Couponing Tip: Trial Sized Treasures!

Ok, so you all know you can use coupons on regular sized items, but did you know you can use certain coupons on trial sized items as well? If not, you're missing out on one of the best tricks of the trade.

As long as the coupons do not say "excludes trial/travel size" you can shimmy on over to the travel section and load up on tiny (but free!) goodies! Even if the coupons state some to the effect of "1.2 oz or larger" make sure to check the ounces on the travel items; a couple of months ago P&G released a coupon for Old Spice (1.2 oz or larger) and come to find out the travel sizes were actually 1.2 ounces!

Think about it like this if a 16 ounce bottle of Old Spice runs at say $4.50 and I use one $1 coupon, I get the body wash for $3.50 OR I could buy 13 travel sized bottles using 13 $1 coupons and getting them all for free! So I could get the same amount of body wash for much, much cheaper even though now it's separated into 13 small bottles.

Now that I have 13 tiny bottles of body wash, what do I do with them? Take them on overnight trips to relatives houses or hotels, make them into care packages for soldiers or someone in need, slip them into guest bathrooms, donate them to a homeless shelter or keep them for yourself! For the last, if you prefer not to have millions of tiny bottles floating around your bathroom, just open them all and pour them into one large bottle (like the clear, plastic ones you find in the travel section!) and use like that.

Don't get me wrong, body wash is not the only travel sized goodie you can find for free with coupons; there are shampoos, first aid kits, band-aids, over the counter medicine, etc.

In addition to the beauty travel section, coupons regularly come out for cookies, condiments, sodas, etc that (with no size restrictions) you can use to score small packages or containers of these for super cheap or free! You just have to keep an eye out on blogs, newspapers and printable coupon sites for those lovely little pieces of paper!

Do me a favor and try to get your hands on many travel sized items as you can and let me know how it goes!