Walmart is too Big

On Thursday, Tom's day at home, we headed to Hutch for the afternoon. Tom dropped me and Elise & Emmeline off at Super Walmart while he took the other two and went to Menards. He picked up some wood for building some book shelves to put the books that are stuffed in the many boxes lining the wall and closet in our spare bedroom downstairs. I was off to "save" money with all the coupons I had lined up to use with the items I'd listed. Some coupons I ended up not using because the Equate or Great Value brand (Walmart's brand) was way cheaper than buying the name product and using a coupon. So I used coupons for items that I didn't want the Walmart brand of. But boy does it take me long shopping using coupons. Walmart is too big. There are too many selections/varieties to choose from. I'm definitely liking our little grocery store here in town. Maybe I'd like Walmart if it wasn't a superwalmart. I spent 2 hours in Walmart, grant it that last 30 minutes was check out! The cashier had scanned all the items and I'd already swiped my credit card through the machine, but the cashier pressed the "finish" button before she scanned in all my coupons. Uggh! So I then had to so to the customer service desk and the lady there had to look through my long receipt list for every item I had a coupon for - which took awhile to complete. I did end up having $30 worth of coupons that I used. But I'm hoping through SuperMarket Savings 101 from Money Saving Mom website (which Renee gave me a copy of for my birthday) to learn some more of how to best use coupons and figure out a budget for food and household supplies. I hope to learn some principles that I can apply to my situation of utilizing our local grocery store here in town and doing a monthly trip to a Walmart/Target and or Sam's Club.

When I finally got out of Walmart, much to Tom's relief and the little kiddos waiting in the car, we headed to Glencoe where we ate at Pizza Ranch using a gift card that someone had given us for Christmas. So that was nice to eat some good pizza and not have to come home and fix supper right away.