A Serious Post

About Couponing and my Stockpile.

Tonight, I bought myself another shelving unit for my basement. I'm now up to six shelving units STUFFED full of food.

Check them out!




I would say that 99-99.5% of the food was bought for literally pennies on the dollar. Let's go on a little tour of the grocery store stockpile

Shelving unit 1:

oil
coffee
crystal light
peanut butter
all types of snacks for kids: pudding, chex mix, applesauce, granola bars, cookies, chocolate, crackers, and some other stuff.



Shelving unit 2:

ketchup
mustard
barbecue sauce
canned stuff-tomatoes, veggies, manwich, tuna
baking stuff-flour, sugar, corn syrup, yeast, salt, jelly, bisquik, tons of dunkin hines
vinegars

Shelving Unit 3
Not pictured (visible in corner of picture):

pasta
grape juice
beverages
soda
soda
soda


Shelving Unit 4:

Home care:

paper towels
toilet paper
tissues
cleaning supplies
ziplocs
foil
gloves

Shelving Unit 5: (picture in larger picture with home care stuff):

Oatmeal
Dovi's Benefiber
Cereal
Cereal
Cereal

And last but not least:

Shelving Unit 6: Wire Drawer Unit

Full of all types of health and beauty aides:
toothpaste
toothbrushes
bandaids
shampoo
conditioner
soap
etc
etc
etc

Now I didn't post this all to show off. I promise. Well I am rather proud of it.

But I'm showing this all for a reason.

We all know the economy sucks.

People are losing jobs. Businesses are closing. Money is tight. Budgets are being cut, people are cutting back.

But my basement is chock full of food. So full that is the unthinkable occurred, I could probably feed my family for a few months.

I have amassed this stockpile by only couponing heavily for about the past 10 months. And let me tell you, I now spend about 50% less on food per month than I did before. I used to spend about $1000-$1200/month on food. Now if I spend $500/month I've spent a lot. And that's including the $40-$50 per week I spend at the fruit store.

Now I'm not going to tell you it's easy. I spend a lot of time on couponing and chasing deals. A lot. As in an hour or so per day reading blogs, clipping, printing, going to stores. I go to multiple stores multiple times per week. There are coupons ALL OVER my house. It drives Benjie batty, all the little scraps of paper everywhere.

But to me it's worth it. I save literally at least $500 per month, usually more. This month I've spent a bit more but there have been some great deals that I've wanted to take advantage of. But in July I spent $300 TOTAL on food. Yes. $300. And that's with keeping kosher and buying kosher meat and cheese.

You have to be willing to be a little nuts. Yes, I go to Jewel and buy 25 bottles of mustard. People look at me a little funny when I check out with 30 boxes of cereal (Ma'am, do you run a day care?). But when my kids need more ketchup and I can send them down to the basement to get a bottle of ketchup that I paid $.05 (yes, that's five cents) for instead of buying one bottle that week at Jewel for $2.50, it's worth it to me.

I will say again that there is a huge investment of time that needs to be put in. You might not have that kind of time. But maybe you have an hour or so per week? Do CVS or Walgreens. With very little effort, in a very short time, you will amass a very excellent stash of health and beauty aids-toothpaste, shampoo, razors, etc. I will never pay for toothpaste again. I used to buy generic shampoo. Now I use lovely Dove shampoo.

And it was free.