The Other Side of Freebies

So I get lots of good freebies in my mailbox each week thanks to several generous companies, but a lot of the freebies or almost freebies I have I obtain through frugal shopping with coupons. I want to share with you what I worked on this morning for about an hour-my food stockpile closet. I have a large closet in our main hallway that I use as a pseudo-pantry and from time to time I have to rotate stock in or out depending on what we need in the kitchen or what may be given away to family or friends.

First I'll share some pictures:











You have to forgive the multitude of pictures, the hallway is only so wide, so unfortunately it took several smaller shots to get the whole closet. What you don't see in these pictures is yet another pantry cabinet that is in an inset wall in my son's walk-in closet that has flour, sugar, can vegetables, noodles, macaroni and cheese and most of our bulk staples.

More to the point though-my family and I don't go hungry, we're able to help others in our family and community when they're in need and it's all because of coupons! A little over a year ago, NONE of this was here and we wondered some weeks how to make ends meet and still have food on the table. I was determined to make things work and turned to coupons and thanks to some great friends at weusecoupons.com and great sales paired with my coupons, we now have 3 closets full of extras(food and non-foods).We also have plenty of health and beauty items that would have been definite extras for us before, and a FREE freezer(thank you to the sweet couple of craigslist who answered my "in search of" ad) FULL of food, as well as a well stocked fridge and above fridge freezer!

All I just want to say is if you're having a hard time, keep looking up and trying, anything can be accomplished with some hard work, and a few good coupons ;)