Running A Household On A Budget - Stocking Up On Laundry Detergent

In a household of 3 little boys, my husband, and myself, you can imagine that I have a little bit of laundry to do each week!  One of the things I learned about when I learned how to coupon 4 1/2 years ago, was to stock up when you find an excellent deal on something.  In my first year of couponing, I was able to build up a stockpile of laundry detergent that I am just coming to the end of.  Yes, you heard me right,  I was able to stock up on enough laundry detergent that I haven't had to buy laundry detergent for about 3 1/2 years!  A little over a month ago I noticed that I only had a couple of bottles left.  That meant it was time to start watching for the right sale to combine with the right coupons.  However, I almost broke down and spent more than I am accustomed too a couple of weeks ago, as I was afraid that the right deal wasn't showing up.  However, this week I found that deal.

This week, Walgreens put a sale on Purex where you buy 1 bottle at $5.99 and then get one free.  When it is a store sale where you get one free, you can still use a manufacturer's coupon on the free item.  This Sunday's paper came out with Purex coupons for $1.50 for one bottle, as well as coupons for $3 off of 2.  I purchase a "coupon clipper" subscription to our local paper for $20 a month.  This means that I get a daily paper and 5 copies of the Sunday paper to get all of the coupon inserts.  As well, I have a few friends that pass along their coupon inserts to me.  Usually I have 8 or 9 sets of coupons from the Sunday paper.  So guess how I spend my Sunday nights?  Clipping coupons and putting them into my coupon binder. It has become my weekly routine. Organizing them into a binder by categories was something I learned in the couponing class I attended when I started.

You can see that my binder is two sided.  On the right side I have all of my household and personal item coupons, and on the left side are all of my grocery coupons.

So with the buy one get one for free sale at Walgreens this week, I was able to get 16 bottles of Purex (33 loads per bottle approximately) using 8 coupons for $3.00 off of 2 bottles for $26.80 with sales tax.  With spending $26.80, I saved $71.92 for a total savings value of $75%!