Ground Control to Major Mom

How many of you have seen Extreme Couponing, the reality show on TLC?  Or is it Bravo?  A&E?  Heck, they all seem to run together to me now…

By the way: When did the word “coupon” become a verb?  

I tossed the show on my DVR a couple weeks ago and watched a few episodes.  I learned a lot.

I learned that there are ladies who can invest 30+ hours per week clipping, organizing, planning and executing their weekly grocery trips.

I learned that some of these ladies were downright dishonest with the couponing: taking papers from neighbors’ houses, dividing up their transactions to multiply how many coupons they could use, etc.

I learned that with those practices, they could cut their food bills down to $20 per week…and even used the stockpiling techniques to build up a balance on their food bill which they could apply to non-couponed foods, such as meat and produce.

While giggling at this incredible drama the show applies to these ladies (really?  you’re mad that you only saved 96% instead of 99% on your grocery bill?  you didn’t want to spend more than $10 on $1000 worth of groceries?  then put back 20 of those 50 bottles of mustard!), I learned that I have really slacked off on the work I used to put into my own “couponing”.

Jacob actually gets a kick out of watching the show.  Ever the numbers guy, he gets SO excited when they show the cash register reducing that final total.  He’s cheering on the ladies and everything!

Of the 8-10 profiles of women on this show that I’ve seen so far, I’ve only liked the ones who gave their stockpiles to charity, or to family members.

Extreme Couponing was the name for this movement before the TLC show brought it to mainstream America.  I used to be a diligent (no, not “extreme”, just “diligent”) couponer from before I got married.  Growing up I helped my Mom clip coupons from the Sunday papers, scoured the sale ads and organized everything in Mom’s coupon keeper.  I’d see her save 15-20% on her grocery bills, and it was as simple as tailoring our family’s meal plans to what was on sale and what had good coupons.

When I grew up and out of my house, I continued clipping coupons.  I did most of my grocery shopping at my local commissaries, so there weren’t the same type of sale ads as in civilian grocery stores.  It was nice having all those special commissary-only coupons.  Also, when we were stationed overseas, our commissaries would take 6-months expired coupons, whoo hoo!

I got a bit lazy in North Carolina.  I began to shop at specialty stores more (Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s) which features a lot of non-mainstream brands for which you rarely find coupons.  We weren’t near a commissary either.  Our food bill skyrocketed.  I attempted to keep tabs on the sales at our local Harris Teeter and Food Lion stores, but with a newborn and a toddler, it wasn’t a priority in our lives.

I severely slacked off clipping the coupons while living in Nebraska.  We didn’t subscribe to the newspaper there, which would have been about 1/2 of our coupons.

As fuel prices climb, food prices are climbing industry-wide, and my days of spending $80-100 per week on groceries are now OVER.  It’s now a struggle keeping the food bill under $150 per week.

It’s time to get back in the saddle and invest a couple hours per week in clipping and organizing coupons!

I don’t have the time, fortitude or space to do the “Extreme Couponing”.  We are a military family and stockpiling 50 jars of peanut butter simply isn’t practical.  Perhaps if I get more diligent I can apply some of the techniques for charitable uses.

I need to take time to get smart on the online, printable coupons available to me.  I also need to learn to mix things up a bit and venture into other stores.  I recently learned that my local Publix grocery store will take coupons from several competitor stores: Winn-Dixie, Target and Walgreen’s.

I found this website that features a “Super Couponing 101” guide.  This is probably more my speed and I plan to check it out.


How many of you clip/use coupons?  Are you an “extreme couponer”?  A “super couponer”?

As promised, Part II of my devious plan to conquer the world. I mean, my paperwork! I need to look into storage options for my photos, videos and these soon-to-be-scanned-in papers.

If you thought my paperwork filing plan was sloppy, our computer’s file plan is an incredible mess. I try to keep up with it, putting everything in it’s appropriate folder on our shared hard drive, but sometimes I get sloppy and will go weeks at a time just dumping EVERYTHING into my MacBook’s “Documents” folder.

