Too many cooks

When Jeremy and I first got married, one of the tension points was what we were going to cook for dinner.  This is because I had entered our union with the idea that this would be my area and I would have a husband who swooned over my cooking, just like everyone else had while I was in highschool and college.  I had all of my recipies handed down from my grandma and mom.  We were given a recipe book filled with favorite recipies from friends and family.  I. was. set.

Then two things happened over and over.
1) I was cooking too much so we had a lot of left overs.
2) Jeremy never ate ANY leftovers and was constantly trying to correct my cooking.

I remember breaking down into tears as we went through recipe books.  He didn't like ANY of the recipies I had in my stash.  I labeled him a 'picky eater'.  I fumed.  I was hurt.  This was not turning out how I'd imagined.

When Jeremy cooked, it was different.  He made things without mixing them.  By that I mean, there were no casseroles.  I thought it odd, but soon realized that his chicken was so moist and succulent that it didn't need gravy-- a totally new concept for me.  He introduced me to green beans (previously I had to gag them down while they were burried in mashed potatoes sandwhiched in a dinner roll).  Soon I realized that I had it all wrong- Jeremy liked to cook and was *gag* better than me.  Why was I making such a big deal out of this fact? 

After Samantha was born and I was on my no dairy/soy/beef/chocolate/tomato diet, being in the kitchen brought me to tears. 

And so Jeremy's uncontested reign of the kitchen began.

Over the years his cooking has become legendary.  All of my family loves to eat his food.  Plus he's teaching everyone how to cook.  Meat is cooked without drying it out.  Canned vegetables with cheese have been replaced with fresh cooked in olive oil.  We haven't bought a can of "cream of _____" in over 5 years because of a thing called a "rue".  He carefully saves his bacon grease to use as flavoring for his hashbrowns and soups.  And he does this every day after he comes home from work.

Now, before you get to jealous and think I'm so spoiled that I no longer merit the title "Mom", he's had to learn a few things too- such as planning ahead.  One simply cannot have dinner ready before bed-time when one comes home and tries to thaw out a frozen chicken at 5pm.  And as much as Samantha and I love his chicken, it's nice to have variety too :) 

So where am I going with this?  Well, there are two areas that I still maintain in the kitchen.  Baking is the first. I've been on the hunt for the perfect chocolate chip cookie (who knew, it had it's own website all along).  Jeremy does swoon over my cookies.  Baking is simply not something he can do as he struggles with scoffs at things like recipies and measuring devices.  And so my reign of the baking remains.

 The second area is scrambled eggs.  I currently hold the crown for scrambled eggs.  All I use is eggs and cheese.  That's it.  And what's even funnier is that Jeremy is the one who taught me how to tell when eggs are cooked right.  It's just that his knowledge is all theory and what he's watched Alton Brown do.  He has yet been able to make them without a puddle of liquid sitting below them.  He gets so frustrated and I just smile. 

I smile because it's not a cooking issue, it's a listening issue.

Week 1 attempt:
Jeremy: How do you make the eggs?  Just eggs and cheese and put the pan on high?
Me: No, I just make sure the pan is hot.  And I don't stir them.  I just let them sit like an omelete and scramble them right before I take them off.

Sam calls me to come eat "dinner" (breakfast is just too hard to say)
As we sit down he sets the plate of eggs down with a frown and grumble.  The eggs are swimming in their juices.

Jeremy:  I did it just like you told me.  Get the pan as hot as possible and let them cook through.
Me: No, I said until it's hot.  I use medium heat.
Jeremy: grumble grumble. 

Week 2 attempt
Sam calls me to come eat dinner.
We all sit down and Jeremy sets the plate of eggs down with a frown and grumble. The eggs are swimming in their juices.

Jeremy: I just don't understand it.  I did it just like you said you do it. 
Me: and how is that?
Jeremy:  Eggs and cheese.  Lots of cheese, nothing else.  And get the pan as blazing hot as possible.


And so lives my reign for the best scrammbled eggs in the family.  My guess is it will be a long one. 

Organizing Tick

A friend came over and showed how she'd organized her office.  I was really impressed.  Mainly because my current system looked like this:

The top right picture was stuff taken out of our hideous and enormous filing cabinet.

She introduced me to this lady's system and I was off! 

