lessons learned from couponing (and giving it up)

Lessons I Learned from Couponing

• Have an idea of what your maximum price is for items. I quickly realized that not all deals were good deals with a coupon. I started keeping a mental note of what I considered to be a good price for certain things, and when a good sale came up I would buy a lot of that item. That way when I wanted or needed it, I had it in my pantry and I didn't have to pay full price for it. It saved us money because even though we were mostly using the same items, we were paying less to buy those things. 
• Match sales and coupons. Most coupons by themselves weren't very good deals, but if I waited for a good sale and used the coupons then, the prices could be quite good.
• Check your receipts. Sometimes items don't ring up at the right price, and sometimes the checker punches in the wrong price per pound for produce. Sometimes customer service has given me the item for free because of the mistake. Other times it's a few dollars. But that adds up! However, I will admit that sometimes by the time I've loaded the kids and all the food into the car and realized there was a mistake, it's not worth it to me to go back in just for 50 cents.
• Grocery shopping goes much faster if you make a list. I keep a running grocery list on my fridge and add to it throughout the week as I run low on things. Then stick to the list. It really helps me to have a list because I don't feel as tempted to buy things that aren't on the list. If I just go without a list then I am very susceptible to buying things I wasn't planning to buy and that I don't really need. I do keep an open mind in case there are Manager's Specials.
• A lot of grocery stores will mark down items that were slightly damaged in shipping or that they ordered too much of. There are certain places in the store where they tend to put those items. Know the hot spots and briefly check them when you go to the store. A good time to get good deals on candy is right after Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, or Christmas when the store is trying to get rid of the extra holiday candy.
• If you want to avoid expensive splurges on treats, don't go grocery shopping hungry, and don't bring your kids if you know they'll try to get you to buy them a treat.
• Go grocery shopping once a week. Plan your weekly menu before you go so that you can make sure to buy everything you need, and base your menu on what you already have or what is on sale that week. Even if you don't use coupons, you can save money by watching the sales ads.
• Avoid making frequent trips for just one item. Every time you go to the store increases your chances of splurging on something--and you lose all that time spent driving to and from the store. (This one actually isn't that hard for me because for some reason grocery shopping always seems like such an ordeal that I avoid going for as long as I can.)

Lessons I Learned from Quitting Couponing

• My time is valuable. One of the main reasons I stopped getting the Sunday paper was because I always dreaded clipping my coupons because it took so much time--even with the help of The Grocery Game. I know there are some things that I could still save a lot of money on using coupons, especially cereal, but I also value my time, and I'd rather have that time to do things that are more important to me. There was also always the stress of making sure I remembered all my coupons, keeping a tight hold on them throughout the shopping trip, and making sure they scanned right. I may start using coupons again after I'm done with school, but if I do I'm going to have to come up with a better system that doesn't take so much time. For now I still look at the weekly ad for the grocery store and add good deals to my grocery lists. It really only takes me about five minutes to do that.
• Did I mention my time is valuable? On a similar vein, I realized that going to extremes to save money isn't always worth it to me. For a while I was washing ziploc bags and setting them out to dry so that I could reuse them. It was a mess. The piles of plastic bags were driving me nuts, and I couldn't keep track of them. I know it works for some people, but I have a hard enough time keeping up with the dishes. Adding plastic bags just didn't work for me. So, yes, maybe I could save some money by washing plastic bags, but that ten cents isn't worth the stress for me. I do have a lot of plastic glad containers that go in the dishwasher just fine, so I use those instead of plastic bags whenever I can.
• I need to come up with a more organized system for organizing our food, at least some of it. After I quit couponing I went through our pantry and realized that I had gone way overboard stocking up on salad dressing (and other items too). I had a mindset that every time salad dressing went on sale for a certain price, I would buy a couple of bottles. So when I went through the pantry I realized several of the bottles were past their expiration dates. My thought is that I need to keep a spreadsheet or list that tells how much of certain things I need to keep in stock--i.e. four bottles of salad dressing, three bottles of oil, eight boxes of Cheerios, and so on. If I already have enough of that item, then I don't need to buy five more when they're on sale.
• On a similar vein, I've come to realize that food storage can be clutter. I do try to keep a pretty good supply of food, but at the same time stepping around food storage stresses me out. In a different season of our lives, we will be able to store more food.
• It's easy to get a lot of unhealthy food with coupons. I had quite a bit of self-discipline in that area, but after I quit couponing I did feel like we had a lot of processed food to work our way through. I guess part of the problem was that it would be on sale for cheap, so I would buy it, but then we would never eat it because I don't cook that stuff very much. If I were to start couponing again I would have to figure out a way to moderate how much of that we get. I do like to keep a few boxes of hamburger helper or some cans of soup on hand for dinner emergencies (which, by the way, aren't happening as much lately since I've been using my menu!), but I don't need to keep very much--and to be honest, a lot of the time it takes just as much time to make food from scratch as it does to make the pre-packaged version. I do feel that couponing can still be helpful even if you do mostly homemade foods. I was able to get things like cereal, pasta, canned fruit and vegetables, frozen vegetables, and also non-food items like shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, and toothbrushes for good prices and save a lot of money with coupons.

