Extreme Couponers

11/21/2013

It is a given that once you stop working, for whatever reason, you have a lot of time on your hands.  That is certainly true for me. I don't feel comfortable driving because of some of the medicine I take every day which makes me a bit drowsy.

There is only so much dusting and vacuuming a person can do (or not) and toilets to be cleaned (boring).  So I programmed the Tivo for some super cheesy tv shows - Extreme Couponers and Extreme Cheapskates.  Neither of these shows will win any, and I do mean any, kind of award for being great television; but, they are darn entertaining.

Last night one of the episodes of Extreme Couponers had a college student, living in a dorm, who went to the grocery store with coupons on hand.  What baffles me about these coupon people is the shear quantity of the food they buy.  The college student goes to the grocery store with a few of his friends to help carry the groceries back, because he has no car.  I can't remember everything that he bought but the one item that stood out for me was that he had a coupon for a feminine product, and he bought them.  I can only imagine what the conversation would be like when he presents a girl with her very own package.  Creepy is all I can say.  Just because you have a coupon doesn't mean you have to use it.  He also bought 44 containers of yogurt that he was going to try and it in the dorm's mini refrigerator - good luck with that.

The people on the show make life's work out of getting ready to go to the store.  They have built shelves and/or entire rooms devoted to their stockpile.  One woman even dusts her cans!  Who has time for that?  Here is my question - how do they keep the food from going bad?  I have a pantry that is well stocked, but not insanely so, and sometimes will find food that has been stored too long.  Sodas flat, crackers and chips become stale and food in the freezer can get freezer burn.  So I wonder how they do it?  Most of the people on the show do not have large families that would necessitate buying food in such large quantities.  I guess it's the hunt for the products, the thrill of watching the price get super high and then becoming super low with the use of all the mega coupons they have.  

Watching these people on tv puts my very little coupon clipping in the minor league.  To be sure I look at all the coupons on Sunday, just like everybody else does.  I may even cut out one or two but they never make it to the store - I tend to forget where I put them!  It has never occurred to me to clip coupons for products that I don't use or want.  That doesn't make good sense to me.  But I'm also not saving hundreds of dollars at the store and the one or two coupons I actually could use are generally forgotten on the kitchen counter!

It's a bit on the cold side here in the East and it's also leaf picking up day, an activity we do for many weeks until the trees are bare.  Good exercise though.

Happy Thursday.

P