Here is a video I recorded yesterday, just to show how easy it is to get a huge selection of shampoos, conditioners, soaps, toothpaste, body washes, shaving lotions, and more for free – or almost free.

I’m almost embarrassed to say that what’s shown in the video is after a lot of stuff has been used, or given away to friends and family!! The good news is except for the toothpaste, none of the rest of it will go bad. So we keep an eye on the toothpaste and won’t get too much of it so we don’t waste any…but the rest we can just keep getting if the price is right (free) and not have to worry about it.

I do have to say it’s nice to get a whole lot of shampoos etc, because it’s fun to share them. I recently got a whole bunch of the L’Oreal Vive Pro shampoo (which is usually $4.59) for free, so I had fun giving some to my sister and a friend. I am happy to share when I have a lot of stuff, since I got it all (or most) for free.

Also, just to show how much savings that is…in the video there are:

• 42 bottles of shampoo & conditioner (regularly $1.00 each)
• 29 bottles of SoftSoap body wash (regularly $3.99)
• 16 bottles of hand soap (Dove and SoftSoap) (regularly $2.49)
• 16 bottles of Gillette Complete Skin Care Shaving Lotion (regularly $3.99)
• 13 tubes of Colgate Total toothpaste (regularly $3.69)
• 9 bottles of Dove Shampoo (regularly $4.99)
• + more that I won’t even bother putting in…

That all adds up to more than $354.27. I paid less than $5.00 for it. Not too bad, right? That’s worth a few minutes each week going over coupons and the sales going on at your local store, right? You really can save money on groceries easily!

The A&P by me is having triple coupons this week.  That means that any coupon under .99c will be tripled, so a $0.75 coupon is now worth $2.25.  While it’s a great way to save money, boy is it a lot of work!

Here’s what I did today before I could go shopping for triples:

1.  Went through a WHOLE LOT of coupons.  Not only do I have my own weekly coupons, but my relatives are nice enough to give me theirs.  I went through the past month and a half (we had triple coupons about that long ago so I knew I had gone through the older ones) worth of circulars.  I cut out anything that was high value that I might use if it was free (or close to it) as well as anything I normally would buy.

2.  Put all of those coupons in my coupon carrier.  I put them in “order” by shopping isle at my regular store.  It makes it a lot easier since that’s the store I am at most often.

3.  Went through the circular to see if anything matched up.  In this case, not much that I was interested in did.

4.  Go to a few websites I like to check out if they found any deals.  Some did, but it wasn’t really on anything I was interested in.

5. Make a list of all of the things I want to buy – both items with coupons as well as anything we need in the house.

I then went to the  store, went up and down each isle, and figured out which were the good deals.  You would think anything that had $2.25 off of it would be a great deal, but I did turn down a whole bunch of items.  For example, I like the Betty Crocker Mini Warm Delights, but even after taking $1.50 off  (the coupon was for 0.50c) it would have still been about $1.29, and I just wasn’t willing to pay it.

A&P isn’t the best priced store in my area, so I knew that I wasn’t going to get as many items as I would have if the triples were at Shoprite instead, but I figured I’d still find a few things.

I ended up getting a few items for free, and a few items for close to free.  I’m happy with how I did, but I think it took more time to find and cut out the coupons then to do the actual shopping!

Of course, the next time there are triple coupons, I will be running! I just hope next time it’s Shoprite that has the triple coupons!