Coupons galore! Day (lost track) of 60/300!

Today was the first day in a while that I felt well enough to do much of anything. Unfortunately, Charlie Bear didn't get the memo that we were supposed to be feeling better. He's been sick for nearly 2 weeks now, running a fever off and on. I swear it's due to those blasted shots. I wish I could convince Chris to fore go them. However, thats a post for another day :)

A while ago I asked Chris to rearrange furniture for me. He hates doing this, but he does it without too much complaint. I am a truly lucky gal!

I could have sworn I posted a picture of my desk area, but I can't find it. So this is what my desk area looked like, and what people saw when first entering my home:

This is a major work in progress. It was all neat and organized but the kids kept messing with everything and it became a disaster area. The blinds are all broken thanks to 4 kids and a dog, and will be taken down as soon as we buy some curtains. The desk is going to get a paint job - the wood will become black colored and the white grout with also be colored black. The silver filing cabinet will be spray painted white and green to match the other set of white and green drawers. The more I thought on it, though, the more I hated this being in the living room. So now our living room looks like this:

So much more welcoming, and homey! The blue recliner rocker makes for a great little reading area. A few more items await this room before it's finished. There are going to be baskets on the Entertainment Center, curtains are going to be hung (and blinds taken down), some writing is going on the wall, ect. I think it will look fantastic when it's done!

This means that my desk had to go somewhere, and since our house isn't very large there was only one place for it to go. My room. Ugh, I hate having non-bedroom stuff in there but with 4 kids it's the only place that things can go if you don't want it messed with. It has a lot of work that needs to be done, as I've been to sick to do anything. It currently looks like this

See how back logged I am with my coupons? I'm trying to organize my inserts and needed floor space to do it. However, I haven't finished and it looks ridiculous.

This weekend my goal is to get my room back in shape. I won't be able to paint the desk just yet, but it will be soon! I also plan to hang shelves and a homemade sign of some sort. Still trying to think of just what I want it to say. I was thinking, "A Day in the Life of a Freg" but we'll see.

I've been using the coupon binder method for my coupons, and I love it.

Basically I have picture inserts that are labeled alphabetically and color coded. Colors are for food, and white is for toiletries and non-food items. I love this system, it is very easy to find exactly the coupon I'm looking for. HOWEVER, and it's a BIG however, it is very time consuming to keep up with. It can easily take a few hours a week just to keep it up. So each week I fell behind and behind until I was left with the mess you just witnessed. So now I'm doing a combined method. I still use my lovely binder for loose coupons, printables, ect. But now I use the insert method for most of it.

My files are labeled with the three major coupon inserts and then there is the Misc for the various other inserts I get. Then I take each weekly inserts, staple the like pages together (I buy 2-5 papers a week), and file them in a file folder with that weeks date on it. This way when they all expire I can just tack another sticker with a new date over the last one. Then the file folders are filed in order of date. Since I use "The Grocery Game" it tells me which insert the coupon I need is in and it takes just a moment to find it. I have a mini-coupon binder I take with me into stores that has a place for each store, their coupons, the ones I end up not using, ECB's, ect. Once I am finally done organizing it I will cut my coupon clipping and organizing time from a few hours to a few minutes.

And finally... I have inspired Chris to clean and organize too. I threatened to do his office space for him and so this weekend he began on it.

It looks awful, but I assure you this is much better than it was. This is the one room of the house I refuse to clean at all and so it is very much a scary scary mess. Hopefully this is finished this weekend too!

I've got the organization bug!

Having diagnosed OCD means that I get very anxious when my house is not the way I like it. Building a stockpile means that there is a lot of new items in my home and I'm itching to find a way to organize them! My good friend Kristina directed me towards this blog I Heart Organizing
which sounded totally up my alley. After finding that blog I also discovered Organized Home. I've been pouring over both blogs and have a lot of ideas swimming in my head. First thing I needed to do was take an inventory of all my items. I printed the template from Organized Home, a dozen labeled "Pantry Inventory" and two labeled "Freezer Inventory" (for my main freezer and my deep freezer. I laminated each of them (may I just say how much I LOVE my laminator!) so that I could just wipe them off instead of crossing out. I hate messy looking things and a bunch of crossed off items would drive me crazy. I then super glued magnetic strips on the upper corner for the Pantry lists, and on the back of the Freezer lists. The Pantry lists hold a Dry Erase Marker so that I can quickly jot down, or erase an item. The Freezer magnets hold it to the freezer and a marker hangs next to it. For my indoor lists I used Velcro to adhere them to my cabinets, and made it easy to remove them for easy writing. My garage lists hang by a nail, much like a calendar, and can be easily taken off. This is just one of my cabinets, my spice cabinet. I have my inventory on there and each dot is how many items of that spice I have. As you can see we have a lot of duplicates. I hope this cuts down on that. I've had similar lists in the past but they weren't erasable like this one and quickly became to difficult to keep up with.

