Time Saving Tips

Don’t we all need to save some time here and there. I do try to cook healthy meals for my family, but cooking a meal from scratch can be a challenge when you are in a time crunch to be at soccer practice, school, brownies or whatever. Then try to have a wholesome meal on the table. Here are a few tips and tricks I use to keep good food going in and have time to do all the other things:

CVS Shopping

Big name change today! Thanks to my husband who pointed out the obvious to me. I always compare how many pounds of food I can get to the cost of the item. This week I bought almost a pound of pasta for $0.19. I think that is a pretty good deal to get a pound of food for $0.19.

I went to CVS on Sunday with only a $1.00 ECB. Here are my results:

Kroger Shopping

Yeah we are back from vacation. I don’t like to post I am on vacation when I am away from my home, but I am so glad to be back. We went to Eureka Springs Arkansas. It is very interesting little mountain town. I recommend you going to visit some time. There are a ton of things to see and do. We didn’t get to do them all. Also a great workout, since there are so many hills. My calves feel it.

I want to thank Laura from Frugal Follies for joining my Blog!

When I got home I was bummed, since I thought I missed most of the good deals for the Kroger Super Saver event. However, on my last day of vacation and our 12 hour journey home I made my list. I already knew what coupons I had. (I took my printed coupons with me) I normally go to the store on Wednesday or Thursday. Sunday there are too many crowds. I was sure the .49 pasta was going to be all gone and was bracing myself for disappointment when I got to the store. I hit the pasta aisle first and was amazed there was a lot of pasta left.

Here are the 51 items I purchased for $39.73:

Target Shopping

I needed to get crackers this week and I was waiting for them to go on sale, but there were not any good prices on crackers. I found a $1.00 off two Nabisco crackers Target coupon. Since I was going to be there I decided to see if there was anything I could get for really cheap or free.

Walmart and Tom Thumb shopping

I was sick yesterday, but still managed to get out and get some shopping done. I needed to stock up on some fish items for lent and there were some really great sales out there. At first I was not so sure I did that well at Tom Thumb. I took my receipt with me to Wal-Mart so I could compare prices. There was only one item I could have done better on, but overall I did very well at Tom Thumb. I did stay on the couch for the rest of the evening. Little miss took care of everything for me. After 10 hours of sleep I am feeling much better today.

Tom Thumb

We were having our traditional Monday night meal of Red Beans and rice. My husband is from New Orleans and this is tradition there. I usually pick up French Bread at Tom Thumb. I do pay full price, but it is fresh that day. Since I was already planning on making a trip I decided I might as well do some shopping and saving.

Free Newspaper Coupons

I was very excited today, since today is Friday. We receive a free paper here every Friday with sales flyers and coupons usually from Smart Source and they are usually the ones found in this Sunday’s paper. It doesn't come with the other inserts for coupons. I still need to buy the Sunday papers to get them all. With the Friday paper I can get a little jump on what is coming up for Sunday. On my way back from watching my daughter get an award at her school, I noticed the papers had come. I ran to the door and pulled the paper out to see what is coming for this week so I can plan.

Coupon Stacking tip:

I have noticed a lot of coupons for $1.00 off of meat. Please read your coupons carefully and make sure you understand what they are for. The good news is most of these can be stacked with other coupons so you can get meat for free. The coupon that is coming out this Sunday says $1.00 of any fresh beef purchase of two Classico Pasta sauces. Since this is a coupon for beef. You could use two coupons for each jar of sauce if you have them and a coupon for the beef. Also if you bought 6 Jars of sauce and had three coupons for a $1.00 off beef. You could get $3.00 off of one beef purchase.

Cellfire is giving away free coupons from .50 to 3.00 today just for logging in. I got .50 off my next purchase a Kroger. Next post will be about using e-coupons and stacking coupons at Kroger my new favorite store.

3/3/2011 Start of Something Great

I am giving this extreme couponing a try. So far I am in week four and I am doing quite well, but I know I can do better. I am still trying to work on a system that will work for me. It is a lot of organizing and planning, but I am starting to buy things we really would eat and I am getting a lot of items free I would not normally buy.

I went to Kroger this week and the register first rang up to $105.00+ with an entire cart full of food. I nearly had a heart attack. I was hoping I had enough coupons to get that total way down. I had a lot of coupons and I thought the people behind me would get angry, but everyone was smiling at how much I had saved. When I was finished and the lady said I only owed $41.23. I was so happy. 

Both me and husband are so happy to have battery toothbrushes for the first time in our entire lives and especially since they were free. I would never buy them, because they were not worth the extra money. We needed money for food. However we do have enough toothpaste for months now. But again it was free.

Now I am telling all my friends about this and they want to learn how to do it to. It is a great feeling to spend $10.00 and save over $30.00. This is about how much I save each week at CVS.