Diaper Dilema

I can say that 4 out of my 5 boys has had a cloth diaper on their bottom. I have seen cloth diapers evolve from pins and outer covers to the amazing contraptions they are today.

So, my dilema? We have cloth diapered our youngest child for most of his 19 months but all of a sudden he started getting horrible, blistering diaper rash. We tried everything, even using products that were not cloth diaper recommended, and damaged quite a few diapers in the process. I have almost given up on cloth diapering and gone to disposables, which I can't stand. But what I can't stand more is seeing his poor little bottom look like he had sat in a dirty diaper for days. It was really THAT bad! He would go from being clear to completely broken out in a rash in a matter of hours. We were even setting a timer and changing him every 2 hours unless poopy (that was immediate). Still no improvement. I am completely frustrated. If it weren't for my couponing, I would be more frustrated. Couponing has allowed me to buy diapers at about 50% less than normal, sometimes more.

I have tried stripping the diapers countless ways. I've used vinegar, oxygen bleach, ammonia (yep, broke down and tried it too), baking soda, borax, you name it. Our water has high manganese content so I can't use products others might use due to oxidization of the element (it causes our whites to look yellow and red/brown stains everywhere). Needless to say, I am at a loss for ideas.

So, until I figure this out I am using disposables and looking for all the good diaper deals I can find.

When is 55 cents or 75 cents more than a Dollar?

Call me crazy but I get excited when I see a 55 cents or a 75 cent off coupon, or even better, although rare, an 85 cent coupon. In the coupon world, when your grocery store doubles, a 55 cent coupon becomes $1.10, 75 cents becomes $1.50 and 85 cents, you guessed it, becomes $1.70. But a dollar off coupon is still a dollar off coupon unless you have one of those stores that doubles on special occassions your coupons up to $2.00. We don't get much of those around these parts. Most stores double up to .99, but I've never seen one of those coupons. I've also never seen a buy one get two free coupon but a girl can always hope, right?

To Freeze of Not to Freeze

I got an awesome deal last week at my local Stop & Shop. They had buy 4 boxes of GM cereals and get a free coupon for gallon of milk valid on your next purchase. Plus, when you buy 4 boxes, you get an instant $6.00 off. Great! I had a few coupons left over from when Shop Rite was having their Dollar Days Sales so I took them with me to spend there. I asked customer service if I could do more than one transaction and they said yes, they just had to be separate. Yippee, Skippy! I get my cereal, which I have to say I about died when I saw the prices since we usually shop at the military commissary or DECA. The cereal cost a bit more than we are used to paying but according to my math, which I always try to do a spreadsheet before going to a store or at least writing down what the deal is, it was still a good deal.

So, I grabbed 12 boxes of cereal, 3 gallons of milk and took my 12 coupons and went to self checkout. As I scanned my coupons something AMAZING happened! All the coupons under $1.00 DOUBLED! I know, a lot of caps and exclamation marks but I did not know my Stop&Shop doubled coupons. It's new or old and maybe I just missed it, which is entirely possible since I don't usually shop there unless I need emergency items. Nonetheless, I ended up with 12 boxes of cereal and 3 gallons of milk for $4.61. That's less than .31 an item.

So what does this all have to do with Freezing? Well, researched it and found you can freeze milk, especially if it's fat free, which is what we drink. So, we froze all 3 gallons as we already had 2 gallons in the fridge. When we finally needed the milk we took it out and put into the fridge. That was Sunday, March 13, 2011. It was still partially frozen as of the 17th of March. On the 14th, my husband decided to take out another so it would be defrosted by the time we finished the previous gallon. Well, I will have to get back to you because it's still frozen too!

Needless to say, I went back and got more milk with my soon expiring coupons. No I am not crazy, well maybe a bit. See, if I had read the coupon, they were good until the end of March so I didn't need to buy them all at once. So from that transaction I got 8 boxes of cereal and 2 coupons for free milk for $2.46 so under .25 an item.

