It was another day for scores.

Yesterday was a couponing kind of day. After a long and dreary night filled with organizing coupons on Sunday, I planned a trip to the store, and walked away happy. So for your viewing pleasure, a photo bomb of my latest adventure. Unfortunately I'm sad to not have pictures of the actual shelf tags, but will make sure from here on out to do so! It was a vital part of my trip yesterday.

 It all began with the clipping process. Since I've never fully talked about my organization and clipping routine, I'll begin there. Sunday afternoon was spent at my mother in law's house, alongside her and my sister in law, as we all sorted, sifted, and stapled our coupons

First we lay out the pages. Ignore the blurry quality, my phone sucks.

Stacked and stapled.

 Now, the first thing we do is divide up our inserts and match up the pages. I bought 4 papers, with 3 inserts, meaning I had a total of 12 inserts to divide  and match page for page. As you can see in the picture, it's a fairly simple process. Lay out each page into stacks so that all your "same" coupons will line up perfect. Then we staple each coupon. Tread lightly with your stapler, because you'll have to separate them in the store when you go to use them, so I always staple the picture of the item. This way you don't accidentally tear the barcode or expiration date. Now, my sister in law takes the pages that are fold ups (like you see in the picture, they have a crease like a book opening) and she tears them down the middle to avoid the fuss of cutting her coupons out from the "book page" sheets, and instead is left with individuals.

I am not partial to either way so I often end up with my stacks looking a little like the next picture. You probably can't tell but these are the same pages from the last picture, all folded back up, stapled and stacked, just waiting to be cut.


Next comes the cutting process. I am not a fan of this step, and I spend most of my time grumbling under my breath about how I'm wasting my time and it takes forever, just for a few measly coupons. My tools of choice are no longer my trusty scissors, although those work PERFECTLY FINE!

No, see I discovered that my rotary cutter and mat work outstandingly for both cutting my fabric AND my coupons.

My weapons of choice.

But, since the point of this is to save money instead of spend it, I don't recommend buying a rotary cutter and mat unless you are REALLY going to invest in the time for your coupons. Or unless you sew, because then, by all means, buy it as a multi-purpose tool like I did.

So after 2+ hours (long and grueling on my comfy couch while my husband played an entertaining video game for me to watch) I finally had a mountain of stapled coupons.

My mountain :)

After this all that is left is to put them in your binder. IF that is your method of choice for organizing them. It's mine, and it works. Actually, it is the method of choice for most couponers. I can testify to this because while I was out with my sister in law shopping we were standing in the cereal aisle with two other women who both had their binder opened up in front of them just like us.


Anyway. So the next step after the clipping and tucking all of your coupons, is to find your deals. The first source for this is of course, your sale ads. I found a lot of deals I wanted to take advantage of in my local Publix ad. So I searched through the pages and wrote down each deal I wanted. The list is always messy at first, as I do my math and figure out what my final prices will be.

Then I went to bed. Because at this point, it was 12:40 a.m. and I knew I wanted to get up early to snag my deals! 

Then came the magic. My sister in law and I headed out to Kroger first. Don't ask why, because honestly I don't know. We just picked Kroger. Whoa buddy am I glad we did. We walked away with some AMAZING scores. Here is where my regret of not having pictures of the prices tags comes in. Let me detail this picture for you. To the left is my Kroger score. I got 6 deodorants, 4 shaving gels, 2 toothbrushes, and 4 Pomegranate juices FOR FREE. I paid .29c for each of the 4 Dial handsoaps. I paid $1.99 for the Listerine, and I paid $2 a piece for each Olay face wash. 2 of the Olay face washes are the Olay Rejuvinist. ALL of the Olay soaps had the WRONG price labels on them. Somebody apparently didn't do their job the night before and remove the closeout prices of $3.49ea on them and because of my coupons I got them for $2. And there is also an Old Spice spray in there that I think I also go for free. All in all for my Kroger trip I paid 13.76 after tax, and $8 of that was my face wash. 

On to Publix. Now my Publix price tags might not look like a score to you. But in all actually it is. Here is what I got:

In this picture there are 4 boxes (with 2 in each) Success Boil in Bag rices, 18 cans of soups, 2 Palmolive dish soaps, 2 20ct Finish Gelpacs, 8 Krafts Homestyles, 4 Minute Rice Steamers, and 8 4pack of Jello Pudding cups (Ok, there is actually only 7 in the picture because my kids got a hold of them pretty quick).

Here is a picture of my reciept:

So I paid $43, but I saved $72, on items that are useful. Anytime you have saved more than you spent,you had a successful shopping trip (on food at least. I do not condone using this theory at say, the mall. It might be viewed as a shopping addiction. Not that I would know or anything...). I am actually more excited about my Publix trip than my Kroger trip because most of what I got was food items, and I got everything at around 50% off. 

So my friends, that is the latest installment in my coupon adventures!