How Do I Coupon ?Save Money While Buying Healthy for You, Your Family, and the Planet!

Well it looks like for the first week of our new grocery budget our total is: $47.00! $3.00 under budget! I was able to stick to our meal plan and also able to get a few extras including pizza, dip, and chips. I ended up going to 5 stores total and the time spent was under 3 hours. Not too bad. I am hopeful next week will be just as good. I will make another menu (which I loathe) and look to see what can be used up around here to create healthy meals. I hope we do not get too bored with the meals but it will be worth it when we can throw the extra at our debt.

I have been doing a lot of organizing with coupons and our food storage. We completely reorganized the garage and it looks great. It is easier to see what we have in stock. I purchased some shelving from Lowe’s and my food storage is much more functional than before.I plan on adding bins and labels later but that will have to wait until we have some extra cash.

The biggest reorganization I have done is my coupons. If you use coupons you know what a pain in the a$$ they can be! I have vacillated between using a big filing system and only taking out coupons I need to clipping every single coupon and putting them in a small coupon holder. In all honesty, neither system seems to work very well! I am either at the store seeing an item on sale super cheap and not having the right coupon with me because it is stuck in my filing cab at home or I have so many in such a small space that I miss one or get so frustrated I say F it!!

So, I decided to use a coupon binder system instead. I will put together a tutorial of sorts so I can show how I organize my coupons, ad inserts, etc. I really like this system! I hope it helps with grocery shopping in the sense I will have all of my coupons with me and available should I see a great deal. I will post that soon!

Overall for this week I am optimistic with our new budget plan and organization!