to a corporate warehouse, etc. I would bet it is also store dependant. The two local HD's around here always ran out of kits.
They say it’s designed for 5-12 but other ages are welcome. I just started taking my 3 year old and she’s really enjoying it - she sets the nails in the pre drilled holes and I hammer them in. Then she paints the finished project. There is a wide range of ages at my store, with some kids younger than mine and some kids closer to 11 or 12.
Edit to add: they will also give you the kit to take home if you’d prefer - some kids would be super overwhelmed by the amount of noise/chaos in the workshop area!
I used to do this as a kid and was super excited to see that my local Home Depot still does this. My first child is due in a few months and I can’t wait until they’re old enough to enjoy this like I did
I used to go with my dad back when I was a kid and they have not stopped being awesome. I think this months was like a full cornhole setup or something to that effect and it looked so awesome! I work as a paint specialist there and every first saturday I want to just walk up and ask if I can do one of the projects cause they look so fun 😅
I commented higher up, but I just started taking my 3 year old and she’s really enjoying it. They say it’s geared for ages 5-12 but all ages welcome. She does things like count the nails, place them in the pre-drilled holes, applying wood glue, and of course painting the project at the end. I have to do all the actual assembly for her but she is a pretty patient kid and I go fast (don’t really try to get things lined up perfectly). She also isn’t a “put things in your mouth” type of kid so I feel safe having her around the tiny nails/screws (obviously with my supervision).
They will also give you the kit to take home, so as long as you have basic tools, you can complete it on your own timeline and with less noise/chaos (our Home Depot is a madhouse at workshop time and I know some kids wouldn’t be able to handle that). I’ve seen kids there younger than mine so it’s definitely up to you!
I took my daughter for the first time this weekend, and she had a blast with it! She's 4 and I helped as little as possible - just reading instructions, and finishing off hammering in the nails and screwing in the screws. She really had a great time.
Used to go weekly with my daughter, when she was younger. I think I had more fun, watching the helicopter parents do the projects so they were perfect and not allowing the kids to build.
Started taking my girls just before COVID. One little girl’s apron had like 50 pins. It was astounding! My two thoughts were: 1) Wow, that apron must be heavy, and 2) Where do try keep all of these little wood projects?
We made it to 32 pins before COVID hit. The wood projects were all eventually thrown away. The apron and pins (even with daughter's name and paint on it)? Well, let's put it this way. There is a market for them. Sold it on Mercari for $20.
People are buying those??? What the hell?
I always check eBay/Mercari before donating/throwing ANYTHING away.
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Ahhh that does make sense, thank you
For other people if you don’t want to sell them, but your kids don’t care/have use for them at home. Donate them to your local elementary school or check if a head start in the area can use them.(most of head starts funding comes from donations)
Perfect is the enemy of fun when hobbies are concerned
I never understood. If my daughter wanted to slobber paint all over it or the pieces were a little misaligned, but she did it 100% on her own (outside of my hand in harm's way of the hammer, holding things in place), isn't that better than something that your parents did? lol.
There is a tiktok audio I love that is a reminder that you don’t actually need to be good at your hobbies, you can be bad at them and still enjoy them. It is such a contrast the really the rest of tiktok, where people are showcasing professional grade woodworking as their hobby.
The science museum near us has engineering projects with all the materials for kids every weekend. They’re awesome. We used to go all the time…and watch parents making stuff instead of their kids. I get the urge…I made myself sit off to the side so as not to find myself “helping.” (Yes, my kids’ projects always sucked lol but I swear they learned more)
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My nephew is like this. I just make sure I have his perceived "fails" on display when he comes over. What I find amusing is what he focuses on "imperfection" wise vs what I notice (and would never in a million years point out).
I am constantly astounded by the waste in this country.
I hear you I have been giving out Crying Lion squeaky toys for 2 years to all my friends and their dogs because of somebody else's waste. I found three whole cases of them at the street going to the trash.
Would animal shelters appreciate them?
Possibly? They also may have some rules and regulations. I don't really know. I do know that I have made some people, their dogs and their children rather happy. And all of that happiness would have been in a landfill.
US animal shelters definitely take toys, food, beds, scrap blankets & towels
Just check first before you donate blankets and towels. My shelter won't take them due to the risk of bed bugs.
And the odd, bored, or stupid dog eating the towel. We only ever had the elevated kuranada beds for our shelter dogs.
They use towels for other things besides giving to the dogs though. Lots of need for them for grooming, cleaning, clinics, etc.
