De-Hoarding & Stockpiling

It may sound incongruous, but the things I'm de-hoarding are mostly things that we don't need or use and are just taking up space and cluttering up our lives and minds.
Whereas the things I stockpile are things we need and/or use and I would buy anyway, but would be paying full price if I didn't stock up when I could get the stuff half-off, or cheaper.

A couple of years ago I discovered "Extreme Coupon" shopping, and back then it was good, really good. Before that TV show came, and told everyone how to use coupons wrong, and caused stores to change their policies and limits and pretty much ruined the super-fantastic deals I used to get.

(Not my Stockpile, but could be, I have the same shelves)

The amount of groceries and toiletries and make-up and OTC meds and school supplies and all kinds of other things I used to get - not just free, but most of the time I was coming out of the store with more money than I'd gone in with - was unbelieveable. Absolutely crazy. I'd invite my family up and fill their trunks with food and shampoo and soap and dishwashing and laundry detergent and much more, and it wouldn't even make a dent in the amount of stuff I had.
Sigh...I miss those days.

Anyway. A lot of stuff I ended up with I had "bought" either because it made me money there at the store, or else it was free but was something I thought I could sell it at a yard sale or on ebay and make some money that way.

Well, at the time, I was spending a lot of time on finding the deals, and running out to get the deals. I'd bring the stuff home and pile it up to deal with later. Then, I got burned out and just didn't care to mess with it.

At that point I was tired, burned out, and up to my ears in my stuff. I started trying to arrange it, stack it, store it, and eventually I just got sick, sick, sick of all the stuff in this house.  Not the drug and grocery store stockpile, but all the other stuff: the boys' old toys, home decor I was never going to decorate with, clothes we couldn't wear, enough books to fill a town library, and so much more.

So I stopped chasing ALL the deals, and began my de-cluttering/de-hoarding phase. It's taken a while, it's a process, and honestly, I pretty much don't do anything productive in the Winter months when it's cold.

Anyway, all that to say, I finally got around to the bags of stuff I had been planning to yard sale, or list for sale at Craigslist or Ebay.

I'm trying to plan to have a yard sale in July, the weekend of our hometown Homespun Festival, so I've started gathering things up to clean up and get priced, so I'm not trying to get it all organized at the last minute , but I came across these items I had gotten for nothing while coupon/deal shopping, and decided to go ahead and try listing them on Ebay, just to see what happened.  It's free to list anyway, so if nothing came of it, I wasn't out anything.

Weeeelllllll, in the past two weeks, I've made over $200.00.
Of course after ebay fees, paypal fees, and postage, I've only netted about $150.00, but it's still $150.00 free money, because the items didn't cost me anything to start with.

So far I've sold (15) packages of Neuragen gel homeopathic pain relief (I actually listed those in 3 separate auctions and one person came along and bought them all at one time. That was over $100 of the $225 by itself), (3) Oral-B Rechargable Electric Toothbrushes, (2) packages Oral-B electric toothbrush replacement heads, (2) boxes of a teeth guard thing you wear at night to prevent teeth grinding, and (3) bottles of Melatonin dietary supplements.

Stuff out - money in. I like it.

I got my local grocery store sale paper, Ingles grocery store. This week they're having a huge Memorial day sale.  Lots of good deals and Buy One Get One Free things, which makes them 50% off.

Being Southerners, we drink a lot of Sweet Tea. A lot - a lot. At least a half-gallon a day; a gallon if J is home and we're working outside and it's hot.

If I still shopped like I used to, a regular weekly trip to Walmart, I'd pay at least $2.00 for a box of tea bags.

But now I watch the sales, and I see this week Ingles has Tetley tea bags on sale for Buy One Get One Free, regularly $1.98, so it makes them less than $1.00 per box. Already a good deal.

As it happened, there was a coupon for 50¢ any Tetley tea box in last Sunday's paper (5/19 SS), which used alone would bring each box down to 49¢.

Ingles policy is that they will double (3) coupons per every $10.00 spent. Since tomorrow is my youngest son's  birthday, I also bought a small birthday cake ($8.98) and (3) tubs of Breyers ice cream (on sale for 3/$9.00). I also bought a box of Nutty Buddy ice cream sundae cones (sale $3.88)(just because I wanted them - impulse buy - very bad). Oh and Bacon Bits are also on sale BOGO at $1.78, making them 89¢ each.  Cheaper than the bottles of Some Name bacon pieces at the Dollar Tree, and twice as large of a package. I stocked up on a few of those, too.

So anyway, about half the coupons doubled, making half the boxes free, and the rest only 49¢ each, or approximately $5.00 for 20 boxes of tea. 20 boxes of tea should last us about a year, IIRC, between home and J taking some to the firehouse.

And that's how you Stockpile to save money.