Coupons

I was just watching that new show "Extreme Coupons" Or couponing (is that a verb?). I have read about people who can scavenge coupons plus store deals and buy 500 dollars worth of groceries for 5 bucks, or something. This show proves one thing to me....I don't have the patience for it. People put more time and effort into it than a full time job. Hours a day finding coupons, researching lowest store prices, driving all over town at all hours of the day and night, and this one couple spent 5 hours in one store. 5 HOURS!!! Just shoot me. As much as I hate grocery shopping there is NO WAY in hell that I would spend 5 hours in there. Not even for amazing savings.

The other part of the couponing scene that I don't like....all of these people have massive stockpiles of surplus stuff that they don't need, can't possibly use up or eat up before expiration dates. Almost everything has an expiration date on it. I check our canned goods fairly regularly and I try to put the stuff with the closest expiration dates up front so we can be sure to use them first. I don't want piles of crap. Not anywhere. Not in my pantry or garage or basement (we don't actually have a basement but if I did, I wouldn't want it full of unnecessary stuff). These people looked like hoarders. Although the few we saw on this one show, the only show we have watched and probably ever will watch, had tons of extra storage shelving units to hold all of the crap. It was organized hoarding. I suppose that if I had nothing else in my whole entire life to do (like THAT is ever gonna happen) I might attempt this once in a while and then take the excess over to the homeless shelter/food bank. That way I wouldn't be storing stuff just to throw it away when it goes bad. But still.....no matter what, I don't think I could stand to be in a grocery store for 5 hours.

Also? Bruce was pointing out that not only do the cashiers probably find these people to be annoying bitches (and bastards, cuz some of them were men).....I would be feeling positively homicidal if I got behind one of them in the check out line. Oh well, these folks seemed to approach it as a game. See how much crap I can get for the least amount of money. And really, this one couple did walk out with almost 600 dollars worth of stuff for about 25 dollars. But they had to be at the store BEFORE 6am, and they also had to call 5 of their friends and beg them to come down to the store to help them get the full discount. I don't know why exactly because I was starting to feel annoyed with the whole thing, but I imagine that it was some kind of limit per customer or something. And if one of my friends had the audacity to call and ask me to randomly run down to the grocery store before 7 in the morning just to score a few bucks off of some product that they probably had dozens of others just like it on their hoarder shelves....? Well, I would have to reconsider that friendship. Or at the very least, never answer a call from them ever again. Leave a message and if its not stupid I might call you back. At a reasonable hour.

Can you tell this thing got on my nerves? And that it is highly unlikely that I will ever get my jollies doing this competitive coupon thing. And you can bet your entire bank account safely on the odds that I will NEVER be in a grocery store for 5 hours. Half an hour makes me start to feel kind of overwhelmed and anxiety ridden. Too much stuff, too many choices.....I am about to hyperventilate just thinking about it. Funny but I really do get stressed about shopping for food. But when faced with several full FLOORS of shoes at the mother Macy's store in NYC...? I thought I had died and gone to heaven. If there were extreme couponing for shoes.....well, I would have to rethink this entire post.