random musings

I love and hate making bread. I like the feeling of mixing and kneading bread because it seems so productive and motherly and homey, and I like the yeasty doughy smell. But at the same time I really hate mixing and kneading because if you don't have the right amount of flour it's really annoying. If I don't have enough flour I add some and knead some more, of course, and just as I start feeling like maybe this time I have just the right amount and it's mixed pretty homogenously, the dough starts feeling incredibly sticky again and it gets all over my hands and the counter and I have to start all over again. But if I have dough that has just the right amount of flour, where it's smooth and sticking to the counter slightly but not so much that I can't even work with it, I just love the feeling of kneading it.

I still haven't figured out why my bread seems to always taste sour and fermented. I was reading some things online and it sounds like rising too fast or too long can cause this. So maybe I need to experiment with adding less yeast than the recipe calls for or not letting it rise as long. Ryan doesn't notice it and doesn't even know what I'm talking about when I complain about it. Ever since I was pregnant with Kevin, my taste buds have been a lot more sensitive. I wonder if food will ever taste normal again.

When you buy something new and you are going to write a review for it, in general it is a good practice to wait until after you have used the item for a while before writing the review. In other words, don't buy a new crib and set it up, and then write a review saying how cute the crib is and you can't wait to see how your baby likes it when he arrives in two months (although this might work for reviewing decorations). What people want to know is how the products works over a period of time, not how it looks out of the box. Also, a review of a product is not the place to talk about how fast the item was shipped to you; it's the place to talk about the actual product. Just a little pet peeve of mine.

I really like the ruched maternity tops. They have elastic sewn into the side seams, and for some reason that makes a really flattering fit. I also mostly like the secret fit belly jeans by Motherhood Maternity. Before I had ever been pregnant, I had this strange misconception that low elastic panels were cool and high ones were nerdy and old-fashioned. Then I actually tried both while pregnant and I realized that it's a matter of functionality, not style. I realized that low panels hurt my tummy. The secret fit belly would be about as nerdy and old-fashioned as it gets according to my old standards because they go really high. But I like them because my pants actually stay up pretty well, unlike the cheap JC Penny jeans I bought when I was pregnant with Kevin. The only thing I don't like is that since the panel covers my entire tummy it can get pretty hot, but then I can fold the panel down and I don't have to experience major abdominal pain because the panel material is light and doesn't squeeze so hard. Now, the sales people always play up the secret fit belly pants. Every single time I've gone to Destination Maternity they've told me that I've got to try a pair on even if I'm not planning to buy jeans because the secret fit belly is so amazingly comfortable. The way they talked, I thought I was supposed to try these things on and instantly feel my tummy settling into a world of bliss and rainbows and weightless joy or something. Yes, they are comfortable, but I still feel the weight of pregnancy pretty keenly down there.

I am pleased to report that Baby Girl does, in fact, have bones. Elbows, even. I felt them with my hand. Which is good, of course, because humans kind of need that sort of thing.

I keep bumping into things with my growing tummy. I keep forgetting it's there. I think I've had a lot of growth in the last couple of weeks.

In March we get the lovely experience of drinking pool water. Actually, our city uses something other than bleach for most of the year to disinfect the water, but every March they have to flush out all the pipes with bleach, so our water tastes and even smells like a pool. I guess I appreciate them keeping the pipes clean, but it sure tastes yucky. I grew up drinking well water, and it was really good, so I guess I'm pretty picky about my water now.

on shopping and other pregnancy stuff

Have you ever looked at the models on motherhood.com? I'm pretty sure half of them aren't actually pregnant and they're just leaning back and pushing out their tummies. I want to see a model who is eight months pregnant wearing these outfits. That's the true test of whether a maternity shirt is worth buying.