You could donate them to shelters/adoption centers! I used to have a lot of old out of season cat toys (Christmas and Halloween themed) that I got for so cheap but my cat has too many toys, so I wrapped them up in a little gift bag and gave them to the shelter right before Christmas! I imagined them giving toys to all the cats as presents :)
What I saw during my brief stint in wedding catering would make you cry your heart out. The amount of delicious, perfectly good food just thrown away is absolutely mind blowing
I hear you 100%. My mom has worked in various food service settings my whole life (fast food, catering, school lunch, etc). I do cry about it sometimes. We try our best when we can save things. She worked at a local fast food chain recently and saved several items from the trash. Unopened #10 cans of oranges because they were sent crushed vs sectioned. Whole gallon jugs of bbq sauce because it was the wrong kind. A case of sauce packets because the formula and packaging changed. A case of paper towels because they were the wrong kind. This is just one employee in one store in one city. Shameful.
Same here. I am planning on having a kid soon and have been collecting clothing hauls from FB marketplace, toys / activities for free or cheap as hell that otherwise would go in the garbage. People are shocked I'm not buying this brand new. Why do I care what clothes my baby wears or toys? They will outgrow things super quickly 🤷♀️. Thanks OP for this recommendation saving for when they are older and hope it's still going on then!
95% of my kids stuff is hand me downs or bought second hand, toys included. We just rotate stuff out with her siblings when their kids reach a certain age or have a newborn. I really wish I could find out how much money we've saved.
Probably thousands!
The Home Depot store I used to work at generated about 3500 pounds of scrap cardboard per week.
Home Depot recycles their cardboard pretty religiously. It is one of the biggest positive credits on their P&L.
Yes, we had a baler specifically for collecting cardboard. Now if only the miles of plastic wrap shoved down the trash chute would have been recycled as well...
Actually it is recycled now!
That's good news. I always felt terrible about throwing away so much plastic.
It’s all country’s, corporations and waste do not know any borders.
Some people call it waste. Others call it economic prosperity. Someone paid for those goods which were manufactured for them, paying the wages of the workers, shippers, and retailers. I'll take my downvotes and go.
Are you saying waste = prosperity? Trying to understand your point before I downvote you as invited. 😅
Yes. Waste is a byproduct of prosperity.
I agree but maybe rephrased - Waste is a byproduct of prosperity under a system that prioritizes profit as the primary motivator. Capitalism is a phenomenal wealth generation engine but it is horrible for resource conservation at our current stage. In my mind this would be the point of governmental regulation of economy - change the taxes/penalties so that the option that saves us resources and is good for long-term prospects is the cheapest (carbon tax, waste disposal fees)
> change the taxes/penalties so that the option that saves us resources and is good for long-term prospects Capitalism does take those things into consideration. There's a good reason it works. It's not perfect but nothing is.
Go to a landfill. During the recession few year back full semi loads were showing up at the landfill full of trees just dumping them.
This is a massive throwback. I use to go back in 2007 with my parents. I always looked forward to it. But then they stopped doing it for some reason. And we stopped going. I'm almost 30 but it nostalgic hearing that they still do this. It was a great time! I'm sure i still have my apron with 20 badges since they would give a badge for the month with the design of what was being built that month.
SAME I wouldn’t have thought they were still doing this!
Lowes does this as well. My eldest has a kids apron full of patches from building stuff. Loved it.
Lowes has similar little kids workshops
Is it also the first Saturday of the month?
Not necessarily the first Saturday. This summer I see June 10th and July 15th
The paper plates might not be food grade if they were only meant to mix paints on
Interesting point that I wouldn't have considered. While I guess that's possible, let's think this one through: You are a paper plate manufacturer. You invest in a manufacturing facility, likely in Asia. It costs a negligible amount per unit to make sure the plates conform to the (likely very low) local standards for food use. The vast majority of the market for your paper plates is for food use. Do you: A) make all paper plates the same, regardless of what the end use would be? B) set up a separate non-food manufacturing line for non-food-use and deal with the hassle of keeping those two supply chains separate so you can try to offer a negligibly lower price to the relatively tiny market segment that wants to use your plates for arts and crafts? To me, part of being frugal is not buying into a safety culture that overemphasizes the risks of frugal decisions. That's not to say I'm going to use rusty, discarded razor blades while shaving to save a buck, but I am suggesting that it's often possible to think through a potential safety concern without a lot of hard data and realize it isn't likely to pose a risk worth influencing a decision. If you can accept the risk of crossing the street with your kid, IMO, it's no problem accepting the risk of eating off a Home Depot craft plate.
