Clip It, Clip It Good

Remember awhile back when I mentioned using coupons, and how many places you can use them? Just to show you I'm serious, I thought I'd give you a little run down of where we've whipped 'em out over the last couple of months.

• Babies R Us: was able to combine a 20% off one item and a $5 off $25 purchase, saving me almost $15 on some baby gear
• Garden center: used $10 off $39 purchase coupons twice to fill our hanging baskets, get a few more vegetable plants, and spruce up the front of our house
• A.C. Moore: 40% off one item to pick up some yarn for a project
• Crayola: used a coupon from a cereal box my grammy saved for me for marker and paper set for Bert at Target
• Farmers' market: $1.50 off $10 purchase at a produce stand and $2 off $20 at the poultry and egg stand
• Grocery store: I use coupons clipped from the Sunday paper almost every time I go grocery shopping
• Ace Hardware: $10 off $50 purchase and a $5 reward coupon when we bought spray paint for the wicker furniture and sand for Bert's sandbox, plus some seeds for the garden, plus we had a coupon for a free quart of their new line of paint (we used it on our stairwell)
• Staples: saved $30 on an external hard drive for our computer; all these pictures of Bert are eating up our memory!
• Snapfish: used a coupon code to get 150 photos and free shipping for $15 (now I really need to finish Bert's baby book...)
• Macy's: I found a discount code on retailmenot.com for free shipping when ordering a bridal shower gift a few months ago

Like I said before, I don't want to be like one of those extreme couponers. I simply take a little time cutting coupons from the Sunday paper and flipping through local discount flyers that come in the mail. I sort my grocery store coupons in a little accordion file I can take with me, and all the other store coupons go on a clip on the fridge that I check before heading out the door to do any shopping. Before ordering anything online, I check my email for any of the latest discounts from places I've ordered from before (like Snapfish) or I search retailmenot.com for codes. Using coupons certainly doesn't make money, but it allows us to keep project costs more reasonable and helps to keep a little more of it in our pockets. Actually, as I'm looking at the list above, I'm pretty impressed by how much we've saved with coupons and inspired to keep doing what we do!