But I have done a little shopping, thanks to my husband. He approached me a couple weeks ago and said something to the effect that prices are going up and that we needed to trim our food budget. He then asked me about my friend, Rachel, the queen of frugal shopping, and asked if I knew what she was doing to cut her food budget. She's a couponer, I know that. Gordon even asked me to talk to Rachel and see if she'd give me a couple of her menus so I could see what they were eating. So I humbly messaged her and she said she'd work on it for me.
In the mean time, I've started watching ads these past couple weeks. Here's what I've found....(I can definitely see how this can be addicting!)
In the picture I have:
4 reams of printer paper
1 50 pk of photo paper
8 bottles of kids' shampoo
8 deoderants
10 boxes of crayons
6 packages of socks (3 were only pictured as I've opened 3 of them already)
Total cost: about $3.00!!
Now that's my kind of shopping! My hubby and friend were a little leary as I was getting up at 6:30am to go shopping one Saturday (but I knew the rest of my day was busy so I wouldn't have time).
How'd I do it:
Office Depot-reams of paper are $0.01 each (limit of 2-mail in rebate)
Staples-reams of paper are $0.50 each (limit of 2-online rebate)
Staples-photo paper $0.50 (limit of 1-online rebate)
Target-had free crayons with purchase of colored pencils (which were on sale for $0.50 each!)
Meijer-body wash and deodarant-they had a super sat. sale discounting to $1. Then I had printed coupons for $0.50 and $0.75 which the doubled up to $1 so it was all free
Meijer-has a promotion right now-buy $10 in Nabisco products, get $10 off Hanes socks. And the socks are on sale and the crackers/cookies are on sale. So we did this promotion twice, getting basically 6 packages of socks for free (or you could say 6 boxes of snacks for free-then I feel less guilty for having them in the house-but we picked ones like Ritz crackers and graham crackers besides just Oreos! :-)
I purchased some more supplies at great prices....
Office Depot:
Pocket folders (with prongs) $0.01 (limit 10)
Plastic rulers $0.01 (limit 5)
Composition notebooks $0.40 (limit 5)
Pencils 12-pk $.25 (limit 5)
Fabric book covers $0.25 (limit 5)
Compass $0.25 (limit 5)
Scissors $0.25 (limit 5)
Stickies $0.50 (limit 2)-at Staples (non pictured)
So my total was $6.65! Oh, and I did buy a USB 8gb thumb drive for my son next year-it was $25.00 off so it was only $10.00.
I, for once, feel like it might just be worth shopping the sales, if I can control my love for office supplies. I actually printed out my boys' school lists for next year too, and purchased enough for both this year, mid-year refills, and next year, just to be done with it. The way the economy is, I just can't see prices coming down-I think they are only going up. And it's not like it takes a lot of room-one little box can hold it all for next year. So my food storage room is now not only for food, but school supplies too.!
