Articles for Coupons & Savings

This was one of the things I wanted to start doing in 2012 and here it is March and I am finally getting one done!

I thought I would just put together a list of the fresh produce that is in season this month as well as the items that should be on sale in the stores.

As we all know, what is in season is usually going to taste the best and is usually going to be on sale. So by focusing on what is in season and basing your meals around that, you can easily save quite a bit at the grocery store.

There are also the other grocery items that we should see on sale right now as well as a little peek ahead at what April will bring.

You can download your free copy of the March Fresh seasonal produce and grocery sales cycle guide here.

You can find any coupons you might need to pair with the sales from the coupon database.

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As I mentioned last week, it is mission organization around here!  The weather is starting to get nicer and with that I seem to get a serious boost of energy to get started on spring cleaning projects.

I took some inspiration from my favorite magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, and decided to wrestle the pantry into order.  I actually just organized our pantry not too long ago and in just a few weeks… well this was the sorry state of things:

Interesting, because I don’t recall seeing wild bears tear apart the kitchen.  So… clearly simply organizing things wasn’t going to work with this family.  I decided labels were in order. Lots and lots of labels.

We have a fairly modest pantry and I keep 99.9% off our stuff in there.  We do have a little closet that holds all the paper goods like towels, garbage bags, extra Ziplocs etc… almost everything else goes in these cupboards.

So here is how project no-more wild bears turned out:

The pantry is built right into our kitchen and is about 2 feet wide. The bottom portion is where the action is with most snack items, drinks, box foods (mac and cheese, rice, pasta etc..), breakfast foods and more.

So I started by taking everything out of the pantry and putting it all in categories on the counter (breakfast items, crackers, box dinners etc…)

Then I started putting things back.  From bottom to top- I found this nifty under cupboard bin from OXO at Target.  I believe it was about $9.00.

It has an automatic kick stand and pulls out very easily so I loaded that with drinks- hot tea, hot chocolate, juice, coconut milk etc…

Next I went with all our breakfast items.  I have a lot of cereal on hand because I tend to buy a lot when it goes on sale.  All those boxes were stacked in the back.  I also put a few boxes of oatmeal and steel cut oats on that shelf.

The open box of cereal went into an OXO container we already had.  Then I bought a bunch of jars at Ikea and Walmart for about $4 each.  The jars have oatmeal and granola.  I used existing Tupperware for other breakfast items.

The next shelf holds most of the snack type items.  I have two toddlers and we spend A LOT of time running from events to the park to play dates to preschool etc… so quick snacks are a must for me.

I put all the extra boxes of things like crackers in the back.  In the front is a plastic bin with quick toddler snacks.  I prepack little baggies of graham crackers, crackers, goldfish etc…  I also keep the little clementines in there.

I made a second tub with snacks that I can grab for myself on the go- trail mix, granola bars, almonds and dried fruit and I like granola and yogurt so there are little bags of granola with spoons so I can just grab a yogurt from the fridge on the way out the door.

I discovered that any super appealing items (like fruit snacks) really need to get tucked away in the back out of sight, so there is a jar of those behind the snack tubs.

The top shelf has all the box type foods in the back sorted by category- pasta, rice, macaroni etc…  I put some extra snack items in jars- Annie’s cookies, Pirate’s Booty puffs, crackers etc…  We also have a jar for spaghetti noodles and croutons.  (My kids will eat a ton of salad as long as there are croutons on top so I tend to have a lot of those.)

The last thing is a basket designated for bread.  I have tortillas, loaves of bread, muffins, naan and other things in that basket.

And the upper portion is all the items we don’t use as often.  The bottom shelf has canned items like tomatoes, vegetables, beans, soups and cartons of broth.

I prefer frozen veggies to canned veggies so we really don’t have a lot of those items.  The jars are back again and this time have pretzels, dog treats and the children’s vitamins.

