Yearly Check-up

One year ago, June 26th, I signed up for my 4 week trial on the Grocery Game. The first three weeks passed by with a lot of confusion, frustration, and just enough curiosity to keep me going. Honestly, probably the only reason that I pushed through is my competitive nature! I had a friend, a sister-in-law, and a few others who were telling me about how great the GG is and how much they were loving it and saving, etc. I almost gave up a couple of times but stuck with it because I thought, "Hey, if they can do it - I can too." By the end of my trial period, I was starting to see the light and signed up for my first 8 weeks without hesitation. I wrote this post My New Hobby - Saving Money last August, and you can clearly see how quickly I became addicted!

I learned that in order to take the most advantage of the deals, you have to stockpile when things are at their rock bottom prices. The problem with this was that I quickly ran out of space! I had to get creative and a little more organized (who? me, organized!?) :) I cleared out everything I could and now use, in addition to our pantry, two shelves in my hall closet, the cabinet above my stove, the cabinet under the girl's bathroom sink, and whatever other little spaces I can find to store all my bargain purchases. I keep from running out of space by periodically filling "donate bags" and sending them off with Andy to give away.

*Note - these pictures do not reflect a "just been to the store and stocked up trip" it is actually an end of a pay period but still have these left" picture!



The hardest part for me was finding a coupon cutting/filing system that works for me. The story of how I came to use my system could really be its own post, so to save space and your time, I'll just say that I use a zipper binder with 4x6 photos album refill pages (3 slots per page) and file my coupons according to categories and arranged (somewhat) in the order they are found in the store. When I cut out my coupons I lay out each page from the circular, I stack my multiple ones on top (I usually have 3-4 Sunday papers each week), and cut out all the identical coupons at the same time (this is where using photo pages is much better than the baseball card pages b/c you don't have to sorry about them fitting in the slots!). I then group them in piles that match the categories in my binder and file them away after I've finished cutting everything. It is quick and simple and best of all keeps me happy and organized! :)

While, I still love using the GG site, I've found a few others that I also check out every week. My favorite is southernsavers.com.

I really wish that I would have kept a record of my saving all year long, but maybe that's a project for another year! :) Just so I can give you an example, here's my purchases from today (note, this was an extra big sale at Harris Teeter and is more typical of a savings that happens about once a month instead of every week).
I bought the following items:
1 24oz bottle of Dawn Pure Essentials
1 10.1 oz Dawn Direct Foam
2 boxes Strawberry Frosted Mini Wheats
10 Mars candy bars
5 bottles of Kraft salad dressing
4 boxes Jose Ole Quesadillas
2 block Kraft cheese
2 bags shredded Kraft cheese
2 4 ct Activia yogurts
1 4 ct DanActive yogurt drinks
2 64 oz Juicy Juice
1 Pert Plus for Men
3 Suave shampoos
3 Suave conditioners

Total spent: (drumroll please!) $16.45
Total saved: $93.01
*includes store sales - total saved from coupons ALONE is $60.93!!

THE PROGNOSIS:
I'd say it's been a pretty good year! :) I'm expecting an even better year with my intentions of planning a meal menu for every week to cut out last minute shopping trips to grab extra items.