Extreme Couponing = OMG

I finally got around to watching Extreme Couponing on TLC. Firstly, let me say these people are crazy. There's no reason to need so much stuff if you have a small family. (Dear lady with the 7 kids, please use your couponing skills to buy some shampoo. Your hair looked nasty.) The only lady I liked on there was the one that would donate some of her finds to charity. Every one of the people on there seemed to have a hoarding complex, allotting several rooms in the house (or their kid's room and their own in the case of one woman) to the storage of the items they purchase with coupons. Crazy!



However, all my snide comments aside, I want to know how they do it. I don't want cart loads of stuff (Really? Do you really need 72 bottles of mustard?) that will just expire in my fridge, but I'd like to buy the stuff I regularly use, and stuff that is healthy for my kiddo, for dirt cheap. I use the websites, and I'm aware of coupon policies, but I feel like I'm missing this key element on how to make my couponing adventure a success.

A side note: I watched Hoarding: Buried Alive before Extreme Couponing and now I want to clean and purge my house of items I don't need. That's why I usually don't watch those type of shows because it's not like my house is cluttered to begin with.


My couponing finds for 4/17/11:
Went to CVS, Target, and BiLo on Sunday, and only spent $9.
At CVS I bought 2 M&M eggs and a pack of plastic Easter eggs, and thanks to my Extra Bucks I only paid $0.10. Yep, ten cents!
At BiLo, I used a coupon to get a two pack of Olay soap for free. All I had to pay was the $0.15 tax.
Target was the expensive one, but I got two bags of the Purina One Beyond cat food, plus four cans of cat food for $8.78. One bag of that food was on sale for $7-something, and I had coupons which made it $3-something per bag. And the canned cat food was BOGO.


I started couponing on April 3. I have already saved $85.40!
(Total before savings = $125.80. Total after coupons = $40.40)