Life in La La's Land

This is my refrigerator.  It was free, given to us when we moved in from his mother who had moved into a new home and bought herself a brand new fridge.  It provides a necessary service - it chills my orange-strawberry-pineapple juice and preserves our leftovers.  In the freezer it holds my sacred ice cream and there are always frosty glasses for Craig to pour his beer into. 

But it's small.  And cramped.  And I feel my food gets lost in the back and on the bottom shelves.  I like things organized and visible and yes...I'm the person who likes all the labels facing forward.  As of now, my fridge is not MTV Cribs-worthy. 

But I have a plan to change all that and it started one afternoon last week in front of the television while I was nursing Natalie.  Two words: EXTREME...COUPONING.  Now, let me be clear - I am NOT crazy.  Well, at least not in the sense that I'm going to buy 47 bottles of deoderant, but if I were going to do that...at least all the labels would be facing forward (see above).  So this show got me to thinking...I might not use coupons the way the people on the show do, but I certainly can get a newspaper every Sunday and check out the websites of products that we use frequently and see if I can start saving the family some money.  I proposed a plan to Craig with the end result being...

Sigh.  It sure is pretty isn't it?  The clean white shelves...the eerie UFO blue lighting...all the labels facing forward.  This is what I'm working towards with my couponing.  The deal is that everytime I go to the grocery store and use coupons, we will keep track of the "savings" and put that money towards a new refrigerator.  When we have saved up enough money, I get my new fridge.  My goal is to be serving Christmas dinner out of a brand new stainless steel beauty like the one you see above.  This is a monumental task for me...I'm a little leery of coupons - they seem a bit time consuming and then there is the actual act of buying what I have a coupon for which has to be cross referenced with my grocery list of stuff I actually need and then divided by the time it takes me to locate said coupon and read the fine print - I have to buy four bottles of shampoo and then turn around twice at the register followed by a curtsy to the queen topped off with blood from my newborn child...all to save $0.50?  Like I said...it's going to take some work on my part to get this ball rolling and figure out a good organizational system for keeping track of coupons, things I need and how much money I'm saving towards my fridge.  I'll keep you posted.