I filled up our recycling bin, sent Jeremy off with a box of things to shred and a few days later I was left with this:

Orange planner for our schedules, coupon box to keep receipts, filing box to empty out every fiscal year, two magazine files for odds and ends, and box for our taxes.

And the blue box is only 3/4 full!  SO awesome, SO easy now and we actually have a spare bedroom that isn't horribly embarrassing.

My Two Cents

Although I've cut down our grocery bill from $120/week to $80/week (would be $60/week if it weren't for the darn packets) I've been waaaay busy and have gotten behind on my couponing. My goal is to get the bill down to $60 a week once the school year starts. That being said, a fantastic scenario fell into my lap today and I had to take advantage of it, busy or not!

So, here's how it rolled out:
Back in May I bought 40 Duracell batteries for roughly $18 from Staples. It was AFTER the purchase that I realized I would be getting a $20 store credit, not a mail in rebate. I was annoyed, as we never shop at Staples, but whatever. We needed the batteries and I figured we'd buy toner there when we needed it.

This past weekend I had seen some awesome items for sale at Staples but was annoyed that I hadn't received my rebate yet, as this would be the time to use them.

Fast forward to today, Staples sent me a $20 rewards coupon in the mail. Now, I have to really give kudos to Staples here. Apparently they'd already e-mailed me the coupons, but I hadn't redeemed them yet, so they sent me paper copies telling my they were about to expire!

After doing some quick math, I made a list of everything I could get without having to pay out of pocket (ie under $20), loaded up Samantha and headed to the store.

Now, can you pick out the error in that last sentence? No? It's the part where I loaded up Samantha. She could have stayed home with daddy, but I decided to get her out of the house. I need to remember that this is my hobby and doing such silly things as bringing my daughter along makes it stressful. Like giving me many false alarms so I'll race her to the bathroom, only to have her sit on the toilet with her hollering "No!....No!....No!"

She's not peeing, protesting, or even answering a question. She's just fascinated about her echo in the stalls.

Anyway, where was I?

So I loaded the following in the cart:

and the total was $20.02

That's right! My .02 really is worth something!

All along I was thinking this was only going to give me more store credit- but when I got home I realized that I'm actually going to get a rebate check for $13.98!

Summary: 40 batteries, 2 reams of paper, 2 paper hole punches, 4 highlighters, 2 dry-erase marker boards, 200 note cards, 5 RSVP pens for $4.04 out of pocket.

Lesson Learned: do not take child to Staples

Buying More to Spend Less

Now, you gotta admit, this is just cool:

Off the shelf- no coupons or sales $32.10



With Cottonelle coupons and sales $17.10


Adding a few other specially selected items to the cart $16.67

Yeppers- my total went DOWN .43 when I threw in 4 packs of disposable razors and 6 padded envelopes.

Does that count as making money?

Head Smack

So this is what a fairly typical trip looks like these days...


Total before ad matching and coupons: $91.39
(most was on sale too, but I don't have their "regular" pricing)

Total after: $61.57

All at one store too!

And all I was dong was paying attention...

WHY oh why didn't I do this before?!?

One Man's Trash...

After four months of doing this couponing thing, both my philosophy and process have evolved quite a bit. Originally I was only going to clip for things I already purchased on a regular basis. But I soon realized that there are many items that I could get for free with the coupons when they went on sale. Then Walmart started their "cash back" policy, where they give you the overage in cash when the coupon is more than the item. Then there were the deals where if I had a coupon for item A then I would receive a coupon/store credit at the store, which would then lead to getting desired item B for free as well.

Very quickly I understood why all the coupon ladies were saying they clip every coupon they find. But I don't have time for that. Or the desire for the blisters that would result. After several weeks of collecting massive amounts of coupon inserts and making a huge mess in our living room every week, I've finally come down with a system that has saved me loads of time finding that-one-coupon-that-will-get-me-the-item-i-really-want within seconds.

So, if I haven't bored you already with my newest obsession, and you are interested in maybe doing this yourself, the process in 10 simple steps:

Step 1 (roughly 1 hr): Go to your local recycling center and look through the newspaper bins.

Some may call this dumpster diving. I can see why, as technically the newspapers are in dumpsters and it may look like I'm diving when I'm on my tippy toes, teetering on the edge to grasp the insert peaking out...but let me ask you this- would you reach into a clean dumpster full of paper to pull out a $1?
$5?
The way I see it, I'm pulling money out of the bins. Those little pieces of paper may only be worth .55 or $3, but they add up quick!

