MrsDrPoe: House Progress, Week 4

It's another Foto Friday on the blog!  As promised, here's our progress from the fourth week of home renovations:

Kitchen: painted the hardware black
Living and Sun Rooms: began laying flooring
Upstairs Closets: trimmed and painted white (2 coats where necessary)
Upstairs Baseboards: painted white
Spare Bedrooms: trimmed and painted 2 coats of brown


We're super close to being able to put carpet down upstairs and also to show finished pictures of the living and sun rooms!  The picture I'd like to share with you today comes from Mr. Poe's closet:

This section is about 2.5 feet deep and has a maximum width of 8 inches.  I have no idea why it exists.  So for something a little different today, I'd like to poll my readers...

what should we store in this very narrow, awkward space?

MrsDrPoe: A Beginners Guide to Couponing, Part 7

While there are more stores to talk about, by this time there's a good chance that you may be obtaining a good bit of stuff from your coupon endeavors and wondering what to do with it and how much is too much. So, stockpiling is the couponing topic that we will address today.

Items will reach their lowest selling price cyclically, typically every six weeks. Because of this fact, the couponing gurus suggest that when an item does reach this point in its pricing that you buy enough of it for your family to use for the next six weeks, until it goes on sale again. Even without using coupons, the stockpile method will save you a good deal of money, because you won't have to pay full price for an item or make last-minute trips to the store.

If you have a very small family (like mine), it doesn't take much to cover you for six weeks. This fact will lead you to a crossroads: do I continue to buy stuff for free/really cheap or do I stop? While the choice is yours, I would recommend thinking about the fact that we are to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with. If you wish to continue to buy, I urge you to not create year-long supplies of anything like the folks featured on TV tend to do. Instead, donate your stash to shelters, help needy saints, and/or build gift baskets for friends/relatives. It is also good to remember that you don't have to take advantage of EVERY deal and that there are a multitude of other folks out there who are trying to feed/support their families cheaply.

I am very blessed at this point in my life to have a spare closet and a pantry where I can keep my stockpiles. I try to keep food in the pantry, personal items in a plastic container:


And cleaning products/gifts in crates:


If you don't have obvious spaces to store these things, get creative. Do you have space under your bed? In the attic? Under a sink? In the laundry room? Any of these spaces can aid you in maintaining a stockpile and saving money. Just be sure that your items are stored properly; for example, I wouldn't store cereal or other food in these places unless it was in an airtight container to keep moisture, bugs, dogs, etc. out.

What method(s) have you found useful for keeping a stockpile?

MrsDrPoe: A Beginners Guide to Couponing Part 3

For the third installment of my beginners guide to couponing, I'd like to investigate coupon storage. As I mentioned in part 1, there are many different ways of storing coupons; we'll look at three specific ones today:

Method 1
This method is the most labor intensive, but it allows you to be most familiar with the coupons you have.

Materials:
large 3 ring binder, dividers, baseball card sleeves ($$)

Procedure:

Initial Setup: Label the dividers (dry food, cold food, household, baby, pet, misc, etc.) according to your needs, and place the dividers and the sleeves in the binder.

Each week: Set aside a specific time each week to go through that weeks' inserts. Clip each coupon*, and place them in individual sleeve pockets behind the appropriate divider. If you have minions...I mean children...they can be a huge help in this endeavor! Periodically go through your coupons to remove those which have expired.

Shopping: While you are making your shopping list, use a coupon database to aid you in picking out the coupons you plan to use during your trip (you can place them in an envelope if you'd like). With this method, it is also very quick and easy to look for a specific coupon while in the process of shopping (if you bring your entire binder into the store with you).

Method 2
This method is slightly less labor intensive at the expense of loosing some amount of familiarity with the coupons in your possession.

Materials:
large 3 ring binder, dividers, page protectors ($)

Procedure:

Initial Setup: Label the dividers according to your the types of inserts (RP, PG, SS, Misc), and place the dividers and the page protectors in the binder.

Each week: Set aside a specific time each week to go through that weeks' inserts. Place each page of each insert in its own page protector behind the appropriate divider. You may wish to label at least the first page from each insert with the date on which you obtained it. Periodically go through each sheet to get rid of any expired coupons.

Shopping: While you are making your shopping list, use a coupon database to aid you in picking out and clipping the coupons you plan to use during your trip (again placing in an envelope). This method can aid you in determining whether or not a specific coupon was in your area's inserts. You can also search for coupons "on the go" with this method, just not as simply as with the previous method.

Method 3
This method is the least labor intensive, but you may not realize you have some coupons that you do.

Materials:
13 slot accordion folder, index card holder/canceled check file ($)

Procedure:

Initial Setup: Label dividers in the index card holder/canceled check file (dry food, cold food, etc.).

Each week: As soon as you get the inserts on Sunday, write the date on the front of each one and place it in the next available slot. Once you've filled your folder (in approximately 3 months), you'll need to add the additional step of removing the old coupons from the "next" slot. When you remove the old coupons, quickly flip through and clip any* that have not yet expired (most will have). Place these loose coupons along with any other coupons (those printed or received in the mail, etc.) in the appropriate section of the index card holder/canceled check file.

Shopping: While you are making your shopping list, use a coupon database to aid you in picking out and clipping the coupons you plan to use during your trip (I place these in the front of my index card holder). It's almost impossible to find a coupon "on the go" with this method, so it requires a bit more pre-trip planning.

*You want to make sure that you keep all the coupons that you get in the inserts even if they're for items that you don't purchase or use. Often times store sales will allow you to get these items for free (or even to make money by purchasing them). You may discover a new favorite product, find the perfect gift, or bless someone less fortunate than yourself this way!

Of course there are many variations of these methods (and many others) that folks use. The key is to find something that works for you.

To all my fellow couponers out there: what method do you use?