The top shelf has the items I use the least often- mostly condiments.  There are extra oils/cooking sprays, maple syrup, pasta sauce, salad dressing etc..  Anything I had in multiples went on the back shelf and then a few stray items I corralled in a basket.  Soy sauce, ketchup, salsa, tzatziki sauce etc…

The last stop is all the random baking supplies that I have.  I use the cabinet above the fridge to hold all that stuff and I just started by putting all the extra bags of flour and sugar against the back wall.  Then I made storage containers to have open packages easily accessible.  I just used containers I already had on hand to sort flour, sugar, whole wheat flour, powered sugar, marshmallows, chocolate chips, cupcake liners, nuts etc… I also have a jar of stray candy hidden up there and I bought two plastic bins from Walmart for $.96 each.  One has all the box baking supplies like cake and brownie mixes and then other has pancake, waffle and muffin mixes.

Everything is labeled so there is no confusion about what needs to go where.

Oh and last but not least, I found these little containers at Ikea for $3.99.  I am not even sure what they are for exactly but I thought they would be a great spot for drinks.  We live in a very warm climate so while I typically take my own refillable jugs of water out and about, I do keep a few bottles of water in the car at all times just in case.  So my husband mounted these guys on the wall of the garage  and one holds any little juice pouches for the kids and the other holds the extra bottles of water.

So far this has worked out pretty nicely for us and now it just takes a glance to see what we have on hand.  Previously I found we always seemed to have a million bags open- cereal, chips, crackers etc… and it made me crazy.  Now we just eat what we have open in the jars and once that is gone move on the next thing.  Any extra portions that don’t fit into the jars, I put into little snack bags and those go into the snack tubs.

Does anyone else have tips and tricks for keeping the pantry organized?

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I wanted to mention this little project in case anyone else has the same maddening issue with kitchen clutter. I have this small area in our kitchen that just seems to accumulate all sorts of junk- mail, recipes, coupons, books, magazines and on and on.

It is one area that drives me nuts because no matter how often I sort through it all, the clutter seems to just come right back.

So I found an idea to try and tame the kitchen counter clutter that I wanted to share.

I bought a file pocket that adheres onto the wall (this one is the Martha Stewart collection from Staples). I added a few file folders with the most common types of items that wind up in our stacks- here are my categories:

Recipes
Paperwork to Return (i.e. school paperwork etc..)
Coupons
Mail
Artwork (all the stuff the girls bring home so I can sort through the keepers and the tossers)
Stickers/Coloring Sheets (when I pack lunches I usually tuck in stickers as a surprise and the coloring sheets keep them busy when I am making dinner.)

Anyway, that tends to be the junk we collect and I just went through the stack and sorted it all into file folders. When I am ready to do a shopping trip I can grab that file for coupons. When I am doing our menu planning, I can grab the recipes file to go through what I want to make during the week.

So far it has worked out pretty nicely and we have been free of clutter for a few days now.

I will say this specific sleeve is really tight and won’t fit really thick files. It has served it’s purpose for us so far but if you want something larger, another idea would be a larger size file box:

This is one I got at Target and it can just sit on the counter or it could be mounted to the wall as well.  This would have a lot more space if you wanted to manage all the bills, the family calendar, important papers etc…

For my kitchen file center, I decided to stick the weekly menu plan onto the front of mine.  I usually put it on the front of the fridge but the less stuff that gets put up there the cleaner I can fool people into thinking our house is.

So there you have it!  A simple idea to tame the kitchen clutter!

BEFORE

AFTER

Does anyone else have suggestions for taming kitchen clutter?

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Our family tries to eat as much organic as we can and I get asked all the time how to make it more affordable.  Here are a few tips that have worked for us:

1. Use coupons.  There are a lot more organic and natural coupons coming out these days.  It is great to print them and use them for many reasons- obviously to save money on your grocery bill but also the more these items are purchased and the more coupons that are redeemed, the more likely stores will increase selection and manufacturers will release coupons!

You can check the My Frugal Adventures’s coupon database to find coupons or you can check the Organic Coupons & Deals tab on the upper right corner of the blog. That is a new feature I am building to offer additional resources.  Keep checking back as it will change all the time.

