Coupons

I was planning on posting about recycling today, but I've got coupons on the brain right now so there's no use fighting it.

Years ago I tried couponing and spent a great deal of time cutting coupons from the Sunday paper and organizing them in a fancy (expensive) coupon organizer. More often than not, however, I would find myself at the store without my coupons and they would expire before I ever got around to using them. Eventually, I gave up and decided it wasn't worth my time.

A few months ago in an effort to further lower my grocery spending, I decided to give it another go. I got myself a cute coupon organizer at the Dollar Tree and sat down with the Sunday paper only to find that there weren't very many coupons in the coupon section anymore. Most of them were ads for mail order products and the entire coupon section might only yeild me three or four useful coupons. So now what? Well, I've kept my eyes open and have found some additional sources for coupons.

TV commercials. I've noticed a lot of commercials are now directing you towards a website for coupons. Just in past few days I've seen the following:

• $29 coupon booklet for Cascade, Dawn, Swiffer, Mr. Clean, Febreze, etc.



• A commercial for the new Woolite Carpet Cleaning Pod pointed me towards Smartsource.com where they have a $2 coupon for the Pod along with many other brands that you can print from your computer.

Samples. I check the websites for my favorite brands and products looking for free samples. Many of the free samples that I get are accompanied by a coupon such as this one from Tampax that came with a $1 coupon.

Products themselves. I've also found quite a few cereal coupons printed on the inside of the box.

So now that I'd collected myself some useful coupons, the next hurdle was making sure that I had them with me when I went shopping. My shopping trips these days are usually planned out, but now and then I find myself at the store unexpectedly so I decided to keep my coupon organizer in my car. I keep it in the glovebox and am able to organize and pull out expired coupons when my husband is driving us somewhere. I also keep any restaurant, fast food, or store coupons in the glove box as well.

I find it rewarding to check the store receipt and see that I've saved $5 or $10 dollars using coupons. It may not be much in the grand scheme of things, but it works for me.