Did I happen to mention that Shop Rite had a special where if you buy 3 boxes of Kellogg's cereal you get a free gallon of milk? Yeah, I bought them and spent $2.23, which is about .47 per item. What can I say, if I could have my own cow I would but my DH vetoed that. At least I am getting chickens this spring! And don't worry, I will cash that milk coupon when we actually need milk again.

Yes, I did learn my lesson. NO MORE freezing of the milk!

The Debt Crisis

So, I am going to try my best to keep up with my blog. Mostly because I need an outlet for my frustrations but also because it may actually help more than just me.

Even smart people make dumb decisions. Well, I'd like to think we are smart anyway. In the past 6 years we have put ourselves in a lot of debt. I'm not ready to post the amount here yet but lets says it's more than we make. It never fails that something breaks and we have to use credit because we don't have cash. Or, we impulse buy because we deluded ourselves into thinking we actually NEEDED it. Really, who NEEDS a new DVD player? Our rationalization on that was that we have 4 kids, no cable or satellite service and we NEED entertainment in the form of movies. Just don't look in my basement at the thousands of toys my kids have or the board games, of which we probably have at least 50. And please pay no attention to how many video games they have! Anyway, that is just one example of us deluding ourselves into bad decisions but let's move on. It's rather embarrassing.

I discovered couponing extreme style a little over a month ago and boy what a difference it has made in our finances. What we do NEED is food and toiletries. Well, maybe we don't NEED the toiletries but who would be able to be near us?

So, this is what we did: BRACE YOURSELF, smart move ahead (well in my opinion anyway)!

We took 90% of our tax return and paid down a high balance credit card. The same card also has a 0% interest rate until Dec 2011 on all new purchases but the rate on the balance was above 15% or so. Then every month we put on the card the minimum due plus all the money we budget for the month for groceries, personal care, entertainment/eating out, gas, heating oil, haircuts, and chief's dues. The usual monthly payment is around $200 a month and we are plopping $1850 a month onto the card. Then, my goal is to spend less than I have budgeted on these categories so the extra stays on the card. Keep in mind I am using the card for the above said purchases. I have created a dummy account in Quicken labeled Household in which I add the amount I am allowed to spend a month. As I use the card for purchase I deduct the amount from that account so I know what I have left. This month there is no decrease in my budget because I am stocking up on groceries when I see really good sales. The following months we should see a decrease as our need to purchase decreases.

Sound okay so far? So, here's where couponing comes in. I am couponing like mad. Anyone on my FB page will tell you that. It's rather like a part-time job. To be fair and honest, I am spending around 20 hours a week on it. Since I am impatient for results, as you may have gathered from our "debt crisis", I am willing to focus on it extremely for a bit until I get it down pat. The justification is that I might just be able to save us $600 a month and that is like me working part time at minimum wage before childcare. The payoff happened this week when I bought nearly $60 of groceries the other day for just 99 cents. Nope, no typo. 99 CENTS! I owe a lot of this to http://www.livingrichwithcoupons.com/ and http://www.thekrazycouponlady.com/. They guide me weekly to great buys of things I need and use. Sometimes there are great deals on things I don't use so unless they are money makers and I can donate them, I don't buy them. So, what's a money maker? Buying 4 toothbrushes this week (that I don't like and won't use) for .99 each, so $3.96. Then using 4 $1.00/1 coupon for a total of -.04 cents and getting back a $4.00 catalina (or coupon) for use on my next purchase. I did this twice so I made 8.08 before taxes on toothbrushes I hate. That begs the question why buy them if you won't use them? Because I am making up a stockpile of donations. If I can make money off it and give what I don't use to someone who can, why not? I may not be able to donate money but I can donate goods. I call it "passive donations". Kind of like my "passive savings account" but that's another day.

Next post....To Freeze or Not to Freeze.