A couple of days ago I was going out in public, and the few shirts I have left that look okay on me were all dirty. In desperation I pulled out a maternity shirt, and, lo and behold, I looked pregnant. And cute. And a shining light bulb appeared above my head as I realized, "Wait a second, I look awful in these shirts because I'm starting to look pregnant!" Not pregnant enough to wear all of my maternity shirts, but some of the smaller ones look pretty good. So I decided that I want to enjoy going to the playground or the store or to a Relief Society activity and feel like I look nice without having to hide under a sweater or coat, and therefore, I am going to go buy some clothes that I like and that I can feel confident in. (I go shopping very rarely, so the fact that I decided to go shopping is kind of a big deal.) So Kevin and I drove to the great and spacious building (i.e. the mall), and I headed to Destination Maternity to find some transition-into-looking-pregnant clothes. Kevin was very good even though he was bored, and he spent most of the time pointing at the mirror and telling his image, "No! No!" So as a reward he got to play at the play area for a while before we went home. And I am so excited because now I can feel like I look nice in my clothes again. I've been wearing big shirts and covering up with a sweater for a couple of months now.

By the way, I was very pleased to note that they've fixed the picture of the pregnant lady on their bags. She used to have her belly poking out under her shirt, but now they fixed it so her shirt covers it all. The old version really bugged me.

The most interesting symptom of pregnancy I've been having this time is that my tailbone hurts, and has been hurting since early in the pregnancy. A lot of the time when I try to roll over or sit up, it causes me a lot of pain and I have to move slowly and carefully. My midwife said it's probably because my body is making hormones to make my joints and ligaments and such relax, which is what I suspected, but I may go see a chiropractor just in case. It would not be fun to find out that I can't get this baby out because there's something funny happening with my tailbone. I don't remember this happening with Kevin, but every pregnancy is different, and this time around maybe my hips know what's coming.

Other aches and pains seem to be setting in earlier this time, like aching hips at night. But for the most part I've been feeling really well. I hardly feel sick at all. My only disappointment is that I'm not sleeping well like I could with Kevin. When I was pregnant with him I was able to take awesome naps that were very deep and very relaxing. This time I have been trying to nap when Kevin does, but for some reason most days I just lie there wondering why I can't get to sleep even though I feel tired.

Classes start this week, and for some reason I'm kind of nervous to start getting bigger and have people in my classes realize I'm pregnant. Maybe I'm afraid it will make me even more different from them because I'll be the married person who's pregnant with her second child. It might be weird. Outside of BYU, it's pretty uncommon for undergraduate students to be married, let alone parents. Or maybe I'm just scared of the attention from people asking if I'm pregnant.

I'm excited to see what Kevin thinks as my tummy grows. Maybe he won't even notice, or maybe he'll eventually figure out that there's a baby in there. He loves to see the babies at church, so I hope he will be as happy having a baby at home all the time. I know it may be challenging to have our attention less focused on him, but I think he will be excited to be a big brother. He is starting to understand a little better what "soft" means. If I tell him to be soft he remembers that it's okay to gently touch a person's head but it's not okay to hit or pull hair. He does enjoy head-butting people, but please don't be insulted if he does it to you or your child, because he truly views it as a sign of affection (I do apologize if it hurts, though). I think it must be a boy thing. I'm sure I will still have to remind him to be gentle with the baby and that there will be times when I have to keep the baby way out of reach, but I hope that I can find the right balance so that he can start bonding with the baby and not feel like this is just one more thing he's not allowed to play with.

I'm starting to feel baby-hungry again like I did before the morning sickness set in. Recently some of my friends on facebook have posted pictures of their new babies and I tend look at them and say, "Oh, I want a baby." I don't know how it's possible that I barely remember the half-conscious once-an-hour feedings in the middle of the night, or smelling like rotten milk, or desperately wanting to take a shower but not doing so because if I set the baby down for too long he will cry till he's purple. I don't even remember being in labor hurting much. I just want a baby. Which is probably why the human race is still around.

a little guessing game

Guess how much I spent for all of this food.

Yes, that's Ryan's head in the top left hand corner. He thought it would be funny to jump into the picture.

I've been getting a little disenchanted with couponing lately. It's not so much that I don't like clipping the coupons and making the list. I still enjoy seeing how much I've saved. I do feel like it has made a difference in our budget and that it helps us have more money to spend on things like produce. It's just that it's getting harder to find a good time to go grocery shopping. A grocery trip usually takes a couple of hours, whether I clipped coupons or not. That's time that could be spent doing homework or getting dinner ready on time or spending quality time with my friends or with Ryan and Kevin. If I go during the day, Kevin has to come, and that's a pretty long time for him (for those moms who do it with three kids or even more, I really admire you). And it's hard to find a good time to get my list and my coupons ready. If I can just get some uninterrupted time, it doesn't take very long, but if Kevin is underfoot then it's really stressful because he will reach up and take/crumple/scatter everything. Lately I've been getting groceries late at night because Ryan is home and Kevin is in bed, but I don't like to go out in the dark or lose my evening with Ryan. Plus, at night the grocery stores generally just have the self-checkout lines open, which I think is a pain, especially when I'm buying enough stuff that there's not enough room for it in the bagging area, and if you try to move things the computer tells you to put it all back. I ended up doing two transactions because I knew it would never all fit.

