Welcome to Coupons 757

Welcome to my blog! I am starting my journey of serious couponing. I am discovering the best ways to collect, organize and use coupons for Hampton Roads grocery stores and more. Clipping coupons can be tedious and time consuming but I have saved more than $600 in the past month and I've barely scratch the surface of what can be saved. During this time I've invested approximately three hours of my time each week, that's like paying myself $50 an hour! Plus I get to reap the rewards of all of the variety of items that I normally couldn't buy.

Hampton Roads has held pretty strong through these tough economic times, but it is starting to hit home a little. I hope that you will join me on this journey as we discover the best deals in our own stomping ground and save some money! Feel free to comment on any posts and add your own special finds and success stories.

Follow along with me and I will post any great deals that I find in our area. It is up to you to clip the coupons. Currently I recommend clipping coupons from the Virginia Pilot, Richmond Times and Washington Post as well as printing online coupons from http://www.coupons.com/ or http://www.couponmom.com/. Also, make sure you have your store savings card and that it is registered online.

I'm still learning too, so everything will not be perfect. I am not quite organized enough yet to tell you which coupon came from where except that it came from the above sources. You will need to make a coupon book and when you see the deal posted flip through it and see if you have the coupon too.


I do not intend to replace the major sites like Coupon Mom, I just want to make it easier for everyone in Hampton Roads to find really great deals that are relavent to us.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Whew... That was work!

Getting serious about couponing kicked our asses last night!  My aunt and I decided that we were going full steam ahead with it by setting up our notebooks and purchasing (and clipping from) the Virginian-Pilot, the Richmond Times and the Washington Post.  We purchased two of each!

Start Time:  8:00 PM

First we separated all of the coupons from the papers and put them in a pile.  We both grabbed scissors and started clipping away!  We threw the coupons in a big basket between us.  Wrong!  Although it seemed like a good idea, in the end it was not.  After we finished clipping all of the coupons it was overwhelming to look at that pile knowing we had to sort through them. 

Since we couldn't look at the pile of coupons we decided to start organizing our books.  We each started with 30 trading card sheets and eight dividers.  We labeled each section accordingly and in this order: Dry, Cans, Baking/Spices, Cold, Meats, Frozen, Pharmacy, Household.  We tried to divvy up the sheets between the sections, giving more to sections such as Household and less to Meats.  They ended up having to be moved around before it was over with.  Since we were using leftover supplies from other ventures, setting up our books ended up taking just a little more time than it would have if we had bought everything new, but at least we didn't spend any extra money on it!

Time: 10:00 PM

Now, it was on to that really scary basket of coupons.  It seemed silly to just start grabbing coupons and filing them so we decided to sort them out.  We completely cleared off the table.  We wrote the title of each section in large letters on the back of eight index cards.  Each card was spaced out and placed around the table.  We grabbed handfuls of coupons and separated them into their appropriate sections.

Since we knew we had doubles (or more) of some coupons it still didn't seem like a good idea to start filing yet so we moved our piles and cleared the table once again.  We started laying them out one by one and placed multiples on top of each other.  When we finished each section we grabbed our books and starting filing coupons by whatever order made since to us.  By the time we got to our last two sections we were a little delirious!  The coupons were running together and everything starting looking the same.  We finally made it through to the end and our books were complete.

Time: 12:30 AM

I think we will get better at this as we go and each Sunday it will get a little easier.  Our books have 30 full pages of coupons and that's without even venturing to the printable ones from the internet!  We need more pages!

Please learn from our mistakes, this is what we will do differently next time:
  • Not buy six newspapers
  • Invest in eight smaller baskets and label them accordingly, separate coupons as we clip
  • Have more available pages
  • Start earlier in the day and not right after a huge meal!
Now I am going to do a quick scan of the grocery ads to make sure that we don't miss any super deals before they switch over on Wednesday.  I will post anything great that I find.
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