The Quarter Pouch

So remember when I told you that I was making a little something for a quarter back in this post looong ago? Well, I finally finished it! I wasn't lying when I said projects take a little longer with a kiddo in the house. I've seen a lot of blogs where mom's refinish their basement while their child takes his afternoon nap and that's, um, ridiculous. I have come to terms with the fact that that just ain't in the cards for me. Abilene is what you'd like to call "anti-nap." So, for me, this little (literally) project took over two weeks. But, hey, it's done!

I know grocery stores are different everywhere but up here there's a little store called Aldi. It's a chain. There was one where we lived in PA and I just recently found out that they are building one by my sister in GA. Aldi is a discount grocery store that keeps their prices low by taking out some of the amenities that you would normally find in other grocery stores. For example, Aldi only takes cash, check or debit, makes you bring your own bags and bag your own groceries - which I love - not that I'm (cough, cough) anal retentive about how my groceries are bagged or anything, annnd makes you rent your grocery cart.

Rent your grocery cart?

Yep, Aldi's grocery carts are fitted with locks that use a U.S. quarter as a "key". The carts are locked to each other so, if you want to use a cart, you have to unlock one cart from the rest. I'm sure many of you have seen them before. You place your quarter in the "keyhole," slide it in the lock and you are able to remove a cart from the remaining line of locked carts. When you're finished with your cart, you simply take the cart back to the line of locked carts, lock it into the last locked cart and out pops your original quarter.

Picture not taken at our local Aldi. Source.

The idea is that, by not having to hire more employees to walk around the parking lot gathering carts that people have left by their cars (hate when people do that), Aldi is saving money. The money saved by Aldi gets turned around into savings for the consumer by allowing Aldi to list their products at a lower price. Having customers bag their own groceries in their own bags contributes to that same idea.

Anyway, Aldi does have lower prices and the quality of the food that they sell is surprisingly good. It's really been a blessing to be able to shop there since most things in NY have proved to be more expensive for us than they were in PA.

All that is to say, a quarter is a must when it comes to your weekly Aldi trip. I've had a couple of close calls where I almost couldn't find a quarter to use and I decided that I really wanted to find a way to keep one on my key chain. That way, I'd always have one for Aldi and it wouldn't be sitting in my wallet waiting to be spent with the other change that exists in there (why does it always feel so good to pay someone with exact change?).

So! I grabbed my travel-sized sewing kit, two of Abilene's Weekly Photo Shoot fabrics, some make-up supplies (yes, make-up supplies) and was able to fashion this:

For lack of a better name (I'm open to suggestions), we'll call it "The Quarter Pouch."

It's just big enough for one quarter and I made sure the quarter wouldn't fall out of the key chain by test-shaking the ever-loving crap out of it (you're picturing that in your head right now, I'm sure).

For those of you Aldi shoppers that want to know how to make your own Quarter Pouch, I'll be posting the tutorial in the next couple days. For now, though, the hubs parents are coming up and we have quite the weekend ahead of us!

It's friggin' beautiful outside so stop looking at my blog and go do something awesome!

I mean, thank you so much for looking at my blog. You guys are the nicest people, for sure.

Happy weekend, everybody!


Update: Jump straight to the tutorial here and see some more finished Quarter Pouches here.