So anyway, because of all those things I've found myself skipping grocery shopping lately even if there are some good sales, because I just don't feel like going. But today I decided to make my grocery trip anyway, and when I walked out I realized I had gotten a ton of stuff and hadn't even spent very much. So I guess I'm going to keep watching sales and matching my coupons after all.

My total spent was $18.93. How much would you have guessed?

on shopping

Recently it occurred to me that similar thoughts go through my head every time I go shopping for clothes:

Why do I bother trying on shirts that have elastic around the sleeves? My big upper arms never look good with elastic squeezed around them, and I don't need to try the shirts on to know that.

Who is determining these sizes? I do not consider myself a large or an extra large person, so why are my clothes being tagged as large and extra large?

I always come away from shopping trips feeling like I'm out of shape and not very well toned and my tummy is poochy and . . . Yes, I could do better in the area of exercise, but I don't like that I always come away from the stores feeling sad because I don't look like what "the world" says I should look like. I don't like that it affects me so much, because I really shouldn't let that bother me. I mean, who decided that women aren't supposed to have muffin tops? Do I really need to worry about what those people think of me?

I am so glad I am not a college freshman. I hope that I am more practical and mature than the girls I see at the stores shopping for their dorm room. I've always felt that there's more to life than clothes and partying, and the impression I get is that there are a lot of 18-year-olds who haven't realized that yet. I guess I look at them and listen to them and wonder if they ever think about anything of substance.

Why are there so many ugly clothes??? I think the people who design the fabric these days take all the ugliest colors, swirl them around a little bit, and then make them into low-cut-paper-thin things that resemble shirts. All I want is a plain-colored t-shirt that I can wear without three more shirts underneath it. I don't think they make them in the east.

All that being said, I've had some really good luck at Target lately. They still have the nasty ugly stuff, but I've gotten some very good deals on nice, conservative clothes there. If there was a place nearby that sold Down East Basics, I would go there too. I used to go to the BYU bookstore and buy Down East Basics t-shirts for $10 apiece, and they fit me just right and were made of good quality, thick fabric. I miss that. Next time I go to Utah, I am stocking up.

disappearing ham

It really bothers me when my food disappears. Like the time about a year ago when I thought I had half a bag of carrots and then I went to make some chicken soup and the carrots were all gone. I didn't find out until recently that Ryan had actually eaten them all and thought I knew that. Well, on Thursday I bought a ham. It was a great deal, and it was boneless. I was quite excited about it. Then I came home and put away the groceries, and the ham was gone! I searched the house, checked the fridge and freezer to make sure I hadn't just forgotten it was already put away, and then decided to check the car just in case. No ham. So I'm pretty sure the cute pregnant lady behind me arrived home with a free ham. It was the last thing scanned, so I think it got mixed in with the other lady's stuff, which was already coming down the conveyor belt as the bagger put the bags in my cart. I was pretty concerned, because I didn't want to lose out on the money I had spent. But I went to customer service at the store yesterday since I was on the way home from Costco anyway, and the guy at the desk said, "Oh, just go get another ham, and I'll put it in a bag for you." I did hand him the receipt, but I don't know if he even looked at it to find the ham on it. So if you come home and realize some of your groceries didn't make it with you, that is what you do.

While I was at Costco, I got my eyes checked. I was surprised to find out that my eyesight has actually improved since I was last checked. I've noticed lately with my old contacts that sometimes it seems like I see better once they're out, but I sort of thought I was imagining it or that it was because it was the end of the day. The doctor also gave me larger contacts than I was wearing before. Apparently my old prescription was a little too tight. The larger ones should allow more tears to get beneath the contacts. That would explain why my eyes have been seeming dry at the end of the day lately. I think I'm noticing a difference with the new contacts, but it might just be because it's a new pair, which always feels better than an old pair. I love the feeling of putting a new pair of contacts in. New contacts slide in so naturally and painlessly--quite a contrast to the feeling of putting in an old pair of contacts, which I think could best be described as "like shoving a piece of plastic in your eye."

