Last week I’d posted about how I was able to pull off some extreme couponing at my neighborhood SuperFresh store. As I’d mentioned that post had originated on my Suddenly Frugal blog, but I decided to include it on Philly on the Cheap since SuperFresh is a grocery store in our area.

Another grocery store in our area is Giant Food Store. I know, for example, that Giant has taken over some defunct Genuardi’s locations, such as in Warrington, PA, and Feasterville, PA, so more people are likely shopping in Giant stores in the Philly area now. (According to the Giant corporate website, there are 35 Giant locations in the Philadelphia area.) In my town you can drive five minutes to shop at either SuperFresh or Giant. I know plenty of people who drive 35 minutes in either direction to grocery shop at Stop & Shop, ShopRite, and Wegman’s! But I digress.

I promised I would recount my extreme couponing at Giant, and so here goes.

With my list and the Giant circular as my guide, plus my coupons and my Giant Bonus Card, I was able to save close to $121. Keep in mind that includes Bonus Card Savings (i.e. that week’s sales), plus my coupons.

Some of the highlights of my trip included:

• Getting Crest toothpaste for $.89. That is, Crest toothpaste was on sale for $2.89 and I had a coupon for $2 off. Actually, I had three $2-off coupons, and used them to buy three tubes of Crest toothpaste, each ringing up for $.89.
• Stocking up on toilet paper for $.62 a roll. Normally, the 1,000-count rolls of Scott toilet paper retail for about $.99 a roll. Giant had a 20-pack of the 1,000-sheet rolls on sale for $13.49, and I had a $1.00 coupon. When you do the math, I saved $.37 a roll or $7.40 on 20 rolls of toilet paper. (I’m starting to look like I have a stockpile!)
• Saving $5.00 on my grocery bill for buying certain items. Last week Giant was running a special that if you bought 10 products within a certain category, you would get $5 off your order. Some of the items that qualified included peanut butter (my kids have PB&J sandwiches for lunch everyday so we always need peanut butter), Pillsbury Bread Flour (a must-have when making DIY pizza dough in my breadmaker, which allows us to have pizza for dinner for pennies), and Pillsbury cake and brownie mix. The latter happened to be on sale for a buck a box, and I had a $1.00 coupon on 3 boxes.
• Qualifying for a free loaf of bread. I’d printed out two coupons off of Coupons.com for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. One was for $1.50 off  two tubs; the other was if I bought two tubs, I would get a free loaf of bread costing up to $2. I bought the two tubs for $6.98, saved $1.50 so that I paid $5.48, and then found a loaf of bread costing $1.99, which I got for free.
• Earning more catalina coupons. I walked away from this shopping trip, not only saving the aforementioned $5 on my bill but also earning close to $10 in catalina coupons. One is for $4 off my next shopping trip, thanks to cereal I’d purchased.

While it was successful couponing, I learned that you have to used catalina coupons within 2 weeks of receiving them. I learned this the hard way by handing over the $3 in catalina coupons from my previous shopping trip, and discovering that they’d expired two days earlier. (If I’d gone shopping on Sunday, the day the Giant circular started, I would have been OK.) In other words, they’d expired two weeks to the day from when I’d received them. After I got in the car, I looked at the catalinas that I’d gotten with that day’s trip, and sure enough, two weeks from then, they would expire. So note to self: don’t dilly dally with catalinas, and use them right away!

Also, online coupons really can help you to save a ton of money. Besides the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Coupons that I mentioned above, I also used a $3 off Weight Watchers Smart Ones coupon that I’d gotten online. In addition, my Sunday paper had had an insert for the Believe in Hereos website, part of the Wounded Warriors, which offers additional online coupon opportunities. So I went to that site and printed more coupons that I used to save on groceries.

Finally, I discovered that Giant does not double coupons up to $1 only anymore. The double the whole thing! I came to this conclusion after reviewing my receipt and noticing a $.50 coupon, a $.75 coupon and a $.35 coupons, and then saw those same denominations show up at the end as “doubled coupons.” This despite the fact that, according to the Giant corporate policy, only coupons under $.50 are supposed to double. Oops.

I’m thinking that one of the next blog posts I need to write either has to be extreme couponing at another supermarket or a roundup of supermarket couponing policies so that regardless of where you live, you can try your hand at extreme couponing as well.