My $5 mini haul haul from AliExpress

My last official purchase from AliExpress was… *looks over notes* July 5th, 2020. I had come off of a AliExpress earring spring (I literally bought millions of earrings—after all they were like 80 cents, and I totally needed 100 pairs of earrings.) I was blessed with some extra money around March, and I gave myself $5 to spend like a madwoman.

Did I go crazy? No. Did this concern me? Yes.

What was really concerning was that it took me a few hours to find some things I wanted to spend my money on. I wasn’t the impulsive and reckless consumer I was a year ago. I had matured. I had responsibilities. I had a new head on my shoulders. But I also am a blogger, and thought this would make an excellent blog post, so I got to brainstorming and searched for good deals.

Picture of the galaxy stickers laid out. Look at those pretty colors!

AliExpress, in my opinion, is totally better than Wish. Wish will promise you a low price then slap you with $1,000 in shipping at the end, then give you a .2% off discount like that will help any. But Ali will tell you straight up. Shipping is $1.29 ma’am, they’ll say confidently as they also show you the same picture of another item with a lower/higher price. Although you have to use your brain, you get better quality for a better price.

So knowing that I wanted some stationery paraphernalia, I tapped my AliExpress app and window-shopped. I saw notebooks, A5 binders with paper, stickers (I love stickers) and pencil pouches to name just a few things. They all tickled my fancy, but none of them tickled my $5 budget.

the items:

As always, AliExpress gives you a lot over what you pay for.

The quality is always superb; I don’t have one item that I’ve bought from them has broken or has worn out. I don’t know what it is about them, but I am thankful for whatever it is.

Now, the letter stickers however were pretty wrinkled upon opening. But for the price I paid for them, I am totally OK with that. Tape was going to go over them anyway to help secure them in place. The leather pen holders, washi tape and the galaxy stickers were awesome quality. I quickly assigned them to my homemade planner which I am excited to get into, despite it being for the year 2022.

Picture of the wrinkled-ness of the stickers.

These items took about one month and a week to arrive. Usually AliExpress is faster than a month, but I think because of the pandemic, things moved a bit slower. Nonetheless, I am absolutely pleased with my products (as I always am) and look forward to going on more AliExpress sprees (and writing about them) in the future.

so…what did ya do with all that stuff?

Of course I’ll be honored to tell you.

In January 2020, I got a gift from my boss (she knows I like stationery and things like that) to simply say “thank you”. It was a light pink, thick planner that said “weekly planner” simply on the cover. I said thank you, gratefully, and handled my accompanying stickers close to me, as her instructions were “don’t let everyone see this.”

As I flipped through it when I got back to my room, I was still very grateful. But one thing I noticed was there were no monthly entries, and it was undated. The undated part I liked…but the solely weekly part… I was going to have to change that.

So I got to work, researched, sketched, and washi-taped. And my final results are beautiful and oh-so me.