Coupon Shopping: Hook Your Spouse by Being a Clean, Moderate Shopper

You've recently discovered the amazing world of couponing and started bringing home sackloads of free or dirt-cheap foods. You're thrilled and excited about the potential of this new hobby, but surprisingly, your spouse is grumbling and telling you you're wasting your time. Many beginning couponers find that their spouses are less than thrilled about their new interest. Spouses may refer to couponing as "a waste of time," "spending too much money" or "tons of clutter." Here are six things a new couponer can do to keep their spouses happy about their couponing.

1. Don't increase your grocery spending. This sounds obvious. After all, couponing is supposed to save you money, right? Still, sometimes a beginning couponer will be seduced by a deal or a series of deals that really aren't that great, and end up spending more money than they usually spend on groceries. The best way to guard against this is to keep your grocery budget the same. Staying within the confines of this budget will ensure that you seek out the best of the best deals.

2. Don't spend too much time shopping. One guaranteed way to make your spouse hate your couponing is to leave him or her alone (or at home with the children) for three nights in one week while you go chase down deals. Pick one day a week to do your shopping, and be prepared with all your coupons and your deal-based shopping lists when you go. If you miss a deal, don't insist on going back the next day. Instead, get a raincheck and catch the deal next week.

3. Don't let the groceries clutter up your home. When you find a deal that makes your family's favorite cereal a quarter a box, you may buy sixty boxes, and who can blame you? Well, your spouse might when he or she stumbles over boxes that were heaped in the corner of the kitchen or is unable to sit down and eat because the kitchen chairs and table are covered in cereal. To avoid this, decide where you'll put your loot before you go shopping, and store your items in out-of-the-way places where your spouse won't be bothered by them. In addition to unused cupboards, other good places are under furniture and in empty closets. Neatly stacked, these items will be out of the way but easily accessible when you need them.

4. Don't buy items your family won't use. If you buy things and then don't use them, or don't use as much as you buy, your spouse will perceive those items as a waste of time, space, and money, even if you got them for free. This perception can spread to embrace couponing in general, and become fuel on the anti-couponing fire. Avoid this by not buying things your family won't use.

5. Keep the grocery staples in place. One complaint couponers often hear is that "there's nothing to eat." This drives them crazy because, of course, there's plenty of food in the house. What the spouses actually mean is that they can't find any of the everyday staple foods that they're used to eating. It doesn't matter if you've got a pantry full of new, delicious foods; if your spouse is used to eating spaghetti and there's no spaghetti sauce in the house when they're craving it, you'll be hearing that refrain of "nothing to eat." Make sure that amidst your new-found shopping adventures, you continue buying at least some of the foods your family is used to, at least until they're used to eating a more versatile diet.

6. Finally, score a deal or two for your spouse. Once I realized that my husband was much more impressed by a deal which got Diet Coke at half price, than by a deal at which I literally made money by buying Band-Aids, I started bringing home deals just for him. Before long, he stopped sighing when I mentioned couponing and started asking me to look for deals on certain items. Now he's one of my biggest couponing fans.

Three years ago when I started couponing, my husband would complain that I was spending too much time on it and buying things that we wouldn't really use. He was right. I changed my shopping to follow the suggestions above, and now he not only tells me that I'm amazing, he even brags to his friends and family about my "skills." Soon your spouse will be saying, as mine did today when I told him I had snagged him thirty boxes of cereal bars (his favorite breakfast food) for ten dollars, "Wow! Your couponing is cool!"