I recently ran across an article on the Internet entitled, How to Eat Organic on a Budget. Since
this is the tag line for my Homemade Life workshop, I clicked on over. This
article listed 75 ways to save money while eating organically, most of which I already
do and a few that caused me to chuckle (get a couple of chickens and hatch your own eggs - really that's all there is to it? and skip the Starbucks -duh). It also listed sites where you could find discount coupons and deals
on organic products. I was excited – this is useful information! So I spent the
better part of an afternoon exploring these sites. And I learned two things –
If you spend two hours tracking
down a coupon for 50 cents off a product, you probably haven’t really saved
anything.
Most sites that make big promises
are either for products you’ve never heard of and have no need for, or are full
of dated information and expired coupons, but plenty of advertising.
And here’s the thing about coupons – they’re only useful if you were planning to buy that product anyway.
Otherwise they’ve done exactly what the company had hoped when they hired that
fancy advertising genius – they’ve tricked you in to buying their product.
A few of the sites did actually garner real coupons on
products you might actually find in your grocery store. Now, I make no promises
that your grocery store accepts these coupons. The world of coupons is lost on
me mostly because coupons are for processed food – organic or otherwise, and I
avoid processed food – organic or otherwise- as a rule of thumb.
All of that said, I will share with you the sites that
looked promising because I know I’m an oddity and most people have no choice
but to buy processed food (or starve) so I’d rather you bought organic
processed food if you must buy processed food at all.