2. Learn Your Prices.  I think creating a little price book or at least trying to get a pretty good handle on prices is a great idea.  A lot of organic produce items I buy are the same price or sometimes even cheaper than regular produce.  There are many organic items that are significantly more expensive though (like milk and eggs) so I pay close attention to what prices are at different stores.  I can often find the best deals in stores you normally wouldn’t think of for organic products.  Stores like the Grocery Outlet, $.99 Only and Target often have great deals on organic items.

3. Piggyback on other promotions.  One thing that is an annoyance to me is organic milk.  We go through a lot of organic milk and it is expensive and there are almost never coupons available.  I usually pay about $6/gallon and even if I can’t get a great deal on milk I can still try and piggyback on another promotion.  In my area, two of my grocery stores offer great coupons for discounted or even free items when you spend $10-20 at that store.  I can purchase my milk for regular price at those stores and I can at least get the added benefit of meeting the minimum to use that extra store coupon.

4. Shop in season.  Really we should all do this anyway, but I really focus on what is on sale and in season when it comes to organic produce in particular.  If organic celery is on sale that week- guess what the kids are having at snack time all week?  If organic berries are discounted, I buy big and freeze whatever we won’t be able to eat fresh.   I do try to stock up whenever there are great deals on frozen items too just to vary our diet a little when things are out of season.  My girls love corn for example, so when bags of organic frozen corn go on sale I tend to buy 10 bags or so and I freeze them.  Some items, like organic broccoli seem to be on sale more frequently in my area so I don’t buy nearly as much.

5. Prioritize purchases.  I usually try to make sure I am buying organic on certain fleshy produce or fiberous produce.  Examples are apricots, celery, berries, peaches etc… You can see the “Dirty Dozen” items list to see the produce that tends to have the highest levels of pesticide residue.  That is where I tend to focus my budget.  You can also see the “Clean 15″ which are the items with the lowest levels- those items you might not need to spend the extra money for organic.

6. Shop around. Lots of people will tell you the best deals on organics come from Co-Ops, Farmer’s Markets and local farms.  That might be a great option for some people.  I have not found that to be the situation for me personally, plus I don’t always have the time to make extra trips so convenience is a big issue.  I have personally found Target to have great prices on staples like pasta sauce and canned foods.  Another grocery chain in my area, Sprouts, has incredible prices on fresh organic produce.  Some people have found Costco to be a great resource for organic items. You might just open up the grocery ads in your area each week and skim them and start to determine where the best deals are.  If you like to shop at Walmart stores, you can always price match the other grocery store’s advertised prices and get one stop shopping.   If you have a Whole Foods store in your area, you might check and see if they offer a Facebook page or dedicated web site for your store.  My store runs a special unadvertised sale every Friday and you can often get great deals just by joining the community.

You can have a look for food co-ops in your area here.

Overall, I have found the biggest change for us has simply been flexibility.  I don’t stockpile nearly as much as I used to because so much of my budget goes to fresh foods.  I have simplified a lot of our menus so I need fewer ingredients each week.  When you are buying high quality and fresh products- fewer ingredients are better to showcase the flavors anyway.  One last thing that we have done is simply shifted portion sizes.   I often see recommendations that people try more vegetarian options if they are trying to stick to a budget.  Now I have been a vegetarian for about 20 years so that doesn’t bother me one bit but if I put a plate of beans in front of my husband instead of a steak… well my guess is he would volunteer to walk the dog and I would find McDonald’s wrappers in the trash.  So I don’t see any need to cut meat out of the diet, I just find that I serve smaller portions of better quality meats in particular.  Surprisingly, my husband has been really happy to have the higher quality foods and hasn’t minded extra servings of the side dishes or salads to compensate.

Does anyone else have tips for buying organic on a budget?

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One thing that tends to cause confusion on coupons is when it reads “one coupon per purchase”. I have had a few questions about this recently and wanted to clarify.

Per purchase refers to each item you are buying. You can buy 1 item or 20 of the same items and you may use one of the same coupon on each of those items.

