One of the hardest things to give up

I love couponing.

It's not just using a coupon here and there. It's a whole different mindset on grocery shopping. You don't make your list with what you'll eat for the week. You make your list by what's on sale, then fill in the items you need and don't already have in stock. After awhile, you do most of your shopping out of your own pantry, and each week you're pretty much just buying the sale items for the week plus fresh produce, milk, & bread. It's changed our diet dramatically-we eat much healthier meals, with more fresh ingredients, and our monthly budget was cut in half.

Obviously, I'll need to make a bit of a paradigm shift when we move into the RV. I will no longer have the room to store 50 boxes of cereal, 20 cans of soup, or 30 bags of frozen veggies, just because they're free. Plus, since we're planning on being in a new place each week, every Sunday I'd need to figure out which paper in the area carries the most coupons and where I can go to buy a copy. And every week I'll need to figure out what grocery store is in the area and find what's on sale there. I won't be able to follow the normal 2-3 month cycle of sales since we'll always be moving to a new area. That sounds like a lot of work for much less benefit than we get now.

I know that logically, it makes much more sense to use the coupons I have, but give up on buying papers and going hard-core. I can do the occasional coupon clipper service for items we know we will buy regardless and switch to Aldi/generics as much as possible. Even if our grocery bill goes up a little, it will be worth it to have the space.

But it still will feel strange to simply walk through the store, fill up my cart, and pay.