Get rid of your spare change!

Does your home have change all over the place? Here is how I got rid of all of our change and narrowed it down to only having one piggy bank for the household.


1. Collect all of your change (Every Single Penny)

A penny laying here, over there, in the junk drawer and so on? Go out to your car and collect all of your change too! It is time to go through every single room and put all of your spare change in one bag or piggy bank. I combined my change and my husband's change and put it into one big bag. Change can get really heavy and it can take up a lot of space! Besides there  could be several hundred dollars worth of change just sitting around in your home! Wouldn't you rather put that money toward something rather than just having it lay around in your home collecting dust?


2. Take your change to the store that has a coin star or a machine similar to it

I headed to my local Food Lion because they have a coin machine called Coin Star. I dumped all of our change into it and the machine counts all of your change for you. Just make sure you are checking the little change dispenser near the bottom for coins that didn't get counted or fell through the cracks. After checking the dispenser put the change back through the machine to get counted.


3. Get a gift card code or paper cash for all of your change

I think a lot of people avoid these machines because they charge you a fee. I found out that by choosing the option of getting a gift card code from your favorite stores doesn't charge you a fee at all! Last year my husband and I did most of our Christmas shopping on Amazon online so we just got the gift card code for Amazon. We will be using the gift card for Christmas this year! Now if there isn't a gift card option you desire you can get paper cash instead but there is a fee of about $8 if I am not mistaken.


4. Repeat the process in 6 months or a year 

Since change can add up fast I told my husband that we should take our change and trade it in for gift cards twice a year and we chose June and December. We are putting our change toward our Christmas gift budget so June and December makes a lot of sense to us. Of course you can put your change money to whatever you decide like a dream vacation or home!


Hope this post helps to declutter your home and get you some extra spending money ;)


XO, Hannah