Under-$5 clearance clothing finds around town

I headed out today to do a little shopping and came across some great clothing clearances!

Our Meijer location (Algonquin, Illinois) is currently in the middle of a store remodel, and the entire center section of the store is filled with clearance clothing racks and shelves. Clothes for women, men, and children are all marked 50% off the lowest tagged price. 

Well, I can’t resist a good clearance sale! I spotted some jeans for my boys. Originally $16, these were marked down to $11.20, and with the 50% off, I paid $5.60 per pair. They also had boys’ Levis marked down to $14, and those were $7 after the additional discount.

There were several shelves of men’s polo shirts. I picked this one up for my husband — it was marked down to $7, and I paid $3.50 after the additional 50% off.

My favorite clothing deal at Meiejr, though, was for myself. I picked up two pairs of jeans. Originally $30, they were both marked down to $7.50 each — already a steal. With the extra 50% off, I paid $3.75 per pair! (I paid more for my kids’ jeans than I did for my own!) One pair of jeans even came with a leather-esque belt, which I have to guess would probably sell for at least $3.75 on its own. 

After a few more errands, including a rebate-freebie trip to Menards, I ended up at the Sears in West Dundee, where I went to return something.

(I almost blogged about this in its own post, but I really am done with ordering online from Kmart. Remember last summer when I found a deal on those cotton cargo capris, then jumped through major hoops attempting to buy them online? I swore I was done with Kmart then. Stupidly, I placed another order with them last month. Here’s the nutshell version of what happened next:

Kmart emailed me a $10 coupon code for clothing in April. Finding it hard to resist a free $10, I ordered (what else?) another pair of cargo capri pants. I had to get help from their online chat to apply the ecoupon Kmart emailed me, because their own cart wouldn’t accept it. When the new order arrived, guess what was inside? The wrong color pants. I called to get a return label to ship them back for a refund. The label never arrived.

I shopped online at Kmart once in 2015, which was a ridiculous fiasco of repeated cancelled orders. 2016, of course brought the crazy cargo pants story. Now, after this, I really am done with you, Kmart. I have shopped online with you only three times in the last three years, and every time, something’s been screwed up!)

Anyway, as there are no Kmart locations left near me, I decided to take the pants back to my closest Sears. I returned the pants, which netted me a partial money refund and a partial points refund, because I used some Shop Your Way points to buy the pants. I was told that the $2.70 in points refunded to my account would expire at the end of the week. Not wanting to lose $2.70, I figured I would find something cheap to spend them on before leaving the store.

This is what I found:

Sears had several clearance racks in the middle of the women’s clothing department, and this dress caught my eye. I love sheath-style dresses like these, and it’s hard to capture in a photo, but the fabric has a bit of a sheen to it and it looks either wine or purple, depending on the angle. I also really liked the price: 

Oh yes. This almost (almost!) made the having-to-return-pants fiasco worthwhile. $54 down to $3.99 is my kind of sale. I tried the dress on, it fit, and I realized I was going to buy a dress for even less than I paid for my bargain Meijer jeans.

After my $2.70 in points, I paid $1.40 for this dress! (And hey, if you like this dress, they had a whole rack of them at this Sears in sizes 6 to 14 for this price.)

I left Sears thinking about the “glory days” of shopping the old Sears Apparel Outlet in Woodstock years ago, when we’d take bunches of clothing home for pennies on the dollar and rock their weekly free clothing days! Does Sears even have clothing-only outlets any more? At one time, we had two in my area — Woodstock and Algonquin — but they’ve been gone for years now.