Work is dragging. You’ve got an event coming up. The kids are outgrowing everything from toys to socks. NCAA March Madness is your inspiration to get a new TV. All the spring magazines have you itching to update your wardrobe. And please, anything to not see Charlie Sheen on a headline!

Time to find an exciting sale. Cheap shoes, Michigan sweatshirts, HDTVs, and sale clothes are just a click away. And remember, you can add to your savings by purchasing a discounted gift card to pay for your hot sale finds.

Our first stop would be Sale.com, whose home page is a shopping addict’s crack, compiling some of the best apparel discounts on the web. Enter the retailer you’d love to see a sale from, ie Abercrombie, and voila, the site’s sale page pops in, along with a list of promotions and offers. Sign up for Sale.com alerts to get first crack at fresh promotions, coupons, deals, and sale merchandise.

Sales on Now around the Web:

Nordstrom:

Get Women’s Coats on sale for up to 40% off.

Shop Nordstrom’s Shoe Clearance – hurry, this is a hot one and the best brands and styles sell out fast.

Shop Nordstrom’s Designer Collection Sale for quality-made on-trend brands and looks.

Aeropostale:

Save big with Aeropostale’s Spring Break Sale featuring $9 Camis and Graphic T-shirts for girls and guys.

Best Buy:

Act now to save 5%-15% on a wide selection of HDTVs on brands including RCA, Philips, Samsung, LG, and Panasonic.

JCPenney:

Time to freshen up the house with JCP’s Spring Home Sale, where you’ll save 30-60% off housewares, linens, and more.

Shop deep discounts on JCP’s Clearance page, with final markdowns at up to 80% off retail.

Zappos:

This online retailer always has free shipping & returns – but have you found Zappo’s Sale page? Shop shoes from 100’s of brands, as well as accessories and clothes on sale. Even hard-to-find men’s shoes are on sale here. Yippee!

PetSmart:

Get deals on thousands of items, from Kong to Advantix & Advantage flea & tick products online and in stores at PetSmart’s Everything Spring Sale.

Borders:

It’s a shame Borders is closing so many stores, but their loss is your gain. Find clearance merchandise in the stores that are closing; here’s a list of closing Borders stores. As well, get to Borders Hot Deals / Weekly Deals page to score discounts on remainders, music under $10, and even bestsellers and upcoming new releases.

Right now, get up to 15% off a Borders Gift Card on Plastic Jungle >>>

Sports Authority:

The NCAA Final Four is around the corner and it’s time to gear up! Save on NCAA gear for the entire family at the SportsAuthority.com Outlet – Fan Gear page, and most of it will ship for only 99 cents!

If you’ve got a “slow-day shopping distraction” ritual, please share it in the comments of this page. Remember, if you’ve got time on your hands, maybe you could create a little cash flow by trading in your unused gift cards. Thank me later! And be prepared, the weekend is almost here.

Hopefully you weren’t planning on traveling today, 2/2/2011, because according to this graphic, a good section of the country is in for it!

If you’re up early, you can find out what Punxsutawney Phil, the most famous groundhog, has to say at the Gobbler’s Knob over there in Western Pennsylvania – he shows up (or not) at 7 am EST. Somehow I’m sure your morning news will have full coverage between wicked storm reports.

Phil

Why not take the extra time you might have from staying home from work, school, or travel and browse Best Buy online for the new LED-LCD HDTV, or 3D TV you’re dying to get for Super Bowl XLV. Right now Plastic Jungle has discounted Best Buy eGift Cards (eCODEs) ready for you to snap up (you receive them within hours of purchase, via email).

Another idea is to head to the theater for a few entertaining Oscar-nominated movies, like The King’s Speech or The Social Network. Other eCODEs in stock at Plastic Jungle include Fandango, which allows you to buy tickets at just about any theater chain.

