Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Couponing is my drug

Today has been an eventful day. I have organized the babies' closets, put away clothes that they have outgrown, did 300 loads of laundry, washed 200 dishes by hand and through the dishwasher, and put together a meal for the hubby to eat for dinner. Basically, I'm worn out. 

This is always what happens whenever I feel like I'm done with dishes. Am I the only one? Surely not. 


So for down time, I put the toddlers in the baby proofed den, cuddled with my tiniest, and finally sat down to blog. It's kinda my new favorite thing. 


I tried to sneak and check up on the two older babies, but as I walked down the stairs, this is what I saw. I stopped and went back up. I didn't even want to know what they were doing. If they ain't cryin', I assume they are perfectly fine. 


Lets take about groceries.
A few people have joked and said "wow, I bet your grocery bill is outrages." And to be honest, it's really not. I usually spend around $300 a month on groceries, toiletries, formula and diapers. People ask me all the time, "How do you do it?"

Like I mentioned in a previous post, my husband used to be a car salesman. Sometimes we would be sitting pretty, and other times we would be scraping pennies just to survive. I had two babies under the age of two, and I had just quit my job to stay home with them. TIMES WERE TOUGH. So in order to save money on diapers and groceries, I learned how to coupon and learned how to bargain shop. And it slowly began my passion and hobby.

I just went to the grocery yesterday, got two weeks worth of groceries, formula, diapers, and spent a total of $148. That's crazy, right? 

Comment to find out how you can get one too!

I start by making a meal plan with my handy dandy Honeydouri. I plan breakfast, lunches, and dinners for the next two weeks. This is also when I started to be creative about dinner. We don't eat steak or shrimp every night, but we do eat really good (and not so healthy) meals. Pinterest has some really great ideas for budget friendly dinners for the family. 

My next secret is to shop at Kroger. It's my heaven on earth. I walk in the doors and most of the cashiers know me by name. I just love it. The reason why I love it so much is because they have the best deals in town! Always! Just this past week, they had their MEGA SALE. This is like Christmas to me. Weird, I know. 

About one to two days before I do a big grocery trip, I do the meal plan like I mentioned, and I make my grocery list of everything that I need to buy. I write down the toiletries, diapers, and food that we will need. And when I shop, I don't buy anything that's not on that list. This has helped me so much in keeping the grocery bill down. (Of course, occasionally, if they have a really good deal on toilet paper, I won't pass it up.) I also leave the husband at home. Haha. 

After I make my list, I go to my big binder of coupons, and I just "look" at all the coupons I have. I have a good memory when I comes to coupons, so I can glance at them and remember what I have. Its my only special gift I have! I have to mentally prepare myself for a grocery trip. You might think I'm going a little over board and that I'm over thinking a typical grocery store run, but this is the only way that I can stay within my very small grocery budget. 

When the time comes, I make my trip. With my big binder of coupons, and my three kids in tow. 

But how do I afford my diapers for TWO babies? COUPONS. And Sales. This week, Kroger had Pampers and Huggies on sale for $7.99 a pack. A pack typically will last me a week for each child, so when I go to the store, I buy two packs of each size. I've done the math for the boxes and my coupons, and it's more logical to buy the packs. I had a $3 off coupon for pampers, and a $3 off coupon for Huggies. So, I got two packs of diapers for $3.99 each. Then, I bought a box of the Kroger brand diapers that was on sale for $12.99. A WHOLE BOX. I had a $2 off coupon for that, so for a 58 count box of Kroger brand diapers, I paid $10.99. So in total, I got two weeks worth of diapers for two babies for $18.97. HOLY COW.  

And let me just add that the Kroger brand diapers are my FAVORITE. 

I normally am a breast feeding momma, but I have a heart condition that has to be monitored by taking medicine. With this particular medicine, I can't breast feed because it will affect the baby. So, at 6 months old, I had to wean my tiniest nugget and put him on formula. It was heart breaking because that stuff IS SO EXPENSIVE. I have signed up for every formula coupon you can get, so on average, I get $20 in coupons each month. That helps. 
BUT, yesterday was the best coupon deal that I have ever had in my life. The Kroger brand formula, which is compared to Similac, was on sale for $13.99. When I went to grab a can, there was a COUPON just laying there beside it for $8 off. EIGHT DOLLARS. So I got a large can of formula for  $5.99. HOLY FREAKING COW. I did the tiny mom dance in the baby aisle. 

So because I only spent $25 in the baby aisle, that left me $125 roughly for food. Remember, I only buy what is on my list. And i did just that. I bought everything that I needed and nothing else.

It wasn't my best shopping trip, but it definitely was a good one. Anytime I walk out of the grocery store under budget (in this case by $2), it's a GREAT day. 

I got home, unloaded and put away the groceries, and have started thinking about the next grocery trip! 

3 comments:

  1. Where do u get your coupons ?

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  2. Do you think you could do a post on how to coupon with Kroger and how their policies work? If they double coupons or what they allow.. I would love to learn. :)

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