I'm getting frustrated with all the bureaucracy at UNC. Everything is so disorganized and a lot more complicated than it needs to be. All the important parts of the university's website are buried so deep that you can't find them unless you know what you're looking for, which I don't, and even if I do find them it's hard to sift through all the useless information about all the clubs and dining services and on-campus housing that I'm not really interested in. It does look like I can finally enroll in classes (if there are any openings left in the classes I want to take!). I keep feeling like there are all sorts of things that I'm supposed to do that nobody has told me about. There's just no centralized place to find out what I need to know and do. I'm working on meeting with an advisor soon to get things planned out. UNC also seems to love using the College Board forms. You have to fill out the form on collegeboard.com and then pay exorbitant fees for the College Board to send the form to UNC, which might also ask for additional information. Maybe I should have known what I was getting into when this is what I saw after clicking submit at the end of the UNC application (click to enlarge):

I did not have these problems at BYU.

I love that Blogger fixed things so that I can preview this page and see how it will actually look when it's published, not just a white page with this post showing on it.

On another note, Kevin learned how to knock. He also learned how to throw a temper tantrum.

There was a ward ice cream social tonight, and part of the social included a homemade ice cream contest, so we entered some lemon ice cream into the contest. It was really yummy. This was the first time we have used our ice cream maker, even though we got it for a wedding present. We'll definitely have to use it again soon.

new breadmaker

Today I finally decided I was going to buy a bread machine. I've been making it by hand, but I don't have the time or motivation to make it as often as we need it, so we've been going without bread sometimes lately. I didn't want to pay $60-200 for one, and I had heard success stories of people getting them at thrift stores, so I went to the PTA thrift shop and bought one. It looks practically new, it has the manual, and . . . it was $10. We tried it out tonight, and, lo and behold, the result was bread. And it tasted good.




If you look closely at the lid, you can see where the bread started baking against the top of the machine. That's probably my only complaint, but with a little experimentation that can probably be fixed.

the last-minute shopping

A couple of weeks ago I did some shopping and bought the last couple of things that I felt like I really had to have before the baby came. It was a great feeling to come home and put them away. The bag for the hospital was packed. I thought I was ready (referring strictly to supplies and such--I am also mentally and emotionally prepared as much as I can be, but it doesn't really seem possible to be completely prepared in those aspects). I do still have a couple of projects that I wanted to finish up, but it was nice to think that if the baby was born today, I would be ready.

Then I started looking through the manual for the car seat and realized that we were going to need a locking clip to put on the seat belt. Oh, no! I thought I had everything! It was no big deal because they only cost a couple of dollars, but Target, Walmart, and Kmart didn't have them (nobody there even knew what I was talking about, which is no surprise since before I did some reading I didn't know what they were either). Plus, the customer service person at Target didn't speak very good English and she hung up on me when I was in the middle of asking her another question, which for some reason made me very upset and stressed. So I caved in and called Babies R Us. Yay! The person who answered the phone knew what I was talking about, AND he was nice. I was determined that I wasn't going to get anything at Babies R Us (I'm not really sure why--maybe because I didn't want to be that nervous first-time mother making a baby registry with that scanner thing while the store clerks tried to convince me that I really did need all those nonessential things like baby wipe warmers and expensive matching crib sets), but if that's where I have to go to get what I need, then fine. And I'm always more inclined to give somebody my business if they are nice to me (in the sincere, helpful way, not the oily, I'm-trying-to-trick-you-so-I-can-get-paid-my-commission way).

So now I have my seat belt locking clip, and once again I am feeling very comfortable knowing that I have gotten everything I need for the baby. So what other essential item did I forget or not think about, and when am I going to realize it?

I'm not feeling terribly positive about being a consumer. I guess it's just that lately I have been getting the impression that there are a lot of people trying to cheat me and get more money from me than their products are worth. Maybe it's because the diaper companies are getting away with cheating new parents by charging large amounts of money for a small package of newborn diapers--which they can get away with since nobody sells that size for a decent price and lots of people need a package or two for the first couple of weeks. (Yes, I have heard about the wonders of cloth diapering--and I'm not going to publish my essay about why I seriously considered it and decided not to do it. Let's just say my reason is not what you would expect. I do think it's an idea worth thinking about, and I've read all the comments and essays about why it's a fabulous idea.) Maybe it's because I've gotten several offers that said I could get a $5 coupon, free shipping, 10% off, or whatever else if I would spend over $100. Maybe it's because Kroger decreased the size of their ice cream containers, then raised the price, then gave me a coupon. I guess I'm getting more experience in the market since I've had to buy things that I never had to get before--maybe the increased exposure has just been a little shocking. Or maybe I just hate spending money, whether I'm getting a good deal or not.