Wordless Wednesday #72

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Coupon Club

Since my computer is on a hiatus I've had to resort back to the tv at night.  Generally there is nothing on (or nothing we can both agree on) but last night I some how convinced my husband to tolerate a good portion of show about extreme couponing.  For those of you unfamiliar, it's when you buy in quantity, rack up a bill in the hundreds, hand over a ton of coupons, and pay barely anything.  It's a dream come true!  I think my husband only watched just to prove to himself how crazy it is, but I watched in admiration.  Here in The Netherlands coupons aren't as popular as in The States.  Sure they exist but it's not like you get the thick Sunday newspaper packed full of coupon clipping mania, I kind of miss that.  Funnily enough when I was young I looked forward to my first coupon holder, you know the ones with dividers that you can store  your loose coupons in until needed.  My mom had one, she probably still has one.  Watching the tv show last night showed me just how far people take it, I threatened my husband that if I lived in the US I would be a couponer!  I would join a coupon club like those ladies, I would spend my Sunday clipping away, I would have a coupon holder (I'd probably create a database on my computer)!!!  He threatened divorce, ha-ha!  To him there is nothing worse than busting out a coupon, especially during meals.  Me, I love saving money and see no shame in it.  It's my job as a SAHM to find the sales and watch the cents.  I guess lucky for us we live here, so you will not be seeing me on any future episodes of Extreme Couponing, oh well.

Another post from my phone, hope it's not too sloppy!

Freebies (aka Monsters)

Freebies!!!  Who doesn't love getting a free sample of something???  In Dutch freebies or samples are called "monsters".  Sounds funny to an American, but so what, I love "monsters"!
 

Every once in a while I go in search of freebies online.  I wouldn't say they're as common here as in The States but you can still find them.  One website I use is ProefMonsters.nl  (I pulled it up to get the link for you and they had an offer for dog Dentastix, great!  Signed up and invited friends too!)  Now if you're not in The Netherlands this site will be of little use to you, but I am sure you can find one of your own.  My last round on this website has delivered at least 2 freebies so far:
 

I'm really happy with this one, it arrived a week or so ago!  It's a lid for cottage cheese.  Sounds so simple yet I didn't have it.  We often open a container of cottage cheese, eat half, and then leave it poorly sealed in the fridge.  Usually it gets tossed out because we don't trust our sealing capabilities (if we bothered at all).  Now, thanks to Danone's nifty little lid, we can rest assure that the cottage cheese will be good the next day and if we happen to tip it over (happened before) there will not be unwanted cottage cheese juice all over the fridge!  Thanks Danone!
 

My other freebie arrived today in the mail, it's a small mixed sample pack of labels/stickers from Avery.  Since I no longer have an office job I almost never print things out on stickers.  Even though I do occasionally feel like getting organized I can't bring myself to buy a pack of expensive labels at the store.  Again, through the freebie website I only had to give my address, wait a couple weeks, and voila, I now have stickers for my printer.  I'm just curious how long it will take me to get the hankering to actually get labels printed out and stuck on whatever the project of the month might be.  I do have some storage boxes in the shed that could use labels!!!
 

Hope you all find a website of your own and start signing up for freebies.  They're extra rewarding because they take so long to arrive that you tend to forget about them!

Albert Heijn

Today I want to talk about a great service Albert Heijn offers.  (For those of you in The States it's an equivalent to Publix).  They deliver groceries!  It's awesome, I think I can count on both hands how many times I've stepped foot in a grocery store in the past two years, it's wonderful!  It all started when I was around 6 months pregnant and Ryan broke his ankle.

Ryan couldn't drive and there was no way I could shuffle to and from the grocery store carrying enough food to full the fridge.  I had heard about the delivery service through a friend, a busy Mom with two small kids (you know who you are) and decided to try it out.  In the beginning I was only going to use it until Ryan was healed and back driving again, but like I said, I'm still using it.  It probably seems crazy to some of you and lazy to others, but really it's a time and money saver.  Oh yeah, and it's saved me and Ryan from plenty of petty arguments.  (There was always the argument about when we were going to go and then we argued while there about it taking too long.  If you know Ryan and I well, you know we bicker a lot, but we like it that way).  You're probably asking yourself how it saves money considering there are delivery fees, well, for the first time I paid attention to the sales.  (I always watched for sales when it came to clothes and other things but never at the grocery store).  I guess I didn't watch for sales because it was always buy 2 get 1 free, was I really going to walk (or ride my scooter) with 3 large boxes of laundry detergent plus groceries, no way.  But now that they deliver it to my front door of course I'll buy all three, it's not breaking my back!  The money I save on watching the sales makes up for the delivery fees and then some.  I go online and order groceries for the entire week, so not only am I watching for sales I am also planning the meals.  (Something I never considered prior to having a child).  Plus there are no more sporadic purchases; you know the ones, you walk passed the cookies and toss them in the cart just because they look good.  It's another way to save money, in the past I would easily add another 10-20 euros to my bill just because it looked good.  What's also nice is they also take your recycling for you (not basic paper, plastic, and glass) but the soda and beer bottles you get money back for at the stores.  They figure in the costs and then deduct the amount from the bill, also a time saver.  I am an avid online shopper, going to a store sounds like torture, so grocery shopping online fit right into my lifestyle.  I've tried to convince everyone I know to use Albert Heijn's delivery service (www.ah.nl/Webwinkel) but not many of my friends/family agree with me, oh well, their loss!  If you read this and think, hey sounds good, then be sure to mention me in your first purchase and we each get 10 euros off our next purchase (I love saving money).  Here's a better photo of what the deliveries look like (cold foods in one bag, freezer foods in another, and everything else in crates) :

This picture is recent and I purely took it for my blog, don't think it's a usual habit to photgraph my groceries.  The other photo was taken because it was all new and exciting, plus I was pregnant and wanted to document everything (I'm not pregnant now and still document everything, hmm, trait of mine, I guess).  Notice the picture with me in it was blurry, that's because Ryan was sitting on a chair with his ankle in cast trying to get a shot that made his pregnant wife happy.  He's a good husband!  Well, this wraps up my blog for today, hope you enjoyed another one of my random fleeting thoughts!