Have you ever really thought about what it takes to be an extreme couponer? Yeah, me neither, but I did see a few of those shows. I was drawn like a moth to the flame of getting $700 worth of groceries for around $25. Now, if you do see the show, you realize that these “couponers” are a little crazy…well, maybe not crazy, more like addicts to saving a buck and dedicating an entire room in their house to paper-towels and barbecue sauce.
Needless to say, I don’t think I want to go that far with it, but I did see a few candy bars on their “organized hoard” shelves, so I thought, why not…if I could get a few free Mountain Dews and some spaghetti-o’s, it sure couldn’t hurt. I figured I would be much smarter though by not wasting time and money buying newspapers and clipping coupons…I would just get on all my favorite brand’s websites and sign up for some of those coupon websites while I’m at it. While I was at it I thought I might as well score some free samples (there is a website for that) and maybe enter some contests too.
It really seemed easy at first. I just would register at site after site, give them my address to send all my samples and winnings to, print of some coupons for things I would actually use, and get a bunch of free stuff. (The samples are going to be some stocking stuffers too). After a few hours, my fingers were getting a little tired, so I decided to call it quits for the day.
Today I have 2,036 unread emails. No joke. I must admit that some of these were from earlier emails. When I started on WordPress I got the email notifications of everything, like whenever the people I followed scratched themselves. I figured out how to stop all that about a month into it, but I never read/deleted those emails, plus I used to get Facebook notifications of stupid stuff that I never opened, so that is part of the problem.
The rest of the problem is from signing up for coupons, store specials, paid surveys, contests, samples, etc. In all fairness, there are some really great things that you can get (p&g, Lysol, Hershey, Kraft, hp, etc. and samples from too many unknown brands to count) each time you give your email address to someone to save a dollar, just plan on getting at least a few emails each week from them.
I could “unsubcribe” from their mailing lists, but you really can get some awesome coupons/deals/free stuff by receiving and weeding through their email, so I am torn.
The plan is to create an email address just for necessary junk, and have a new one for legitimate news. Anyway, if I do get a new address, I will update WP, since I know how to block word press junk, but until then if you send me an email and I don’t respond, please don’t take it personally. Wish me luck, and if you find me buried in heaps of emails, call the extreme coupon people and not hoarders to complain. 😉