So when do I stop?

Generally when the handles on the paper bag break, or I can no longer feel my fingers.
Just depends on the week, really.

Step 2 (20-30 min): Go home and sort the inserts into piles according to week:

Step 3 (1 min): Pile them up in zig-zag fashion
(there's another word for it, but I can't remember)

Step 4 (5 minutes): go through one insert of the first type and pull out the coupons that you would will most likely use:

Step 5 (5 minutes per weekly insert): once you know which coupons you want out of an insert, pulling all the same coupons goes very quickly:



Step 6 (3 minutes per weekly insert): put all the inserts together of the same coupon and clip all the coupons at once- this is the real time/hand saver:


Step 7 (30 seconds): Gaze at husband as he ooos and aaaah at your progress. Then put him to work by putting the coupons in piles relatively close to your coupon file categories:

Step 8 (???): repeat steps 4-7 until you've reached the end of your pile

Step 9 (2 minutes): Pile inserts again in a zig/zag pattern according to type (Red Plum, Smart Source). Remember, we are keeping these until they expire, so that we don't have to clip every single one for those occasions of an awesome (free) deal.

I hope to find some cheap/free horizontal file thingys soon, as digging to find an insert is a little cumbersome...


Step 10 (10-20 minutes): File coupons

Viola! Your weekly couponing trip is done in 3-4 hrs.
This may sound like a lot, but if you are saving yourself $40/week, that's like earning $10/hr (tax free by the way)

A few other tips:

• I learned a few days ago that the insert's date is actually written on the crease in veeeeery tiny print (the 3/13 was me in paintbrush for personal reference):

• Each week you get faster and faster. And once you get to a point where you have enough of a type 'clipped' you won't need to do anything more than just add the whole insert to your stash. If you need more, you know you have it and can go get it later. I'm hoping to get this down to just 2 hrs eventually.
  

• I find dumpster diving is most lucrative on Tuesdays- most people have brought Sunday's paper and the bins haven't been collected yet and are quite full

• If you have a really great radio program to listen to, it goes by very quickly, and you can strengthen the brain cells that may have atrophied during the week while caring for your offspring

• You can easily involve the offspring by having them "match" the piles when you are sorting and when you are pulling inserts (Please note that this will add time onto the activity!)

Happy Couponing!

Oh, and if I see you while dumpster diving, I will be giddy to see a convert, but please consider this:

It was my idea first, therefore I get first dibs.

Adventures and Goofy Grins

Shopping has become a daily event here at our place, particularly because it makes for a very happy toddler. Here are a few steals from the past week:

$8.38

$3.86

$21.68

$20.98
($11.16 just for the stinking cheese- and it was on sale!!)

$13.76

$Free!

These were quite the ordeal at the counter as I had to convince the cashier that I wasn't trying to scam her. I was at CVS (where they are usually very up and up on the couponing thing). When the lady realized I had enough coupons to cover all the eggs she stopped scanning, picked up a coupon and said, "This is for the wrong size, these are all for 9 oz bags."
Thanks to this lady, I knew that it was on the coupon and searched the fine print myself to find it. After this, she scanned a couple more and then stopped again to read the fine print on the coupon, "You can't use all of these, it says 'one per purchase.'"
Amidst keeping Samantha from pulling all of the candy off the wall which was ever so conveniently placed at her level I replied with a smile (and inner pride for not backing down), "Actually, it means one per item purchased, not per transaction. So I can only use one coupon for each item." Still frowning, she finished the transaction.

And Sam still thinks they are just pretty toys!!

Deal Chasing- Plans vs Reality

I have to document, if anything, so I can track my improvement later!
I was all excited for the deals this week.
Jeremy is quite picky about his hair products (no Shaklee for him), so you can imagine my excitement when there was an awesome deal for BOTH of his hair products. The plan was to get 18 bottles of hair gel, but after I cleaned the shelf out, they told me there were only 5 left in a store clear across town.

Darn you, other customers!!


So anyway, I ended up getting just this:

$18.23

The next day the plan was to get 30 boxes of cereal and lots more free milk, however, they didn't have the cereal I was looking for for the hubbs (Crispix), so I only got 10. The pretzels were a $1 each and the banana was to make up for a -.01 balance while doing my last transaction.

