I watched it once ages ago; people in that particular episode did donate to their local food bank. The one I watched had no fruit or vegetables - which tend to be no coupon in-store specials items (at least where I live) among the mountains of cans and boxes. Without donating a goodly portion of it, it smacks of a kind of hoarding. I just don't have any inclination to do that kind of thing and have never been much of a coupon clipper.

I equate it to an addiction, not unlike gambling.

The high you get from "winning" by playing the coupon game.

How else are you going to survive when the Zombies come?

Seriously though, in Canada we don't get to extreme coupon but back when my kids were small and we bought name brand products rather than food from our own land, I would use coupons all the time.

I have actually seen that show on occasion (what can I say sometimes I want to veg and there truly is nothing on) and I'm pretty sure there was a lady donate everything. And I think another person used it for their wedding reception supplies or might have just been a party, can't remember.

I can't imagine shopping for as long as they do though, that's a long time spent in the grocery store.

Thanks! I get it now, about the hoarding and addiction.

I know that there are sane people who keep up to five years of food and supplies as a hedge against disaster (natural or financial, though maybe zombies for all I know), but those tend to be well thought through and have more things like dehydrated eggs and milk and less chips and soda and 50 years worth of toothpaste. Though, I suppose, maybe one could barter the toothpaste.

Since I get my newspaper electronically, I don't get a lot of coupons. If there's one for the kind of TP I buy, or some other product from a chain store that I would be buying anyway, I'll use the coupons. I shop mostly where they have more ingredients than products and give discounts rather than coupons.

I get it about the stuff that's free or nearly so, but I keep thinking that a better way to save money on food, if that's the purpose, given all the time they devote, is to plant and tend a vegetable garden or mini-greenhouse, have a dehydrator to preserve the produce and herbs, bake from scratch, including milling the grain, prepare beans from scratch, etc. Use a solar oven and haybox to save fuel. It's a different worldview I guess. They showed freezers chock full of freezer burned meats but didn't show if there were backup batteries or generators. How much does it cost these people to store all those heavily packaged products?

There was a later segment with a pastor getting stuff for the needy. There was a huge amount of Coke, but I think it was free. There was also a mom who really was doing it because she needed money, but her stockpile looked normal, like products she could and would actually use in a reasonable amount of time, and well distributed with the kinds of things you'd think a normal family would need, not just the greedy hoarding of a bunch of stuff gotten only because it had the coupons. I guess that's the difference between enterprising and addicted or compulsive.

I seldom see coupons for anything I buy. Most are high-profit/low value items. There are a lot of coupons for cosmetics and hair products, pet food, air fresheners, soft drinks -- and the slew of vitamin 'supplements' you will need if you only buy coupon-ed food.

Yesterday we shopped Kohl's for their store brand of men's cotton underwear, something that has always fit DH (after washing and shrinking). The bad news was that they have discontinued it. The good news was that they still had his size on the 'reduced' table. He got 18 pair of shorts for $36 -- and there was a $10 coupon for purchases of at least $30. Dare I hope these will be 'just like' his old ones once they are washed?

I would stock up bigtime if there were products that I used and it was free and didn't expire, for sure. Last year I got Dawn dishsoap (which is what I use) for 25 cents a bottle because it was on sale and I had a coupon. I think I got 6 because that's all the coupons I had, but would have bought more if I had it. We go through like a bottle a week here between dish, kids using it as hand soap (grr) and washing up barn bowls and buckets. We also use bounty and go through a lot of it because I use it when I hatch chicken and ducks. The first week they get paper towel bedding and we do use it down at the barn and in the house. If I got if free, I would dedicate a whole room. LOL Ok maybe not, but I'd stock up excessively. There isn't a lot of food coupons we use, but some cereal and granola bars.
We get our paper free with the inserts and if I am in the store and see a good coupon for a product I buy, you bet I'll take a bunch.