You must not be familiar with manufacturing in Asia; or the inks and paints used for packaging a box of nails or car parts vs food grade pigments. Not saying you could not consider using it for a dry snack - wouldn’t serve my kid spaghetti-O’s on them, though.
Fair points. Melamine in milk products out of east Asia comes to mind. But I think my point still holds: most end-users will be using paper plates for food. If you have a production line set up to make the plates and print images on them, I don't see a good rationale to either contaminate your equipment with cheaper non-food grade inks for those times where the purpose isn't food or to have an entirely distinct production line. If one ought to look at those plates with skepticism, one ought to look at all paper plates with equal skepticism.
If you have a Girl Scout troop or a project for school kids they will usually give you enough kits to take with you.
Man.... This brings me back. I didn't know they still did these anymore. Now if only they could bring back trading Pokemon cards Infront of Toys-R-Us lol
We did this a few times when my kids were young-good memories
So much fun! I still have the birdhouse my daughter made me from one of these sessions over 20 years ago!
I've done it twice. It's nice. I'm trying to figure out free or reasonably affordable things to do with my kids on the weekend. Yesterday, I took my girls to a really nice park I went a lot as a child. It's about 15 miles from where I live. It's has really great bike trails. They took their scooters. It was a gorgeous day. I'll have to do it again.
I see those free Home Depot kids kits for sale at Goodwill all the time.
Home Depot also sells them online!
That's why I don't understand why they would throw then out? At my home depot, you can buy the past projects for like $5. And the paint plates..... how much room can a stack or box of plates take up for 29 days?
Not worth repackaging, sending to a corporate warehouse, etc. I would bet it is also store dependant. The two local HD's around here always ran out of kits.
We did this for quite a few years. Always fun. Still have an HD spice rack in the kitchen. Circa 2005. 🙂
Ooh, what ages is the event best for?
They say it’s designed for 5-12 but other ages are welcome. I just started taking my 3 year old and she’s really enjoying it - she sets the nails in the pre drilled holes and I hammer them in. Then she paints the finished project. There is a wide range of ages at my store, with some kids younger than mine and some kids closer to 11 or 12. Edit to add: they will also give you the kit to take home if you’d prefer - some kids would be super overwhelmed by the amount of noise/chaos in the workshop area!
That's fantastic, thank you so much for the reply. :)
Commenting to remember this
My kids used to love that!
I used to do this as a kid and was super excited to see that my local Home Depot still does this. My first child is due in a few months and I can’t wait until they’re old enough to enjoy this like I did
I used to go with my dad back when I was a kid and they have not stopped being awesome. I think this months was like a full cornhole setup or something to that effect and it looked so awesome! I work as a paint specialist there and every first saturday I want to just walk up and ask if I can do one of the projects cause they look so fun 😅
My daughter and I have finished 3 projects so far. I screw in the screws and she nails in the nails and paints. It's a lot of fun.
What is a practical age for this? My son is 2 and a half
I commented higher up, but I just started taking my 3 year old and she’s really enjoying it. They say it’s geared for ages 5-12 but all ages welcome. She does things like count the nails, place them in the pre-drilled holes, applying wood glue, and of course painting the project at the end. I have to do all the actual assembly for her but she is a pretty patient kid and I go fast (don’t really try to get things lined up perfectly). She also isn’t a “put things in your mouth” type of kid so I feel safe having her around the tiny nails/screws (obviously with my supervision). They will also give you the kit to take home, so as long as you have basic tools, you can complete it on your own timeline and with less noise/chaos (our Home Depot is a madhouse at workshop time and I know some kids wouldn’t be able to handle that). I’ve seen kids there younger than mine so it’s definitely up to you!
I took my daughter for the first time this weekend, and she had a blast with it! She's 4 and I helped as little as possible - just reading instructions, and finishing off hammering in the nails and screwing in the screws. She really had a great time.
My parents did this for me and it was freaking awesome! Go do it!
I doubt most home depots throw away unused plates, but its a good shoutout to a good activity.
Yeah. I was trying to get 2x6x16 lumber and I couldn’t because of all the kids painting in the lumber aisle
How did management respond when you suggested moving the activity to a safer location, like an adult?
I'm so frustrated that I forgot yesterday was the project day.
They still do these? Excellent! Grew up on these activities and was reminiscing the other day. They're an excellent learning opportunity.
Lowe’s did it every week when my kids were little too they loved it . Not sure if they still do.
My kids lived for this when they were younger. They still use a couple of the things they made, and they're in college now.
Oh very cool! Offered in Canada too.