$9.63

So then we headed on over to Target, where I was planning on getting free cheese (notice a pattern here?). Turns out that, after loading 10 boxes of cereal in the cart and 8 bags of cheese Target told me (well, the guy standing in from of me told the lady who was also standing in front of me in a "if I don't look at her then she won't talk to me" sort of fashion) that they do not match 2-day-sales. Let me just say, I'm becoming less and less of a fan of Target. They are just so cranky when I pull out coupons or try to price match- like I'm a bottom feeder or something.

Anyway, moving on...

We then went to Super Saver- where I was planning on getting cheese for .45/bag and Crispix. Well, the cheese had their own coupons tapped to them and the store price matched the Crispix!! So I got 8 bags of cheese for .18/each and the cereal for .88/each.

$18.66

The final trip was the next day to the same previous store (don't ask) and I bought 2 boxes of girl scout cookies for $7 (yes, that is almost a tenth of our grocery budget, but I just can't help myself- there are two types that are dairy free! It's for the children!)

Jeremy put away the groceries before I had a chance to take a picture (not complaining!!):
8 bags of Kraft Cheese
1 box Raisin Brand Crunch

for $4.31

So this week's total thus far is $57.83.

This is BEFORE a $20 mail in rebate for the cereals (I didn't pay close enough attention and bought 4 boxes of the wrong size, so I "borrowed" a couple upc's from my mom's recycling...still one short, but I'll find it!)

Now, I know you critics out there are saying- yeah, but how much did she spend on gas?
To be honest- a lot. I could have done better. But I am getting better. And my baby loves riding in the carts, "helping" mommy and greeting every shopper we pass. And the free helicopter ride at one store. And the "cars" at the other. And the free juice at the tasting sections...

You get the idea!

I'm One of THOSE People Now

This past Christmas, while at the In-Laws in Texas- I saw a show called "Extreme Couponing." From what I can tell, it's quite popular, as anyone who I mention my new hobby to, they refer to this same show.

After watching this show, I was quite enthralled- if they can save hundreds, there's no reason I can't try this myself! Originally I didn't do the couponing thing for a few reasons:

1) Since I buy all of my cleaning/personal care items from Shaklee, I didn't really think there would be any good coupons for the stuff I buy

2) I really like getting fresh stuff- preferably organic- and there really aren't any coupons out there for that

3) Usually the off brand is cheaper anyway, but I really am picky about certain brands.

4) (and this was more of an excuse than anything) Samantha is on a dairy-free diet and Jeremy a low/no fiber diet. This makes for a very specialized grocery list- and specialized generally doesn't have an "off brand".

But then I realized- If I just watch for deals and coupons on the stuff we do buy, surely I'd be able to save us some money.

And my newest hobby was born.

A hobby that actually saves us money- by which I do not feel guilty for spending so much time on it (like knitting- oh, how I miss you).

I was very excited, decided to sign up for the Sunday paper and maybe do some dumpster diving when I take the recycling.

And then I talked to Julie. Julie informed me that her weekly grocery budget was half of what we have. My jaw was on the floor. We generally went over our weekly budget. How in the world could they survive on half of what we use?!

She opened my eyes to two new ways of thought:
1) Add/Coupon matching
2) Adjusting your grocery shopping to a stock-pile method, vs a weekly "needs" method

I, myself, do not do the match-ups. I've found a couple gals that do the work for me.
Long story short, we've cut our grocery/toiletries bill from $120+a week to $60-$80 a week.

That's roughly $200 a month! When you are living on rice and beans, that's a nice little chunk to add to your debt snowball.

Now, I spend around 3 hrs a week clipping coupons, checking blogs for deals and making a list/shopping plan. I originally made my own coupon binder that I carried in a plastic bag:


But was recently blessed with a much nicer (and less annoying) coupon binder for my birthday that I L.O.V.E

(Coupon Clutch on the left)

I'm still a novice and learning a great deal, and certainly have not made money off my endeavors yet, but I'm getting pretty darn close.

One of my "early" trips- don't remember the exact amount, but it was under $15 for all of this...pretty sure it was $10. Anyway, I was proud, so I took a picture.

Another proud moment- spent $5.78 at CVS

For those of you who think that using coupons really can't save you that much...

And my favorite endeavor thus far:


Yep- that reads FREE!