I've Moved!

Today I am laying to rest this blog and have moved to my new .com home. Please see all the excitement at http://www.theobsessiveshopper.com/

Be sure to change your book marks and feeds to the new address. If you are subscribed to the newsletter everything has already been taken care of for you.

If you have any question please email me.

How to Use GrocerySmarts.com

Thanks to the help of the awesome gals at Food Made Easy I have this simple video to help teach you how to use GrocerySmarts.com

What Do You Think?

I've been reading my coupons and there is one little tinsy sentence that has me thinking deeply as I try to use and encourage you all to use coupons ethically and lawfully. Tell me what you think about this sentence commonly found on most coupons.

"Void if altered, copied, sold, purchased, transferred, exchanged........"

You Are What You Eat

I had a question asked of me this week that has really been on my mind. At a class on Monday one gal asked me what we eat. I told her we try to eat semi-vegetarian. What I mean by that is that when I cook I try to only have meat every other day. We eat a lot of veggies and fruit. Cheese and milk for cereal are the basis of our dairy but not consumed in huge amounts. Truthfully some weeks we eat better than others. It depends on the work load at home, the places we need to be each night and/or my mood!

I love trying new foods and recipes-I hate repeating meals and especially having left overs. When I cook I like to try to please everyone without cooking seven separate meals, however this is almost impossible so to make it justifiable in my mind I try to customize my cooking for my family making someones favorite one day and another's the next. I want our family to cut down on processed foods and meats so instead of start World War 3 I just settle with vegetarian every other night or at least twice a week. (I sometimes just pick the meat out of my food or I don't have that piece of steak that everyone else is enjoying.)

I guess the reason I am sharing this is to tell all of you out there that you know your families best and you must be able to choose for yourselves what to feed your families. I am lucky I don't have very picky eaters and my husband is extremely supportive and rarely complains over our food choices. He told me once he really doesn't feel like he can complain since he doesn't do the cooking as long as he is fed he is happy! (I know his least favorites and I do try to keep those choices to a minimum just to be nice.)

I will share with you a few things that have really helped me in meal preparation but please feel free to do what works best for you:

• Keep a list of favorite meals in a note book, recipe book, white board etc... when your in a pinch you can always start there to decide what to make. I broke mine down into categories like: Meatless, Beef, Chicken, Pork.
• Stock up on the things that you need to make these meals. I love, love, love this Excel worksheet from the website foodstoragemadeeasy.net it helps with breaking the meals down, giving you an idea on what you need to store for 3 months.
• Instead of planning meals then looking for what is on sale I look at what is on sale or in my pantry and ask, "What can I make with that?" I use websites like Kraft, Food Network (my favs are Ellie Kreiger and Robin Miller), Family Fun and Betty Crocker as well as Google.
• I never plan what we will have on a certain day, something always comes up or maybe we (I) don't feel like Italian that night. Instead I just make a list, usually on the back of my shopping list, of meal ideas for the week. I make sure I have all the ingredients to make the meals then plug them in when I can. I only plan about 5-6 meals to make room for left over night(sometimes you just can't avoid the dreaded lefter night!) or eating out.

I hope this helps someone out there. If you have some tips that help your family please share!

I guess if it is true you are what you eat then I would say our family has multiple personality disorder!

How I Organize My Coupons

I've gotten this question a lot lately. So for those of you who are wondering if I take hours cutting and filing coupons you would be sorely mistaken. When the Sunday paper comes I take the coupon books out write Sunday's date on the front and put them in a hanging file folder. That is it! You're now asking where will I know to find the coupons I want to use? That is where the Grocery Smarts website comes in. On the website when I choose the store I want to shop at a list will come up matching the store ad with the manufacturers coupons.

You will see something like this:

**** Tide 40 load $5.99 Tide 40 load or larger $1/1 $4.99
RP 4/15 (Expires 7/15)

The stars mean that it is an awesome price and that if I can stocking up on this item would be ideal. Five to Four stars are awesome, Three to Two are comparable to a good regular price.

The item from the store ad will be noted next.

The sale price is then listed.

Then the coupon description and where to find it listed. I have four hanging file folders labeled for each of the coupon book companies and for misc. coupons from magazines, the Internet, stores, mailings, etc..