I try really hard to file the pictures into folders that have both the date and a brief description of the event. My more loyal followers see me doing this all the time when I point you to pictures on this blog. Each album is just my uploading the contents of the photo folder, which is named such that I can go to the My Pictures folder, alphabetize the folder list of photos, and they’re in date order automatically.  I like it that way, I know not everyone does things the same way…

Anyway…let’s assume I’m organized in that department. Which I’m not.  And that I’ve scanned in all the paperwork I needed.  Which I haven’t.

My next challenge is storage of all of this digital personal paperwork. And photos (I have nearly 20,000). And videos. And maybe even some of the kids’ schoolwork?

Starting two PCs ago, I’ve avoided putting our personal files on our internal hard drives. I have an external hard drive USB-attached to our PC and I ensure all of our PCs and Macs can connect to it to read/write our personal files. The external hard drive is starting to fill out (it’s “only” 200 GB) and it’s time to look into something new…and bigger.

Many of you have weighed in with me on “off site” storage options, and I’ve also have discussions about “on site” server and wireless external hard drive options. All of this will cost us money, and LOTS of time ensuring the files are transferred properly. And the I want to have a periodic backup plan.

Okay, I know I’m starting to sound like Veruca Salt here. I want this, and I want that…

In a perfect, limitless bank account world, I would love one of these Apple Time Capsule external hard drives!

The 2 TB version, please. But I think in reality, I need to (a) consider a 1 TB instead, since we don’t NEED a 2 TB drive and (b) do a little more research. There are lots of allegations of an 18 month shelf life on these things and I would like to see how well the newer ones are doing.

I’m not looking forward to how much money this is going to cost, either. But the computers we have aren’t getting any younger, and the external hard drive everything is on right now is nearing 3 years of age…I’m nervous it’s going to croak really really soon. I’m copying my entire 2010 photo gallery from my Mac to it right now, in fact. But the copying isn’t doing so well — 16 GB of files via WiFi? I used to have a nifty auto-backup feature on our old PC, perhaps I should bring it back on the new one?

Back to the office…

…at least that’s the plan here….

Now that I have a handsome new office, I was hoping to work on bettering the family’s reliance on stacks of paperwork everywhere.  I want to scan in our old bills, bank statements, and receipts, and clear our office of some of the stacks of papers everywhere.  I’m even debating going digital on some of our medical paperwork, such as our Tricare payout (or lack thereof) statements.

This was taken right after I’d put the books in the bookcase in early December.  After 6 weeks, it doesn’t look this nice now.

I’ve been weighing in with my friend Paul about this issue.  He’s probably the only person with whom I could have a conversation about filing paperwork who wouldn’t run screaming in the other direction.  He’s also considering converting his existing files to digital, and then make a habit of scanning in bills every month.

He and I have exchanged some ideas about “smart scanning”, which is easier than ever these days.  You can now scan directly into PDFs that allow you to search for keywords.  For example, if you scanned in some medical paperwork related to having a baby, you could do a Microsoft or Mac search on “maternity” and if the word “maternity” is in the PDF, it’s possible to find that document.

It also came up in our conversations how much better scanners are than 10 years ago.  Now you can get multiple-sheet-feeder scanners, double sided scanners, and inexpensive all-in-one systems, which include printing and copying.

My current file plan isn’t very graceful.  I have two plastic tubs that hold hanging file folders (metal filing cabinets never move well).  I have a pretty basket in the office where I dump all bills, statements and receipts.  Every 2, 4, 25 weeks (depending on how busy I am), I’ll sit down with the pretty basket and file the paperwork into the two plastic tubs.  Every New Year’s Day (give or take a week), I shred the oldest paperwork using Consumer Reports’ guidance on how long to keep records.  Shredded paper goes into the worm bin (which I still have, by the way).

I guess I can argue that at least I HAVE a plan, right?  But to go paperless would be AWESOME!  Especially for the major purchase receipts that I’ve been carrying around for years and years and years.  Just in case we need it.  I’ve had my Kirby vacuum cleaner for 11 years and it’d be nice to not have to worry about that little slip of paper getting lost.

This will be a lifestyle change for me, but I think I can do it.  When it’s PCS (i.e. military move) time in a couple years, just having an external hard drive to protect instead of 2 tubs and 4 banker’s boxes full of paperwork would allow more room in the car for the boys to stretch their legs too.

Which leads me to my next challenge, keeping up with data backups.  That’s for another post…