Or start fantasizing about Spring Break by shopping for a bathing suit using eCODEs from Gap, Old Navy or Banana Republic, offering up to a 12% discount off the eGift Cards’ face value. (The gift cards from Gap-brand stores are interchangeable!) The stores currently have their “Spring Lookbook”s online. You can now toggle between the Sale Pages on each of the sites with a handy “QuickLink” button located at the lower right of each sale page.

Best Non-Spending (Actually Fund-Raising) Snow Day Idea of All Time: Take a minute to think about where your unused gift cards are and log on to PlasticJungle.com. Sell those unused gift cards and find the extra money hanging around your house. Are your cards possibly years old? They are likely still good! You can look up the value of many gift cards here on the Plastic Jungle Blog (search blog for “Check the Balance of your Gift Card” Posts) or search the blog for your retailer’s name. Getting a payment can always brighten your day.

I’m writing to you from sunny California. According to the National Weather Service, while there are great swaths of pink and purple and blue out in the rest of the country, they have marked us “beige” for the time being.

Let us know what you’re going to do on your snow day, or what you would do if given a free day off. I’d probably take my dog to the beach! Enjoy Groundhog Day, 2011.

As the web’s largest secured gift card exchange, we’ve seen the volume of gift cards exchanged on our site rise exponentially in the past year (see our Plastic Jungle blog post with figures). It’s exciting to see consumers finding great ways to save money time and time again.

During the holidays, we found that the top ten gift cards purchased on our site were from versatile retailers with many product lines to offer. Clearly, we’ve got a hot market if you’re willing to sell any of these gift cards. Check the Plastic Jungle “Sell Gift Cards” page to see what your exchange value will be.

Plastic Jungle’s Top 10 Gift Cards (in reverse order)

December 2010

10. Lowe’s

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Lowe’s Gift Cards Now

9. Best Buy

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Best Buy Gift Cards Now

8. Target

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Target Gift Cards Now

7. Kmart

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Kmart Gift Cards Now

6. Lands’ End

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Lands’ End Gift Cards Now

5. Home Depot

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Home Depot Gift Cards Now

4. iTunes

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted iTunes Gift Cards Now

3. Sears

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Sears Gift Cards Now

2. Macy’s

1. Walmart

Check Plastic Jungle for Discounted Walmart Gift Cards Now

View gift cards you loved in January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and Fall 2010.

Where do you love to shop (and save money)?

What has the first week of 2011 brought to you? More work, I’ll bet! Let’s get you back on track with a win.

Get to Office Depot for Office Cleanup Tips

So, say your desk is piled with papers. How bad is it? If it’s really bad, you could win a $10,000 Office Makeover courtesy of Office Depot! Just “Like” the Office Depot fan page on Facebook, upload a photo of how messy your office is, and you’re entered to win. (You’ll need to be logged in to Facebook to get to the page.) Ten instant winners per day get a $100 Office Depot gift card. Check the page for storage and filing tips on how to manage all that stuff, and see funny pictures of offices that might be even more cluttered than yours. Thanks to SweetiesSweeps for pointing us to that one. Contest ends 1/31/11; check the official rules on the same Office Depot Sweepstakes Facebook page for details.

If you can’t wait to win, check out what Plastic Jungle has on offer for discounted Office Depot gift cards.

Win $1000 for clothes, shoes & accessories? Yes please!

Amazon Fashion is giving away a $1000 Amazon.com Gift Card just for “Liking” them on Facebook. When you’re logged into Facebook, go to the Amazon Fashion page, and click on the Sweepstakes tag. Sweepstakes ends 2/17/11; check the page for official rules for details.

Think you’re ready for an Amazon.com Gift Card right this very minute? If you’re ready to exchange a gift card you’re not planning to use, you can trade that and get up to 96% of its value on an Amazon.com Gift Card on Plastic Jungle right now.

Win a $50 Best Buy Gift Card!

