Couponing Extravaganza

My local grocery store has been running their Dollar Days promotion this week, and there have been a lot of great coupons this month.

This haul included free ice cream, rice steamers, wax melts, pasta sauce, rice sides and salad dressing.  I paid $28.00 for this order, but also received $15.00 back for the dollar promo.  There are 8 boxes of fruit packs stacked there- that will last a long time, and it my usual bribe to the kiddo.  I did these deals four times in total so I could really stock up our pantry.  We use the sauce on our homemade pizzas too, so we should be set for a while.

I just ran in to grab this stuff really quick this morning.  The store has all their Gorton's frozen fish half off, which works with coupons for a really good buy. I spent $5.87, and got $3.00 back for the dollar promo.  There are great coupons available now for the turkey bacon, snickers, cookies and P3 packs.  I thought the P3 packs would be a waste but the coupon made them free.  However, they are a nice addition to a salad, so I am glad I picked them up again.  The cookies were finally clearanced from Valentine's Day, so I picked up all the Pillsbury they had left since they matched up with my coupons.  The eggs, P3 packs, cookies, snickers, cleaner, tissues and hair products were all free or better than free with coupons.  I found the hair products on clearance, and I have coupons worth more than their current price.

You will notice that I don't purchase a lot of produce or meat.  The reason that I don't buy produce is that I garden from the spring through the fall.  It is by far the most fun way to stretch your grocery budget.  When I started this, we lived about 45mins away from NYC so we had a 10x10' plot in a community garden.  I canned 50 jars of sauce, and ate countless salads, cucumbers and melons from that tiny space.  I will write more about gardening when I am not looking at snow outside the window.

I only buy meat in bulk, or on a manager's special.  My husband and I tried out a vegan diet a couple years ago, and after not eating meat for twelve months, we just don't eat as much as we used to.  So I buy bulk packages at Sam's and split them up into dinner size portions, and then freeze everything.  When luck is with me, I find those on manager's special.  Since I always freeze everything immediately, it doesn't make much difference when it is expiring.  Our deep freezer has become my best friend in this endeavor.

Be sure to check all the popular sites for coupons as least once a week: coupons.com, redplum.com and smartsource.com are great places to start.  My grocer allows me to stack those coupons with store coupons, so I can get some pretty great deals.  Become familiar with your store's coupon policy, and if you don't know the rules- you better ask somebody.  :)