I once had a friend who loved, loved, loved freebies. I remember going to The Women's Show in Toronto with her. It was a full time job keeping up with her running around getting samples. At the end of the day the though when vendors would be giving away full sized products or even things by the box full, she would bolt and take off running from vendor to vendor. People would go nuts and I'd have to stop myself from going into the fetal position. I went with her twice and then I was like, just can't do it anymore. It was stressful for me, her on the other hand it was a high. She was very successful at it though.

I rarely buy any clothing or household goods for regular price. I like to save money.

Where our coupons used to be good until the end of the year, the manufacturer's have now limited them to about a month. Have you noticed that Littlemonkeys?

The only thing we use coupons for are for some shampoos. All of our coupons are for frozen boxed food, swiffer type cleaners, all Proctor and Gamble products. Nothing of any value to me at all. If I'm lucky I can find one for cat food or shampoo and it might even come on sale in the month that the coupon is good for.

Jasdip, P&G products have always been bad for quick expiry dates. I do still see coupons with longer expiry but I do think quite a few manufacturers have been putting out less with quicker expiry. Kind of like how they raise the price of cheese to $7 and then drop it down to 400g bars.

Littlemonkeys3, thank you for the giggle :-). Guess I'll just have to take my chances with the zombies!

I totally get LM3's farm quantities of paper towels and dishsoap. Very different from a suburban household where you're usually limited to three animals. But that's still less than a year's supply of Dawn! Given that it's a major brand product that will have emulsifiers and stabilizers, I doubt it'll settle out before you use it. And that's also sticking to your brand, not just getting whatever is on coupon that isn't going to do the same job. Unless you're on the edge, or really and truly have no preference, I think buying any old thing because it's cheap is a false economy.

A better way to be conservative with money for housecleaning products is to make your own. I only buy them because it makes my housekeeper happy, and I still don't buy the big brands with all the extra chemicals. There are a few things that you need a lab-factory for, like mildew killer, but household acids, sodium bicarbonate and alcohol are enough for most cleaning tasks and far cheaper than all those jugs of goo. Maybe use a coupon or two to get the free bottles to put your cleaners in. :)

Some things I have no preference for but though I hate to say it, I do prefer dawn and bounty. I'd probably love to say it if they wanted to say, send me a year supply. I've made my own and they just don't compare. Dishwasher soap recipes were even worse. I do make my own bar soap though and you know that has lasted since Dec 2013. We're a family of 5 and I've given soap away as well. We have still have 9 bars left. (Yes I went and counted) I have sensitive skin so I can't just use anything or I get eczema. I made my own recipe by using a soap ingredient calculator and it is amazing. It's basically the fat from our steer which was pretty darn close to organic, olive oil, coconut oil, tea tree oil, vanilla oil and vanilla beans with lye and water. So if I find a good recipe that I can make myself I do, but so far I have not found a dish soap or dish washer soap that even comes close. We do have well water that is high in iron though, so maybe that has something to do with it. One day when I am rich, I would like to put in a whole house filtration system because a water softener can only do so much when you have water like ours.

I am sorry to say it, but my niece was a super couponer, and crooked. She and her husband built a storage facility in the basement of their huge, gorgeous McMansion, complete with computerized inventory. My niece's point? To sell it to her friends at less than market price but at substantial profit to herself. The problem: this little detail: she didn't tell her husband about the profits. And… her husband is a federal law enforcement official. It has not been made clear to me if he shut her down when he learned of her enterprise, or if she got tired of it. She gets tired of things.

She is beautiful and smart, and she has lifelong ocd. She is always made up and perfectly turned out, spa'd, mani'd, pedi'd, expertly coiffed, her kids the same. She never has enough money. Her house is unbearably clean and perfect. She decorates and changes things relentlessly, buying and selling furniture and accessories constantly.

She says she's happy.

LM3 -- You should have seen me puzzling over you washing "barn owls" -- until I realized you'd said "barn bowls". LOL

chisue - although Dawn is used to clean off water fowl if they have been caught in an oil spill - so you never know.