This is most pronounced on the Proctor and Gamble coupons.  They will write in red letters “limit one coupon per purchase.”  That does not mean you can only use one like coupon per shopping trip, it means you may use one of those coupons on each like item you buy.

Now if the coupon reads “one coupon per person” or “one coupon per transaction” that does indeed mean you can just use one each time you shop.  It doesn’t matter how many of the same items you buy, you only get to use one of the exact same coupon.

The Proctor and Gamble coupons do not limit you to one per transaction but they do limit you to four coupons per shopping trip.

Now the example of the Iams coupon above is nice and easy because they say “one per purchase” and then right underneath “limit four per transaction” so to me that is pretty clear. You can use one of those Iams coupons per bag you buy and you can buy 4 bags in total per shopping trip and use (4) of the coupons.

It does get a little blurry with other coupons. Recently some Johnson & Johnson coupons have had a new clause “no more than 4 coupons (of any kind) for the same product in the same transaction.”

Now that is clear as mud really but the coupon also says “limit one coupon per person.”  So that is the starting place for me- you can buy one Cortaid at a time and use a total of one of the same coupons.

I believe that they are saying with the no more than four coupons is in very special and very rare circumstances when multiple coupons can be used on an item.  The best example I can think of is at Publix where they will sometimes accept a manufacturer coupon, a competitor coupon and a Publix store coupon on an item.  That would be 3 coupons for that item.

Another example is at Walgreens where they can occasionally have an in ad coupon, a coupon booklet coupon and a manufacturer coupon for the same item.  That would be a total of 3 coupons on the same item.  If for some reason there was another store coupon for that same product from a different source (like an activity book or a store flyer) well that would be 4 coupons on the exact same item.  That would be the limit and you could not use a 5th coupon.

So obviously those situations almost never come up but that is how I read the new clause on those coupons.

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Well some of you might have noticed new coupon bar codes when you print some coupons and perhaps on a few of the newspaper insert coupons as well.

You might notice there is now one barcode and not two as well are used to.  This has been in the works for a few years now and the point of these new bar codes is to increase efficiency at checkout for the customer and the retailer.

The main reason we will see a switch from the standard bar codes to the new single bar codes is to prevent fraud.  There are a lot of people that feel that if a coupon scans they can use it for whatever they want, regardless of what the coupon is actually intended for.

I hear this all the time when coupons are released for Disney movies for example.  The coupon will state is is valid for a BluRay combo pack and people will still use it on the regular DVD.  So this new barcode system was designed so that the coupon will only work on the specific item or items it is intended for.  In the case above, a Blu Ray coupon will beep if used on a DVD.

So this should also help retail stores because they can have more confidence when accepting coupons.  The registers are supposed to alert them to exactly what the problem is if the coupon beeps OR if it does scan they can be much more confident that the coupon is perfectly legitimate.

The goal is for the cash register to alert the cashier as to precisely what the problem is (expired coupon, not the correct item etc…) so all the guess work is gone and it should be a much faster process to check out at the grocery store.

Now these bar codes really started popping up at the first of the year, however retailers actually have up to 6 months to change their registers to start accepting these new coupons.

So the short term issue is that many of the new bar codes might not scan at your store.  I have heard about issues with Walgreens and I have personally experienced issues at Safeway and Walmart.  I had coupons refused because they wouldn’t scan and since the coupon policies do say a coupon can be refused if it doesn’t scan… well there isn’t a whole lot that can be done.

Now one issue that some of you might experience is with doubling coupons.  Currently if a coupon states “do not double” it may or may not double at your grocery store.With the new databar bar codes, the chances a Do Not Double coupon will actually double are slim.  Mostly likely they will not.  Unfortunately I don’t have any stores in my area that double coupons so I can’t test this personally.

So again, the bottom line is that these new barcodes might be a headache for the short term.  I wanted to be sure you were all aware of exactly what is going on so you feel empowered when you go to the store.  Hopefully most of these major retailers will have the software updated quickly and the new coupon barcodes should ultimately lead to a much more efficient experience for all of us.

You can read a little more about the new Coupon Barcodes here and the new Databar Bar codes here.

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