Please Save Me Your Extra Coupons!!

I never believed those woman on TV who claimed to buy $200.00 plus worth of groceries for $10.00 by using manufacture's coupons and rebates. "Impossible!", I'd yell at the TV when they would show her at store, clutching her binder of coupons, and smiling like she just won the LOTTO. Mostly, I was trying to make myself feel better about feeding my own family of 6 for about $80+ a week. That number had been steadily increasing over the past few year until late fall when I got involved with the "food run" I talked about in a previous post, but I still hadn't been able to get down to the $30 - $50 range I so desired. I honestly believed there was no way to get super great deals using manufacture coupons except the occasional coupon matched with a clearance item. I stuck to my routine of stocking up on loss leaders, searching the clearance sections, and doing the bulk of my shopping at Aldis. All that changed a month ago when I discovered Hot Coupon Worldand I can honestly say I'll never view coupons and shopping the same way again! I may never pay full price again!!

Here, again, is another instance where I am torn between being frugal and being green. I have been purchasing multiple Sunday papers to get the coupon inserts. I have been saving the papers to use as ground covering for my garden and also to compost. I still need to do more research to make sure this is safe. As a last resort I will, of course, recycle them. Here are my reasons for justifying purchasing these papers. We don't subscribe to a daily paper and until recently only occasionally picked up the Sunday paper. Buy using almost all CFLs in my home, hang drying most of our laundry, making my own environmentally safe laundry soap and general purpose cleaner, shopping thrift stores for a portion of our clothing and other items, using reusable shopping bags, making (and selling) items from recycled cloths and paper, recycling, reusing and not wasting everything and anything possible, I'd like to think I'm doing a good job off setting this wastefulness. Even so, what it all boils down to is money, and with two kids graduating from high school next year and then going off to college, I need to save every penny I can. Two years after that I'll have another in college for a total of three at the same time!!

Yes, that is my coupon binder! I'm looking for a great deal on one that zips all the way around and has pockets for scissors and a calculator. I'll probably find one in late Summer with the back to school specials.