My niece has become an extreme couponer. She has always been a selfish brat who got caught up in goofy things, and this fits her perfectly. She dumpster dives for coupons, clears shelves in all the stores, then goes home and organizes all that crap in her newly built storage room. She is well educated, beautiful, funny as hell, a meticulous-to-the-point of fanatical housekeeper, married to a fine man and the mother of two kids 12 and 15 who are turning out just like her.

She is certainly not going to donate her stuff! She is selling it to her friends for a little less than they can buy it for in the stores and claims she is making a small fortune while saving her friends money! Her friends are also in their late 30s, early 40s, educated professionals, all live in in suburban mcmansion bliss.

Anyway, no, I rarely use a coupon unless it falls into my hand at the perfect moment. Like you, I am a careful shopper who rarely finds them useful, and I have many more things that interest me. I feel bad that my own niece is nuts!

I've watched the show before. I'm not impressed in the least with the couponers. They buy multiples of things I would not give my family. Processed foods, sugary drinks. Just crap I would not use. I use coupons for stores like Jo-ann fabrics or non-food items. As I said before it doesn't interest me or impress me what they do. NancyLouise

I haven't watched the show, but personally think that people who get consumed by anything radical are usually (sometimes unknowingly) running away from something in themselves or their life. When you spend most of your waking hours on the obsession, there isn't much time to think/worry about anything else. JMHO

I am curious about how you organize your food storage program. Do you record each time you use a jar/can/pkg. of something? Is there software for this or have you designed your own personal system? I always keep extra, but don't have a system and quite often end up with food that is past the "use by date".

IâÂÂve never watched any of those shows but have seen it on the news. I donâÂÂt understand it either unless you have a house full of kids to eat all that junk. It doesnâÂÂt make since and who would want to feed their family any of that stuff. I would think the deodorant would go bad by the time you use it up.

IâÂÂve always kept at least a year in food storage, probably more, and am upping it now due to the rising food prices, drought and just plain lousy economy. It will appreciate much better than the money I keep in the bank at this point.

I donâÂÂt use coupons because I never see any for anything I would use. I did save some diaper coupons for our new great grandson but then decides to just have diapers from costco.com sent to my grandsonâÂÂs house.

Claudia

lizbeth_gardener,

I use the food storage analyzer that I've linked below for "big picture" nutritional data. I also have a spread sheet that I developed many years ago that stays in our pantry. Yes, I keep track of every item we add or remove from storage along with the dates.

Hi Claudia! Boy, do I agree. Our storage is paying nice dividends now. Actually, it usually does. Three years ago, we beefed up our storage also for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

I'm glad to see it's not just me that doesn't believe those folks are doing something useful. And, if they don't use what they store - what ever they spend is just wasted dollars.

/tricia

Here is a link that might be useful: Food Storage Analyzer

lizbeth_gardener,

I should also have mentioned that a lot of what we store is packaged for long-term storage. I only keep open in the kitchen what we'll use within a reasonable length of time. For instance, this morning we had strawberry/oatmeal muffins made with freeze dried strawberries picked and packaged at the peak of freshness.

/t

When the newspaper didn't have enough usable coupons in it to cover the cost of the subscription to the Sunday paper, we canceled the paper. I don't purchase many of the over-priced, over-processed items they represent.

I always wonder if the hyper-couponers are dealing with an addiction similar to gambling? I have a niece who is in this category and she's certainly addicted. What she spends on gas alone doing her store hopping in a 50-mile radius where she lives is more than my $125/month food budget.

Store coupons are sent to me in the mail and I can also load them onto my store loyalty card from the store web site, and are things I purchase on a regular basis. They generally include a coupon for a free jar of peanut butter or a free dozen eggs. I also wait to use the coupons when the item is on sale for additional savings.

I agree with triciae and use a similar method. Once you get over the learning curve, home food storage is money in the bank. I only purchase something when it's at a rock-bottom price and rarely pay full price for anything.

-Grainlady

I almost never use coupons at the grocery store. Once in a while there's something that I would actually use, but as we don't buy processed food, most of the coupons aren't relevant. I skim the ads when they come out, looking for loss leaders. So when Chobani yogurt is $1, I'll buy several - this is my lunch at work.

I'm a pack rat when it comes to food. I'm not organized like Tricia, I rely on my memory. DH is in charge of the freezer and his memory is long gone, so that's hit and miss. He keeps discovering items which we've forgotten we had.

We buy whole hogs, have them cut to our specifications and store in the freezer. When we lived in New England, we bought whole lambs the same way. We also lived near an excellent small family butcher who supplied many restaurants in Boston. I will only buy meat if the animals are humanely raised so we have limited choices.

We buy most of our non-food items from Costco so we have shelves of paper products, soap etc. We also buy produce by the box from Costco and local farmers. I once did a calculation of our food and grocery costs and it worked out to be $6 per day for two of us (this was about 6-7 years ago). My guess is that it's up to around $8-10 right now. Who need coupons?

Cheryl

Don't/won't have cable/satellite and shows like this are a definite part of the reason. Haven't seen the shows but I've read articles about them and seen news blurbs about them. Now that stores are tightening up the coupon redemption policies they're starting to cry about it.

I don't get many opportunities to get coupons. The Sunday paper doesn't warrant the cost. And I won't go driving to 10-20 stores to try to maximize them out.

I will take coupons for occasional items and try to couple it with clearance prices or at least sale prices and if there's a store coupon to stack all the better but I don't use many coupons other than in the store flyer when I'm going there and there's something I'm getting anyway.

I keep a pantry. I have way more laundry and dish detergent than I need but considering the cost, I have a couple year supply of each and have given away a lot. I also have given away brands in stock I'd rather not use to keep the ones I like and get for lil' or nil. For instance I gave away Ajax to keep Dawn and gave away Arm & Hammer to keep Tide that was next to nothing or less.

I also know prices on a lot of frequently used items so if I'm at a store and see something on clearance or on sale, I'll pick it up. That does far more in reality for me than messing with too many coupons. And Aldi doesn't take coupons when I shop there.

AFAIC, most of the time, coupons are more of a feelgood thing, giving the buyer the impression they're saving money, not unlike the clubco stores. Give people the impression they're saving money and they'll pay any price.

I've never seen the show, and have never heard of it. I've seen stories about couponers, and have not been impressed. If it's something they like to do, I don't begrudge them, but it's not for me.

I don't have space for a food storage system, but it would be nice to be able to do that. I agree with everyone above that coupons are not worth the trouble. They are rarely for anything I buy. When I do get a coupon for something I might buy, I tend to forget about it or lose it before I have a chance to use it.

I hate the trend now that stores will automatically print out a coupon along with your receipt, and hand you not only a mile long receipt for just a few items, you have to deal with an extra mile long piece of paper that has nothing to do with anything you want or ever buy. I always hand it back to them.

All the wasted paper is another subject, but I do love the way that Whole Foods has gone to double sided printing of their receipts. I'll get a basket full of stuff from them and they'll hand me a receipt that's maybe 4 or 5 inches long. I'll get a couple of items at another store, and I'll get a 2 foot long piece of paper, coupled with another piece of paper with coupons. I hate that!

Sally