The Great Swiffer Heist of 2010

You may have noticed I didn’t do any drug store shopping this week. That’s because the deals just weren’t doing it for me this week. BUT…I did have a deal planned that I worked on all week that I was able to execute last night with my partner-in-crime, Maria.  (Go ahead, click on her name and check out her blog! It is awesome and so is she!!)

Yes, first I am going to make you read the back story!

Last Friday I was at Maria’s house talking bloggy business when she mentioned she had learned in a committee she is on at our son’s school that the #1 wish list item for teachers at school was Swiffer Wet Jets. Apparently, getting down on your hands and knees to clean up constant spills is a pain!! Oh wait, I already knew that, but I only have a two kids spilling crap all over my house as opposed to…25 spilling all over a classroom! Yikes! However, as you can guess, the cost of Swiffer Wet Jets and refills was not exactly in the budget. So Maria decided to form a sub-committee to try and figure out how to get these teacher wish-list items inexpensively.

And she just happened to be talking to the right girl. I LOVE a challenge like this!! And this is how I see “God in the coupons” – I went home and started looking online at sale ads for this week and saw that Wet Jets were going to be on sale 25% off at Walgreens this week. Maria had been calling around to different stores to see if we could get a discount and Walgreens had already agreed to give her 15% off. SO – that made for a good price. Then, I started trying to find coupons. I found that there were $5 off Wet Jet starter kit coupons in the September P&G that were expiring 9/30. So I put out a call in Facebook for friends to send me any if they had any! I also purchased a few from a coupon clipping service – since they were expiring so soon, they were only 8 cents each for a $5 off coupon!

THEN when I opened up this Sunday’s P&G insert, there was a coupon for a FREE REFILL if you bought a starter kit! I put out another call in Facebook for these coupons and was able to collect 16 of these, and Maria got a few too!

SO – the plan was in motion!! Maria ordered the Wet Jets from Walgreens and we set a time to pick them up – they would be delivered Thursday, 9/30 – so we could still use the $5 off coupons! THEN I saw that Swiffer products were also 20% off at Meijer, with a $10 rebate if you bought $35. I had a Meijer $5.50 of a $55 purchase coupon, so it was actually a better deal for me to buy three units w/ refills there. So before heading to Walgreens, I went to Meijer and I did this transaction:

Three Wet Jet starter kits $15.99 each = $47.97

Three liquid Swiffer Wet Jet refills $4.36 each = $13.08

total = $61.05

coupons:

-$5.50/$55 Meijer purchase

-$15 three Swiffer Wet Jet starter kit coupons

-$13.08 three free refill WYB starter kit coupons

=$27.47 +$3.89 tax = $31.36 and I will get a $10 rebate Mastercard back!! So $21.36 for three Wet Jets and three refills!!

Then, it was on to Walgreens!!  The only snafu we hit there was they only had FOUR refills in stock. (Misunderstanding – Maria had told the manager that we needed them as well but for some reason they didn’t come in.  And of course he wasn’t working when we came to get them.) 🙁 We were bummed, *but* there is hope that the manager will order them in for us and honor our free refill coupons – Maria was going back in to talk to him today.

**Update** Maria went back to Walgreens to talk to the manager today and they are going to honor the 14 free refill coupons for us!!  The refills will be in next week!**

We bought 18 more Wet Jets and 4 refills – and did each transaction individually because you got a $2 register reward with each one!!

So each transaction (with the available refills) looked like this:

1 Swiffer Wet Jet starter kit $17.99 – %15 = $15.29

1 refill $4.84 – 15% off = $4.11

Total = $19.40

coupons:

-$5 Swiffer Starter Kit

-$4.11 free refill WYB starter kit

=$10.40 + $1.20 tax $11.60 for a Wet Jet & refill PLUS $2 register reward back so net was $9.60!  And we did this EIGHTEEN times. Unfortunately only 4 times WITH the refill but like I said we are hoping to still score some more. (We did end up with 10 total refills from purchases I had made earlier in the week and at Meijer.)

Maria took the Wet Jets and refills into the school today and the teachers were ECSTATIC!  It was so exciting to be able to fulfill this need for them  thanks to coupons and sales!   We got what would have been over $550 worth of merchandise for less than $200 (after register rewards and rebate)!!  And when we get all 14 that will be another approximately $85 in merchandise.

Yay for teachers, coupons, and getting things done!!

Thanks to the very nice manager and cashier at Walgreens who took an hour helping us get these items for our teachers!

This was definitely the largest-scale coupon operation I have ever attempted!  Maria and I were pretty “high” when we were done even though we didn’t get all the refills we wanted.  It was super-exciting to see a plan come together and to help make our school’s teachers lives a little easier!  Now I just have to keep constantly watching the sales (like that’ll be hard! ha ha) to make sure we keep them stocked up with refills all year.