Another part of my frugal life that I have let slide to the back burner is my coupon usage.
I have been working the past few days on getting binder back in order.
First thing was to take out the expired coupons. They went back to September!
I have weeks and weeks worth of Sunday coupon inserts to cut as well as coupons I have printed, coupons that have come in the mail, and coupons from magazines.
In fact, here is a picture of my pile before I started:
Hubby and I have run into a financial situation where it's been that we've only had a little to spend at the store and had to buy what we could, when we could.
Yesterday is an example. I had $13 to spend.
I ended up buying 4 apples, garlic bread, Cheerios, 2 bottles of Dr. Pepper, 3 Nissin Noodles, butter, eggs, and toilet paper. I paid $12.82.
I did have a $1 coupon for the butter, a $1 coupon for the noodles, and a store coupon to get the Cheerios free.
I did have hubby pick up a gallon of milk on his way home from work.
I worked Wednesday cutting and putting coupons into my binder once I got all the expired coupons out.
Yesterday I started just looking through the coupons and cutting mostly just the ones that I think I might use.
I went to the Deal Detecting Diva blog and checked off items from the sale that I hope to buy and printed out my list. I also printed out some more coupons.
Today I still have to finish looking through a few more inserts.
I do plan on shopping this evening.
With all of this said, I want to note how thankful we have been for my prior coupon shopping and my stocking up when I could. So many times we've had to just buy a few things to have complete meals for the week using foods from my stockpile.
No, I've never had anything close to a stock of what you see on the Extreme Couponing show.
I do still have 10 cans or Ro-Tel in the cabinet. This is after what we have used as well as I just donated several cans of it to the food bank.
We used a can of it in this supper:
What's for Supper? Mexican Goulash - News - Bubblews
It was a hit!
Three things happened that have taken away my couponing motivation:
1. Our newspaper lost it's contract with Smart Source. This means we have to buy the Wichita paper to get that insert----and means that I can't go to our newspaper office to buy 5 Sunday papers for $6 and get lots of coupons. I have done that once in the last 8 or 9 months when there were a few good coupons in the Red Plum that I wanted more of.
2. My friend that was picking up 30 or 40 Sunday papers free, and sharing the inserts with me and another friend, lost her source. Not only did I no longer have a stack of coupons, but no longer were the 3 of us meeting to cut coupons and chit chat.
3. Our store stopped doubling coupons. This was back in August. I am still having a hard time with this one. It really means no more free thanks to a double, and I still look at a .50 coupon and think $1, or a .25 coupon and think .50.
I appreciate any and all frugal/simple living posts that you will link up this week! If you have posted about shopping trips, please do link those up and keep me motivated. Thanks!
