Some deals only come around once or twice a year, but offer savings that justify the wait. This post is part of our series on such 'don't miss' sales.

Back when I was doing home remodeling and home repair projects for myself, I enjoyed the routine trips to Menard's home improvement centers to buy products and materials. Its weekly newspaper fliers were stuffed into Upper Midwest newspapers where its 235 stores are located. The stores nearly always had exactly what I needed.

Menards has become known for a promotion called the "Fit in a bag sale." It sends full-sized grocery bags out with a sales flier. Shoppers can take the bags to Menards and fill them with whatever they wish (subject to restrictions). All items in the bag are then discounted by a percentage (which varies from sale to sale, but last August's was 15%) off the normal price of the items in the bag.

I used this sale opportunity to beef up on my home DIY guy supplies. I'd pack that bag with things like duct tape, drywall screws, utility knife blades, lightbulbs, batteries, auto fuses, WD-40, Miracle Grow, and caulk. I'd also pick up things for specific ongoing projects. Perhaps I'd buy solder if I was approaching a copper plumbing task, or some ring shank nails to fix a fence.

Surprisingly, the Menards spokesman I spoke to declined to comment on the sales, or even acknowledge that they exist. Apparently, he didn't want to suggest that you should wait for an upcoming bag sale to buy your supplies. But I will. Who doesn't want to save 15%?

Watch your newspaper and circulars for news of upcoming 'fit in a bag' sales at Menards.

As a girl, I was a perfectionist. I can remember my boxes of watercolors, and how I obsessively rinsed my brushes between colors so as not to turn them into a rainbow of blacks and browns. Pastels were even more precious, and took a soft touch to blend them on paper, but not on the instrument itself. It's hard to create when you're spending your energy focused on keeping things neat and orderly.

And then I had kids.

The first time I let my two-year-old destroy a perfectly good watercolor box in a happy hour, I took lots of deep yoga breaths and then faced facts: I was not about to run back to the art supply store after every messy creation to get a new box. Painting in the black and brown spectrum didn't faze him at all. Why fight the power of a preschooler's exuberance?

So during my next trip to the Goodwill Bins, the outlet where everything is sold by the pound, I "picked" until I found some treasures. A very good quality, but heavily used, watercolor set, missing its brush. A treasure trove of fancy pastels, half of them dumped out of their box. In five minutes, I'd gathered up all the broken and chalky bits and ended up paying less than a dollar for my artistic treasure.

It turns out that the art supplies are now partially destroyed, and I often end up discovering a brilliantly-colored pastel chunk underfoot (note to mothers out there: don't clean up pastels with vinegar. It's like dying your floor). But I don't sweat: I rescued those supplies from the trash, so I can let go of my obsessive-compulsive self and just let the little boys be. Thrifting art supplies for little ones is the way to go.

This post was written as part of a series on how to thrift shop smarter. Read more on what to buy, and not to buy, at thrift stores.