Good Stewardship part 2

Okay, so I've had roughly 36 hours to totally bury myself in websites and blogsites that have some of the greatest tips for saving money, and I tell ya, I'm pooped but very excited at the same time. I spent the majority of my free time the last two days printing coupons, signing up for freebies, buying 650+ coupons on ebay (my sister and I are splitting them) and going through three different grocery store ads to figure out what's on sale this week and what I already have coupons for. I pulled out my old coupon folder and wiped the dust off, and now I just need to come up with a system that will work for me. Right now I have them in folders according to the months they expire, but I'm not sure I like that. I'll have to play around with it a bit after I get my share of the 650+ coupons!

As I've been doing all this work, I've also been thinking as I do my chores around the house what things can we live without - do we really need so much stuff? I've already sold a fair amount of items on ebay...music CD's we don't want anymore and lots of homeschool books. I keep wondering what else would sell on there, and need to spend some time soon getting more stuff listed. Then there's the rummage sale we NEED to have just to get rid of all the extra clutter we've accumulated. I'm hoping we can really do a thorough clean-out of the house soon so that we won't have to have another rummage sale for a few years!

Here's another thing we've been doing already to save money. For several years now we've already saved lots of money on clothing. My generous sister has supplied my kids clothing as hand-me-downs from her kids, so we haven't needed to buy them much at all. My husband finds t-shirts and other shirts he needs at either Kohl's or Walmart on sale or clearance. He is also able to spend a certain amount of money each year supplied by his boss to purchase polo tops, sweatshirts and jackets with his work logo, so that also helps. And for me, most of the time I wait for Mondays and shop our local Savers. Mondays are $.99 Mondays, and they have one color tag for $.99. Several years ago I had lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers and needed a new wardrobe because nothing was fitting. I purchased a complete wardrobe - 125 pieces for $125! Since then I've gone back several times when I've needed other pieces of clothing and still go for the $.99 deals. Lately my husband has been giving me Coldwater Creek gift cards for Christmas and Mother's day, so I have stocked up on some brand new clothing as well, but even then I only buy clearanced items and get several items for the amount on the card plus they send out coupons for $25 or $30 off a $100 purchase. For this last Mother's day my husband and kids gave me a $100 gift card, and I had a coupon for $30 off, plus another $10 for completing a survey. Then I went online to their clearance shop and bought $140 worth of clothing and got it for the $100, so $40 worth of free clothing! I was very happy with my good buy and got some great summer clothes.

Soooooo.....I want to know...what are ways that you save money for your family? Do you clip and use coupons? Do you watch for sales, send in rebates, frequent thrift shops? Rummage sale? I'd love to hear from you!