A few weeks ago I told you all about how I save time by using Meijer as my ONE stop shop for my monthly household shopping. I ALSO wanted to tell you how I do my grocery shopping at Meijer. A big thank you to Meijer for sponsoring this post and letting me take pictures at their store.
Paper Coupons
I came up with this blog post idea this summer. I spent a few days making this lovely coupon binder on our vacation in August. Yes, this is FUN for me!
I spent some time walking up and down the aisles at my local Meijer and making a list so that my coupons and grocery list matched the store layout. My partner Carol uses Siri to make her lists by just speaking into her phone. {Have a mentioned I want an iPhone?!}
Taking the time to make a master grocery list is worth it!
Since this summer, a few things have happened with coupons for me.
#1 I just don’t have time to keep up with them and the expiration dates.
#2 They don’t double anymore.
#3 I am finding that mPerks works just as well if not better than paper coupons.
This week, I have been blogging about how I made the transition from reading paper books to eBooks. In the last few months, I have also moved from paper coupons to digital coupons.
mPerks
I finally sat down and figured out how to use mPerks. It is SO easy. Honestly, why do I put these things off?!
I created an mPerks account a while ago. You use your cell phone number and a PIN.
You can watch the Meijer Math Video here.
When you first log in, you can personalize some of your savings perks. There are rewards for prescriptions, baby products and these custom perks. The picture above shows some of the options I had today when I logged in. I always pick 3 {the max} to work towards. I don’t really think about it much, but it is nice to have a potential extra savings on products I am already buying.
The website tracks my spending toward reaching my goals.
Next, I took about 5-10 minutes and scrolled through the online coupons. There were over 350 coupons online! Seriously, these are the same, or better than what I was clipping out of the paper.
You can see I only clipped 15 coupons for my next shopping trip. I forgot to take a screen shot of the mPerks coupons for this trip.
And here they are – loaded on my account already for the next shopping trip.
I know that soon I will be moving to all digital coupons, but on this trip I used many previously clipped coupons as well. I had a BIG stack of soon to expire coupons to use, although if I didn’t, many of the paper coupons I was using were also available in mPerks.
Going Shopping
My hubby does the weekly shopping, so my once a month shopping takes a few hours and is a BIG haul! I actually like these marathon shops. I would much prefer one big, long, expensive trip over all the little trips hubby makes.
I start by picking out my favorite cart with the spot for my phone.
I start my trips over in the health and beauty section and work through my whole ONE stop shop list.
Once in the food section, I start with a quick trip around the perimeter of the store to pick up all of the advertised deals and endcap promotions. Then I go back and check off my lists aisle by aisle.
I use a basket in addition to my one or TWO grocery carts. Having a basket makes it easy to add makeup and other small items to your cart. And it really helps at checkout time!
This time, I used envelopes for each section of the store with corresponding coupons inside each envelope.
As I shopped, it was easy to check off the items bought, check the coupons and move onto the next aisle. I keep a running total of what I buy with that chicken scratch on the left.
I spent a few hours at the store this time and got carried away buying things for our Elf on the Shelf to bring. But Abby was afraid of the Elf, so guess what… my stockings are ready to be stuffed!
Since I got so sidetracked with the fun holiday candies and goodies, I didn’t get to the frozen or drink aisles on this trip.
Savings Break Down
All in all, I stocked up even more than I usually do since this is predicted to be a long, cold winter. I hate shopping in the cold, rain and snow. My bill…gulp- $403. But I saved a total of $138 and MANY extra trips to the store.
I save the most at Meijer by shopping the sales. On this trip, I saved $77 by buying items on sale. I saved $41 in clipped coupons and $22.50 in mPerks coupons.
What do you do to save Time and Money at the grocery store?
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