Couponing trip 6/21

I was pretty nervous about taking all of the kids to the grocery store tonight. It's something that I normally avoid. I had to share how it went, though, and I'm pretty excited about some of the deals I got.

First of all, I had kids in the store with me, so I had to be fast, also we had to be somewhere in an hour, and it was 30 min. away, so we really had to hurry.

Here's what I bought: Colgate toothpaste, 2 Pine-sol, 2 Clorox clean-up spray, 1 Herbal Essences Shampoo, 1 A-1 steak sauce, 4 Kellogg's Pop Tarts, 2 Kellogg's strawberry mini-wheats, 2 Kellogg's fruit snacks, and 1 409.

First, the Colgate. It was on sale for 1.50. I had a coupon for $1 off. Toothpaste for .50 is not bad, but it gets better. Today was super doubles (they will double your bigger coupons up to a coupon worth $1.98), so my coupon doubled to $2 off, it was on sale for $1.5o which means they paid me .50 to buy the item... pretty cool, right?

Then there is a deal running in the store that if you buy any 10 items (from a huge list) you get $5 instantly off your order (it also says if you buy 20 you get $10 off and if you buy 30 you get $15 off). I bought 10 items: 2 pine-sol each for $2.59 and each with a $1 off coupon that doubled to $2 off, so I paid $.59 for each one. 2 Clorox sprays, each on sale for $2.50 and each with a coupon for $1 off which doubled to $2 off of 2.50 making them $.50 each. 1 A-1 steak sauce, cost $3 with a $1 off coupon doubled, so I paid only $1 for it. 1 Herbal Essence Shampoo which was on sale for $3, with my coupon it was only $1 for me. Finally, I bought 4 boxes of pop tarts, normally $2.59 but on sale for $2.29 - not a huge savings, but this is a staple at our house. I paid a total of $13.34 for the 10 items, got my $5 off of the order, bringing that total down to $8.34. Which is not bad (it essentially means that I only paid about $1 for each of the boxes of poptarts!)

Kellogg's - I bought 2 cereal, each at $3, which isn't a great deal, but I needed a change of scenery with my cereal choices so I bought some. So $6 total for that but I had a $1 off of 2 coupon, which doubled brought that down to $4 total. I then got fruit snacks (because the kids were pretty good and they asked nicely) which were on sale but I didn't have a coupon for, I paid $2.29 a box instead of $2.99, so $4.58 total. What I didn't know, is that if you buy 5 Kellogg's products, (which they counted the pop tarts too, but I won't count in my total here because I counted it above) Kellogg's would give you $3 off your order! So, my total in Kellogg's products here was $8.58, minus the $3, and I paid a total of $5.58 for it.

I bought the 409 because I needed it. It cost $2.50. I also donated a $1 to Children's Miracle Network - something I try to do when I feel like I am saving money. My total before savings was: $52.70, with tax and everything, I paid $19.27. I know I could have saved even more money if I'd had a coupon for pop-tarts, fruit snacks, and 409, but overall, I feel like it was a fairly successful trip!