The storage begins.

I'm lucky enough to have a HUGE walk in closet down stairs. It's at basement level, so it stays nice and cool. Three sides of floor to ceiling/wall to wall shelving that was already built in when we bought this house. Until recently, it's been filled to the brim with my Brother's stuff and an accumulation of boxes and junk from his old roommate moving in/out.

With my new found obsession ..I mean, hobby, of rebuilding a food storage supply, I'm running out of storage space upstairs. I have one small linen closet in the hall for household & toiletry items and a small pantry in the kitchen. So, when I can get cereal for less than $1.00 per box, or pasta for free, I can now stock up. We've never been huge cereal eaters; in fact we never have cereal for breakfast... always just a snack or dessert if we have a sweet tooth. I've been using coupons since Ashleigh was a baby. Then, out of necessity. My favorite coupons, at the time, were for diapers. Since getting the Sunday newspaper (2 papers actually) again, last year, I've been passing those highly sought after diaper coupons to my kid's Stepmom, since they've had a little one in diapers. My brother & his girlfriend get the pet coupons and a friend at work gets a lot of my restaurant coupons since she eats out often.

My best purchase to date is the thirty bottles of body wash I got last week... all for free (That retail for $5.99 per bottle). The store was having a 'buy 1 get 1 free' sale and I had 'buy 1 get one free' coupons. In the interest of full disclosure.. I did buy coupons off Ebay because I wanted to get more coupons than the two I got from my papers. So in actuality, I did pay a few dollars out of pocket. My receipt from the store literally said "Subtotal: $ -.01".  I gave some to my brother and some to friend at work, some also went into our donation box and that still leaves me with enough for months on end, if not for the rest of the year.

Standing in the doorway of that closet and seeing food, water, & hygiene items start to fill those shelves, gives me a great feeling of satisfaction. It feeds my maternal instinct to provide for my family and I think being a single mom, even more so because it all falls on my shoulders.

I look forward to getting that Sunday paper to see what coupons I got, what's on sale at the drug stores, and every Tuesday when the new grocery store add shows up in my mailbox. It's kind of fun.