RP= Red Plum
SS= Smart Source
PG= Procter and Gamble

The last column is for the end price with coupon and other applicable discounts.

On my shopping day I print out the shopping list from the website. I look at what is on sale and ask myself, "Does our family use this?" I write next to the item on the list the amount I intend on getting then I circle the coupon code if there is one. I can usually do this while the kids are eating or while I'm on the phone. Then I just grab the coupon books by date, from my hanging file folders, look for the coupon I need, cut them out, and put them in a page protector (like for reports or scrapbooking), "shopping sleeve", with my list, shove it in my purse and go shopping when it is convienent for me. You can see a PDF file that explains this by clicking here. I toss the old coupon books out when the date reaches five months. By then everything in them has expired. I am sorry if you are disappointed about the simplicity of the system. That is the point though, to make it easy and not take all my time. Don't we all have better things to do?


Hopefully this helps if you still have questions feel free to email me or comment on the post.

Movie Ticket Update

I have been getting a lot of questions about the movie tickets. (see these posts http://thecrazyshopper.blogspot.com/2008/07/rockin-savings.html, http://thecrazyshopper.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-movie-tickets.html I just learned something really awesome especially for you who do not have a theater in your area. (Cache Valley etc..) If you have gone to the Fandango Site and entered your zip code and there are no theaters in your area there is an Option 2 that you can use. You click Option 2, fill out a form and Fandango will send you in 7-10 business days a $25 Visa gift card that you can use at your local theater!

Great tip for using the online lists

I am so excited that I figured this feature out. Okay so say I want to see only the "good stuff" or the 4-5 star items, this is what you do.

1. Choose your store
2. Click the Start button in the top right of the page
3. Click the Star right about the Stock up scale
4. Click Shrink in the top right of the page

Now you can print or view only the 4-5 star items!

You can practice this by using this All In One list which shows all of the ads on the site.

When do I go shopping?

I got this email today:


dear shauntell,
i had a question, but couldn't get it onto your blog. anyhow, what day and time do you recommend to go to the grocery store? when i go it seems that all the sale stuff is gone.
thanx haley


I used to get so upset when this would happen to me that I started going shopping as soon as I could on Wednesdays so I could get my stuff! Now I try not to sweat it as much. If the store is out of what I wanted I get a rain check. This post on Rain Checks will be helpful.
Really shopping should be fun, easy, and fast. I think it gets that way after awhile, especially after you've gone though the stock up phase. That is the 3-4 month period when you first start using coupons that you are building your pantry up so that you can start shopping out of your pantry then simply replacing the items you use when they go on sale again.

Rain Checks

A rain check is something you can ask for when the store is out of a product. Each store has a different policy on rain checks. You will have to ask them what their policy is. If you do not know if the store offers rain checks go to the Customer Service Desk and ask. They can usually help you right then and there.

When you get a rain check keep the coupons that go with it together.
When redeeming your rain checks be sure to hand them to the checker first, you can add the coupons with the rest of them.

No coupon books in the paper

Okay so I freaked out the first week I got the papers and there where no coupon books in them! I thought for sure someone stole them. With a phone call to the paper I learned that on some holiday weekends they don't have coupon books. Good to know! To check out what coupon books you should get and how many, go to my webpage and in the bottom right hand coener there is a list.

This is what it looks like:

Did my Sunday newspapers have all the coupons: The following is a partial schedule of what to expect each Sunday.Also, look for P&G packets, and ANY OTHER packet the "same size" as SS or RP as long as it has manufacturers coupons in it. This list is only Smart Source and Redplum, there are sometimes 2 different Smart Source packets in one Sunday paper (SS1 or SS2). Also, some Sundays may have packets with a different name on them (like Kellogs or General Mills), so pay attention and keep them all.
2008 Sunday paper dates:
Has at least 1 coupon packet of:
5/4
SS and RP
5/11
SS and RP
5/18
SS and RP
5/25
None
6/1
SS and RP
6/8
SS and RP
6/15
SS only
6/22
SS and RP
6/29
SS and RP
7/6
None
7/13
SS and RP
7/20
SS only
7/27
SS and RP

For a complete and up to date list go to the website.