Start couponing off with a BANG! For my buck that is!!

Following my SIL's lead BK on a Budget I have decided that it makes mucho cents (LOL) to get my butt back in gear with coupons. I bought two newspapers on Sunday and spent at least an hour clipping coupons for all the items I know we'll use. The next day, it took another hour or two as I organized them all in conjunction with the store sales circulars for the week. I was wondering how I'd organize all the coupons when Gabbie realized that she had a small photo album with many, many sleeves for 4x6 photos. She offered it to me for separating all the coupons by category...BINGO! It's small and easy to fit into a large purse or reusable shopping bag which we have quite a few of. I bought some colored sticky tabs to add to each category page. If it doesn't work out to be a good system, I'll come up with something else and let you know.

Armed with a list (I'm a list person btw) and coupons -both store and manufacturer's, Nikolas, Kingsley and I headed for Walgreens. Truth be told, the sale ends tomorrow so I didn't expect to find much left for sale items. As it turns out, the only thing that they did not have left was the flavor of Scope that I wanted so I crossed that off my list.

I can't upload a photo yet, but here is a list of what I bought and how much I spent/saved.

16 holiday theme pencils
16 holiday color votive candles
16 holiday theme paper gift sacks
2 Hefty One Zip storage/freezer bags
2 boxes of Celestial Seasonings tea
3 bottles of Clairol Herbal Esssences shampoo
2 rolls of store brand invisible tape
2 bags of Ricola throat lozenges
2 bottles of spices
8 rolls of curling ribbon for gifts
1 bottle of Dawn dish liquid
1 Advil PM
1 Glade Flameless candle starter kit
3 Crayola Color Wonder kits (paper/markers)
1 Post Its color tags (for my coupon book)

The Crayola Color Wonder kits are something I would never buy because I can't justify the price. However, after walking around shopping for 45mins and being amazingly well behaved, I saw the sale price and treated the kids to them. They were reg. price 10.98 each and on sale 3/13.98. For that price, I COULD justify it and they don't often get unasked for goodies like that.

Grand total I paid: $51.82

Savings: 58.39 !!!

Now THAT is some serious savings. Granted, I didn't NEED the candle, but I ended up paying only $2 for it which made it ok and I may just put it into my box for things being saved for holiday gift baskets since it's not my favorite scent. Everything else was something I'd have to buy anyway. And now I can put away the holiday items and not worry about them at the last minute.
Today's mail brought more circulars for the week ahead; I hope to get more deals. We still have to pick up a few necessities at CVS tonight if we can so I'll post my bargains if they're good.