Super coupon and deal site MyBargainBuddy.com is giving away a $50 Best Buy Gift Card. Enter by 2/1/11, and check MyBargainBuddy for rules for entry and details. Plastic Jungle has Best Buy Gift Cards at a 4% discount at the time of publishing.

Appliances, Electronics, Music, Computers -- Best Buy!

Win a NookColor!

Are you a reader? Like, really a big reader? Then you’ll love the Bookalicio.us blog. In celebration of the two-year anniversary of blogging, Pam is giving away book collections for eight second-place winners, but the Grand Prize is a NookColor. The Nook is the e-reader offered by media retailer Barnes & Noble. It’s a device that’s a lot of fun — read books, listen to music, play games, show photos – for everyone from kids to seniors. The contest is open through February 10, 2011. Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts and more to enter. Check Bookalicio.us for rules and details. Check Plastic Jungle for discounted Barnes & Noble Gift Cards or eGift Cards to get a discount off your own NookColor.

Get $150 Gift Card to Steven Dann!

Life&Style Weekly wants you to walk away with $150 gift card to haute East Coast boutique Steven Dann. The contest is open until 1/20/11. Enter and see rules at Life&Syle Weekly’s WinIt page.

Good luck! Let us know if you win anything. And get back to work!  : )

Perhaps you’ve read the articles: more and more people aren’t bothering to re-gift or even tuck their unwanted gift cards into their wallet this year. They are selling or exchanging them for cash or credits as soon as possible. Why? It’s a good cure for a holiday shopping hangover.

With all the focus on consumer spending this last holiday season, everyone from local TV news (KTRK-TV an ABC affiliate in Houston, TX) to savvy Internet news sites (CNNMoney.com) is reporting on the gift card trend. With so many cards flying around, it could mean that even when people are given a gift card to a store they love, it may very well be that they can’t use it. Let me tell you why:

1)      Fund allocation. Times are tight, and while a $50 gift card for iTunes is much appreciated, the exchange value (especially here on Plastic Jungle) is worth so much more in calm nerves and a paid PG&E bill.

2)      Time allocation. Macaroni Grill might be your family’s favorite restaurant, but getting everyone together to enjoy it is like herding cats. By turning in the card and purchasing a discounted card to the local grocery store, everyone gets the dinner they want at 5 pm, 7 pm and 9 pm, or as they run in and out of the kitchen.

3)      Suffering from Holiday Shopping Hangover. They just purchased the items they were dying to get or couldn’t possibly think of heading to the mall for another four months. Um, yes, it’s true: we tend to shop for ourselves during the holidays. Maybe the necklace they wanted at Macy’s was on fire sale and they couldn’t resist; maybe it was very convenient to get the Kenmore appliance at Sears last month; the Sony laptop and all accessories were begging for purchase at Best Buy while they were at the store picking up Best Buy Gift Cards for all their neighbors. Suddenly, the $100 Macy’s Gift Card looks like it might not see the light of day until another dress situation comes up, and it would be better just to cash it in, load their PayPal account, and pay a bill.

So if you’re on the Plastic Jungle site and wondering, “Who would give up that credit at Victoria’s Secret – especially NOW when they’re having a huge SALE?” (and yes, the sale goes through 11:59 pm EST on January 23, 2011).

Here on Plastic Jungle you can rest assured that your gift card purchase is always safe, and there will be no gift card maintenance fees or expirations dates to worry about.  Further, when you sell or exchange gift cards on Plastic Jungle, it’s a guaranteed transaction with no fees or even shipping to pay.

So pick up that Victoria’s Secret gift card: go ahead and calculate the added savings on top of the up-to-50% off you’ll get at Victoria’s Secret. [At time of writing, Plastic Jungle has a fat selection Victoria’s Secret Gift Cards and eCODES (electronic gift cards) on sale at a 10% discount off face value. When you combine a discounted gift card + Victoria’s Secret sale savings, you could save up to 60% on merchandise today.]

What’s your reason for selling or exchanging your gift cards? We’d love to hear your story.