extreme couponing

So I took couponing to the next level this week and added Wal-Mart. Because I had several coupons to use before they expired at the end of this month, it turned out to be quite a large shopping trip, but the rest of this month will most likely be pretty small. Again, I only bought things that we could stockpile in our pantry or cabinets or freeze, and only things we would ordinarily buy at some point.

I was originally going to itemize everything like I've done before, but that seemed a bit too daunting.

CVS



Walgreens



Wal-Mart (The old lady in line behind me was so excited to see how much I saved with my coupons. She kept saying how proud she was of me.)



Overall, my out of pocket was $157.83 and the original price of all of this was $284.41, so with sales and coupons I saved $126.58 or 45% of the original price! That's not bad considering how many "staple" items I was able to buy. I didn't buy a single item I didn't have a coupon for except for Ben's security blanket. I even had a coupon for my socks ($1 off any No Nonsense brand item, and I found the socks on clearance so they were only $2 for the pack!)

Here's the best of my purchases, and feel free to ask if you want to know how much anything else was or where the coupons were from.

Free - Diet Dr. Pepper (go here to get your free coupon, can be used anywhere)
Mentos Gum - $0.28 / pack ($1.00 off coupon from All You Magazine - March)
Halls Cough Drops - $0.18 (after $1.00 off coupon from the newspaper ads, I think)
Grands Biscuits - $0.50 (on sale at Wal-Mart for $1, then coupons from newspaper ads)
Glade Oil Warmers - $0 (I had two buy one get one free coupons and the check-out guy said I could use them both, so they were both free. I'm not sure if he was supposed to do that, though.)
Reynolds Foil $0 (Walgreens has an in-store add, plus the add from the paper makes it free)

The rest were various combinations resulting in the following:
4 4-packs of toilet paper for $2 each
6 things of deodorant for $0.99 - $1.24 each
4 large bottles of shampoo for $1.49 - $2.24 each
4 packages of Pillsbury fridge cookies for $1.83 each
6 boxes of Quaker granola bars for $1.50 each

I bought a KC Star at Price Cutter and it was definitely worth it. I believe they have twice the coupons of the Springfield News-Leader, especially for food. Some were duplicates, but then I just bought twice as many of that item if it was a good deal. I've also started taking a Sharpie and writing how much I paid for an item on the item. I think this will help me remember how much I spent the first time, so I can aim for that price when replacing it. We are lucky to have plenty of storage cabinets above our washer and dryer and a nice pantry, or this could get out of hand. I would still like to install some additional shelves in the laundry room, but I'm not going to have another coupon trip this large for a while.

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Mom noticed I didn't put any pictures of Ben up today. We visited great-grandma Hebbert today, but I'm going to write about that tomorrow with pictures, so here's Ben and daddy on the couch.