March grocery Madness!!!

So after finding out that I suck at saving money at the grocery store I decided to figure out how other people spend half of what I do on groceries. I already bought store brands and bought everything I could that was on sale but I was still spending so much more. For the month of Febuary we stretched out everything as far as we could and tried to waste nothing. We saved $112.84. I didn't buy as much nutritional milk as I usually do for Blake so I definitely would have saved less if I had kept up with that.

My goal for March is to save another $100 this month. I am going to meal plan, which you guys know I don't cook so that will be hard. I'm going to use coupons and try different places. Thanks to my awesome Friend Lacey whom I'm just not worthy, I bow down to you Lacey, I am on my way to major coupon savings. She has this binder full of baseball card holders and she puts all her coupons in there to keep them organized and it makes them easy to see. Ingenius! So the last few days I've been organizing all my coupons and checking the sales flyers that come with the paper. I also have been checking out a blog that shows what stores have good deals that match up with coupons. Again thanks Lacey.

Okay so March starts and I think I'm somewhat prepared to start my grocery challenge. What a joke! My first adventure was at Walgreen's where even strapped in Blake was trying to dive out of the cart. He seriously was impossible to shop with. I never shop at Walgreen's so I didn't know where anything was and was all over the place. I learned that I was definitely not as organized as I thought I was. I spent 40 minutes there and yes I saved money but not as much as I thought I would. So I left there feeling totally defeated. I marched on though and went to Meijer's later that night to get more groceries. This time I was much better prepared but it took me forever to get all my groceries. One, I don't know that store and two, I had my coupon book, my calculator and other sales flyers that I checked for almost every purchase. I didn't have a lot of time so there were a few things that I wanted to buy somewhere else but I needed them the next morning so I had to buy there. But even if I had bought them somewhere else it wouldn't have been that much in savings. So in total I have already spent $215. Not off to a good start. I did have to buy some things that I don't normally get but that only ads up to about $50 of what I spent. I'm hoping that I won't have to do another shopping trip for a couple of weeks so maybe it will be better than I'm expecting.

So what I learned from yesterday is that I have a lot to learn and that this is going to take a lot of practice. So wish me luck in my March Grocery Madness Challenge. Where do you guys shop? Any tips?