Coupon Mom

Coupon Mom

I used to look down on the Sunday inserts of our paper. Yeah, it’s true. I was a coupon snob.
I do not have time to clip coupons, I thought. This isn’t 1956. I’m a modern mom with a smartphone and a Facebook page. I don’t need to save 40 cents on a box of cereal.
But I’ve seen the light. I’m a changed mom. I’m singing a different tune and it’s called “I Love Coupons!”
I blame Raleys. They started sending me emails. Sign up for e-coupons and get your Friday freebie, they said.
For weeks, I ignored them. I didn’t want to sign up for some email list. I’d get spammed. How good could this “free” item be anyway?
Pretty good, as it turned out. A bag of apples. A container of juice. Potatoes. Salad. Chips. In other words — stuff I actually buy. And with a family of five that goes through bags and bags of groceries each week, any free food I can get my hands on is good thing.
Sign me up.
Next, I met Super Couponer Katie. Super Couponer Katie had a hot pink four-inch binder packed with thousands of coupons. Katie had an amazing couponing strategy. She’d combine a store coupon with a manufacturer coupon and voila – Super Couponer Katie was saving big bucks on her shopping trips.
Using two coupons at the same time, Katie managed to get sponges, lip gloss and yogurt — for free. I was impressed. I wanted free sponges, lip gloss and yogurt too.
The next Sunday I grabbed our papers. Save me the coupons, I announced. Digging out an old binder, I started clipping and filing coupons into page protectors made for baseball card collectors. I went through our recycling bin to find the inserts I’d so easily dismissed a week ago.
To learn how to organize my coupons, I watched a video by someone called the Krazy Coupon Lady. I Googled “free coupons.” I printed out coupons from Target.com. I asked Grandma Sue to keep the coupons from her Sunday paper. I started stopping at a local café on Sunday afternoons just to pick up the coupon inserts out of their recycling bin. I signed up for the Target red card to save 5 percent on every purchase. I hopped from computer to computer at work so I could print multiple coupons of the same coupon. (This plan was working pretty good until I ended up printing my coupons onto the film we use for the presses. Oops.)
My family was a little skeptical of my new hobby.
Are you turning into a crazy coupon lady?
I guess so, I said. Hey, last week I saved $16 using coupons, I said.
They didn’t seem impressed.
And then I brought home the chocolate bundt cake — a Friday freebie from Raleys.
That got their attention.
“You got this cake free with your coupons?” they asked, as they started wolfing it down.
Yep, I said.
Whaddya think of my coupons now?

Read more: http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/columnists/jennifer-huffman/coupon-hoarder/article_03f8ccec-7c7c-11e1-8779-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=story#ixzz1rP9Fmwzr