Our coupon journey

As many of you know us, you may not know how we started our love for coupons! It all started in August of 2011, Liberty was only about 2 months old and the TLC show Extreme Couponing came on the television at about 1 am and as me and Ethan laid there watching it I decided from that day on I would start couponing to help our families! Growing up my mom always used coupons and would normally get paid to take stuff home with her but as we all got older and she got busier and busier with her florist she used them less and less. The next day I got online and researched like crazy about how to get started and what sites to use to print coupons and searching the store flyers and printed a coupon for $1.00 off ANY size Aquafresh toothpaste and went to Wal-mart and used my coupon on the trial size bottle that is only 97 cents so Wal-Mart paid me 3 cents to take it home with me and from that moment on I was hooked! I started my own stockpile within a month and it has only grew since then! We moved into a 2 bedroom apartment and thought our stockpile and Liberty could share a room but that didn't last long! We had stockpile stuff EVERYWHERE! Liberty's room was completely packed full and our kitchen cabinets and on top of the cabinets were PACKED! I even had a 6 1/2' long table in my kitchen that was loaded down with stuff on top and below the table! Our 2 bedroom apartment quickly turned into the smallest place ever! We recently moved into a 3 bedroom house so the coupon stockpile can have it's own room but that room is FULL now! As I couponed more and more I quickly learned that the show Extreme Couponers is fraud and fake! If you search most of the people that has been on the show have been charged with coupon fraud! There is a website where you can search all the fraud coupons that have been reported in the US and most of the coupons they use on the show are on that list of fake coupons! I was asked not once but twice by TLC to be on the show and I told them no because I do not want everyone to think I coupon fraud like they do! I know to all of y'all outsiders looking in it seems crazy and impossible to get so much stuff free or really cheap but it CAN be done! It just takes dedication and time! I spend a lot of time on line looking at store ads and matching them with coupons! When my stockpile kept growing I had to make a limit for myself that I will only buy something that is a non-food item if it cost less than 50 cents and only buy food items if they cost less than $1.00!! I have been sticking to those limits for a little over a year now and recently I have even been skipping items that are withing my price limit just because we have so much stuff! Ethan lost his job at the beginning of last year and thanks to couponing we never went hungry or did without anything we needed! No I don't need 80 bottles of shampoo but I do need shampoo so if I can get 5 bottles with coupons for the exact same price or cheaper that I was going to pay for that 1 bottle that we need then why would I not go ahead and get all 5 bottles and keep them for when I need them? It makes no sense to me for people to not coupon! I always hear people say they don't have time to coupon and I just laugh because while your sitting on the toilet you could be clipping coupons! There is no sense in wasting money and if your not using coupons you are wasting money! We go out to eat usually once or twice a week, we never have to worry about not having money to do something we want to do because all the money we were wasting on food and toothpaste and shampoo and deodorant we have to spend on other things! Everyone has to grow up and buy things in life but we get things FREE so we can spend our money on more fun things! We (me and Ethan) will NEVER stop couponing as long as we live and I will make sure that LIberty doesn't either! Ethan broke his back a few years ago and he can't stand in the store for hours and hours at a time in the checkout line like I can but he loves couponing just as much as I do, he helps me get out the coupons we need and is our muscles for when our buggy is too heavy to push haha, and he don't want y'all to know but he gets just as excited as I do when we get FREE stuff!! :D Liberty is the world's smallest couponer and the best I do believe! She helps me cut out coupons (yes I give her scissors!), she helps me separate the coupons and gives them to the cashier! Even if I have to count out change to buy my papers each week I will (I have done this before haha)! We love coupons and that's just all there is to it!