Couponing is not for the weary. . .

After watching the TLC episode of "Extreme Couponing" my daughter, Anne and I have teamed up our efforts to saving our family money by couponing again. 

We began in January by doing several things.  First, we set a budget as to how much we'd spend in groceries and personal care items.  That being said, we also decided that just because something was on sale, a great deal and that we had a coupon for the item,  if the family wasn't going to use the item, we wouldn't buy it.  We also said that we didn't want to be "extreme" in that we'd clear shelves and go overboard and end up with a year's suppy of toliet paper (which when I think about that with six girls in the house, might be near impossible to store up!)

So we  began searching blogs for other ladies who had traveled the coupon road before us, one in particular from the show, Joanie Demer, The Krazy Coupon Lady.  She offers coupon match-ups to the weekly sales fliers, tips for beginners and videos on how to shop.  While I haven't read her book, "Pick Another Check-Out Lane Honey," it sounds interesting.

Since, logistics and lack of shopping selections were going to be a battle for us to overcome, we decided to focus on Walgreens, CVS and Safeway.  We were not new to couponing - we had tried it in years past, but simply got overly burnt out on shopping at too many stores, missing those really "great sales" and having to go back in several times a week, and driving all over the city to the different stores.  So, we knew we needed a better "game plan" this time since CVS is a 30 minute drive north and Walgreens and Safeway are a 20 minute drive south.  I wish I could say that we've come up with a "fool proof" plan thus far, but we haven't - we are still stumbling through, but it has been fun to see some of the great deals we've found - even if we get overly excited over buying laundry detergent or toothpaste for almost nothing - have you ever seen the coupon dance??  Perhaps that should be my next post - a video of the coupon dance!

I thought I would show you a week worth of shopping for us and the amount of money that can be saved by simply spending a couple hours a week clipping coupons and printing them from the internet.

So, for the totals. . .  drum roll please. . . . .

Total Spent. . . * $86.92

Total Saved. . . * $219.93

Total of all Goods Purchased. . . . .* $306.85

(We forgot to take a picture of the items we got at Target which were two packages of Huggies diapers, two Suave Professionals products, and two Secret deodorant and four boxes of fruit snacks)

This gave us a 72% savings on all of the items and we purchased 100 items this week.  If you divide that by our cost, that is less than $.90 per item.  We are so blessed by these savings and some of these items we'll be enjoying for several months.

Blessings,

Michelle