My next project is the Family Binder! I'll be sure to update with pictures of my progress. I'm a little upset that we no longer have a colored printer - I'm not a fan of just black and white and my printed sheets won't be as pretty :(

Crazy Coupon Lady!

A few years ago I got quite heavily into the whole coupon/sale craze. I loved the thrill of getting items for free or nearly free, of saving my family money, and of seeing my pantry and bathroom cabinets stocked. When my body began revolting on me I quit couponing. I didn't have the strength to do it anymore. I hated watching our dollars disappear, I hated telling our children they couldn't have this or that treat because we couldn't justify the expense. My kids never hurt for anything, we were never without food, but they didn't always get a lot of choices in food either. I couldn't justify buying oatmeal when this type of cereal was so much cheaper. It meant the difference between eating Macaroni towards the end of the pay period and eating meatloaf. As food prices rose the choices went down. Buying stuff to make cookies became a rare treat rather than a family event on the weekend. Sandwiches for dinner became more frequent than a night where we didn't have time to cook a full meal. Our grocery budget rose $80 every two weeks from $120 (where we had money to spare and treats and fun food in the house) to $200 (where every penny had to be accounted for). I thought about couponing again but I didn't even have the ability to clip coupons.

After I healed from my wrist fusion surgeries I thought about it more and more. The clincher came when we ran out of shampoo. We literally had not bought shampoo in 4 years because my stockpile was so large. We ran out of shampoo and I refused to buy more shampoo because I knew I could get it free or nearly free. I used the kids babywash, and those little samples you get and Chris called me ridiculous and bought shampoo. I loathed that bottle of shampoo, lol. It represented all the wasted dollars we've spent over the past two years. All the money we could have been using to take the kids bowling, or to the movies. Even taking the kids to McDonalds has gone way up in price. When your family is as large as ours nothing is cheap. McDonalds easily costs us about $30.

I started researching deals again and buying the newspaper for the coupons. Even the newspaper went up in price since I last did this. When I was couponing years ago the paper was $1.50, it is now $2.50. To justify the $5 (I buy two papers a week) I spent on papers my savings had to be greater than that in coupons. I was doing okay, but my stockpile was weak and I wasn't really saving much. I didn't have the hours in the week to research deals as well as go shopping at multiple stores, cut coupons, and do all the other mommy and wife stuff (and hopefully get an hour or two for myself!) that is needed to keep this household running.

I had heard of "The Grocery Game" years ago and I SCOFFED at the idea of PAYING someone to do what I could do myself. I mean, wasn't the whole point to save money? I decided to look at the website again just to see if it was really going to save me more money, and decrease the time spent needing to clip, buy, and research. They used to have a 4 week trial for the price of $1. Now their 4 week trial is completely free. Well, free is good, right? I don't like entering my credit card info for "free trials" because inevitably I will forget I did it and be charged. But I was desperate so I did. I didn't have months of coupons saved up so I wasn't expecting major savings just yet. I was wrong. The first few weeks I used "The Grocery Game" I saved, on average, 50%. Before them I saved about 25% to 30%. In one trip to the store I more than paid for their fee and all the newspapers for that month.

I've been using them for 2 months or so now. My savings is generally 80% or better at CVS and Walgreens, and about 50% to 75% at Bakers and HyVee. My pantry is bursting, as are my non-food item shelves. I literally have 2 open containers of laundry detergent and 17 unopened bottles plus 4 bags of Tide Stain Release. I have 22 boxes of spaghetti noodles, 14 tubes of toothpaste, 23 deodorants (plus 2 open), 12 cans of kidney beans, 17 boxes of cereal, and the list goes on and on. Just in 2 months.

Some people say, "there is a lot of processed foods in coupons and I won't use those!" Well, neither do I! I buy a lot of healthy foods (and now can buy treats for my kids. I have 4 bags of morsel chips of some variety waiting to be made into cookies), and I still save. My List shows what produce is at it's cheapest and where. I bought 4 lbs of strawberries this weekend for $4. Also, just in non-food items you can save a major amount. Who doesn't need laundry detergent? My husband insists on using Charmin Toilet Paper which is ridiculously expensive. I use cloth most of the time and the kids couldn't care less. I have 50+ rolls stocked away of his favorite bath tissue. There were some months where I had to buy the cheap stuff and Chris waited until he was at work to use the bathroom. I haven't yet had to pay for a tube of toothpaste.

I firmly believe in giving back whenever, and however you can. I donate a lot every year to the local food pantries. If an item goes on a very good sale, that I know we would never eat or use, I'll buy it and donate it. We went from having to be very very careful with our grocery budget to being able to donate to others.

If you'd like to check out the website its thegrocerygame.com. If you decide to sign up I'd love to have your referral!