I see a lot of coupon hauls being sold at garage sales nowadays. Makes me mad when I try to buy stuff on sale and have to get rain checks because it's out of stock because someone cleared the shelf. I like couponing and using apps on my phone to save even more money ( I have over $300min my app accounts) , but I have no desire to have stacks and stacks of stuff in my house. People also buy coupon inserts online in order to buy mass quantities of things.

Lm3-90% of the tine I buy my paper towels online and have then delivered for free. Using coupon codes you can get done good deals. Usually I buy from Staples but recently bought a who,e bunch of bounty using a coupon codes plus got gift cards back. The only things I can think of that I do buy in large amounts is paper towels, toilet paper. I keep them in the garage. I've also read in a few places that those stores featured in that show bend their coupon rules for the show.

LM3, a good way to test what tp is good for septics is to put some in a jar with water. Shake it up and if it breaks up and floats around the jar, it's safe.

Both Kirkland brand and the Cascades that Costco sells are good.

LM3, it's only entertainers and speakers who aren't supposed to laugh at their own jokes, and who seem desperate when they do. Ordinary people do naturally. There's even science behind it. And I thought your joke was funny. :) I once lived where the normal TP was mauve or gray crepe paper. With the folds. And no perforations. I spent my food money on beautiful white imported two ply that cost about five times as much and came in small packages--and hid it from my roommates. :)

Thanks for letting me know about the bending of the store rules. I get why they do that--free advertising and all, but it paints a false picture. Near me, all the stores have quantity per customer rules, no coupon with other special offers, like the two for ones that give these people the free with coupon sales, etc. I feel better knowing that it's not real.

I don't believe that you can realistically get all that stuff for free or almost free in the real world. I see very few coupons for products that I actually use. They are only for a small amount off and have very short dates on them. Heck, the other day I used a couple coupons for IAMS and bought two bags and the cashier tried to tell me that I could only use one coupon at a time even though I had TWO BAGS. I told her to scan the coupon and if it works it works and sure enough it worked. She didn't even know you could use two coupons for two items because it said "one coupon per purchase". I said "yeah, I have two purchases, two bags". GAH! We have another store in town that says on the front door "absolutely no internet coupons".

Jasdip - We don't have any Costco's close by. Good tip about testing the tp.

PIllog - no perforations? How did one get what you needed? You can still get many free product coupons. I've cashed in too many to count in my adult life. Just normally stores in in the US have limits on how many of certain products they wring in. Can you imagine being the person going grocery shopping after the store is cleaned out? Where I am we can still use coupons with other offers, but we can't double coupons like some stores in the US do. Or use a store coupon and manufacturer coupon. I've got many product free when I use to coupon actively. I'd have them all organized by type check expiry dates and wait for sale and almost always used sale and coupon at the same time. If it was a item we used all the time then I didn't normally wait for a sale.

Arkansas girl - I can remembering having to teach lots of cashiers in the early 2000's. My husband has had a few incidents as well. He's the normal grocery shopper and after a while he was comfortable with using the coupons but he did have a few cashiers that had no clue. I blame the store for not informing them though. I also remember not being allowed to use printable coupons for a long time here. I know at least some stores do accept them now, but you can also have internet coupons mailed to you and they do accept those.

Another good reason to keep coupons on hand even if you don't use the product is to wait for amazing deals too good to pass up and donate the food to the Food Bank. I do that all the time. Even if you eat a super healthy diet, not everyone does and things like pads and toilet paper even if you don't use them are usually an great expense for people who use the Food Bank.

Umm, just clarifying my last sentence.... I meant even if you don't use a particular brand of toilet paper, not that you wouldn't use it at all. Just making that clear, sometimes thing sound ok in your brain and then when you re-read what you wrote, it doesn't quite sound the same anymore. ;)

I've used a privy where the 'toilet paper' was torn out of a Sears catalog that hung on a chain near 'the hole'. Beat that savings, couponers! This was at a roadside 'rest station' when I was a child. My grandmother had announced that she was 'going to pick some daisies', and I trailed along after her. (Have you ever heard that euphemism?) I remember her taking a stick into the privy to dispatch any spiders and their webs before we 'used the necessary'.