Have you seen this lady?

I have some ladies from church that look at my blog and are learning how to coupon. I thought I would link to a lady that is like the ultimate queen of couponing. Her name is Erin, although she calls herself Jane on her blog. She is a single mother with 3 teen girls- one actually is 18 now and I think has moved out to go to school, but anyway, check her out. Don't let her intimidate you, though, she is one more to look at with an awe rather than even try to imulate everything she does. She has been couponing for four years now. She started by looking at Hot Coupon World and learning what sales matched the coupons. She trades coupons on their site, so she is getting multiple coupons when she knows about sales. She takes it all a step further and goes to the managers of Kroger and Walgreens and asks them to order cases of a sale item so that she has the item without taking all their inventory. That is where she loses me- I think I would be humiliated to be known as the lady that orders cases of stuff then uses 80 coupons for them. I am not in any way condeming her, she is really resourseful and had to be as a single mom, I just always try to fly under the radar at stores. Some people go to CVS and do up to 10 transactions back to back so they can continue to roll the first ECB into the second and so on. I have done up to three but that is really too much for me and really only will do two.

Back to Erin- she spent three years stocking up and this is a link to her photos of her pantry stock which is amazing. She then made a challenge to feed herself and her three girls only spending $800.00 for the year. On HCW she said that she could not have done it without the three years of stock to begin the year with. This does include health and beauty products. It is still amazing that she was able to pull it off this past year and is doing it again this year. She grew a garden, she does online surveys to acquire gift cards which she uses, and her family does not seem to eat a lot of meat.

From Erin I have learned that you can freeze bagged salad. You cannot defrost it to eat as a salad, but can add it to soups or stirfries or dips. You can do the same with spinach. She just throws the whole bag into the freezer. Anyway, check out her photos and blog to see if something helps you, but please remember that she is extreme and that you don't have to do as well as her, just see if you learn anything new.