Declutter YOUR coupons!

UPDATE: This contest is now over!  Congratulations to our winner, Megan!  Thank you to everyone who participated and sent some coupons overseas!

UPDATE: I've decided to include some coupons with the prize, and the usual choice of design stuffs by yours truly. I'm not sure what the value of the coupons will be since I haven't gotten around to counting them yet, but it'll be a good size lot.

Above is $517.65 worth of expired coupons that are currently making their way to military families stationed overseas through the Coupons For Troops program. All of the coupons expire 9/30, and a couple of them expire next week. I know that I'm not the only out there with a small mountain of coupons expiring today, so I am issuing a challenge to declutter your coupons! You have to clean out your coupon stash anyway, so you might as well help our military out in the process...!

To give you some extra motivation to declutter your coupons and help out, I'm going to offer a couple of prizes. The grand prize is 2 United Through Reading tokens, which will allow you to get one of six children's books for free. To enter into this random drawing, please fill out the form at the bottom of this post. Each question (except for your name, email address, and comments) represents one mode of entry. If you have any questions, please e-mail me. Entries can only be submitted through the form and not through comments on this post. But still feel free to brighten my day by leaving a comment. I will be drawing a random winner sometime on Monday October 6th.

The other prize that I am offering is actually a small appreciation gift. The 3 choices are address labels, a button for your website/blog, or a digital enhancement of your digital photo (color accents, creating a greeting card...etc.). This is only available to those who send coupons and can email me some proof. A picture of your receipt from the post office or of your addressed & stamped envelope will do just fine. Just send some some proof other than the words "I mailed it".

I will be offering this appreciation gift until further notice, and you are eligible for a gift every time you send out a batch of coupons. So if you clean out your coupons twice a month like I do and send them off, by Christmas you could have an entire set of greeting cards! I reserve the right to put further limitations on this giveaway as I see fit (i.e. if a bunch of people email me saying they sent off 10 batches and there's all of 2 coupons in each batch...well...we'll have issues then).

You do not have to calculate what the total is...I just did it to satisfy my own curiosity. You can simply weed out your expired coupons and stick them in an envelope. My envelope ended up weighing 11.6oz and cost $2.70 to mail. For less than $3.00 I am able to send over $500 of coupons overseas. I saved $31.50 this week at CVS, and as part of my personal Charity Challenge I'm putting 10% of my savings towards charity - whether it's a monetary donation, donating items, or sending coupons overseas. A mere 10% of my savings from my 15 minute trip to CVS is enough to cover the postage, envelope, and then some. Just goes to show how simple and cheap it is to brighten someone's day...especially when that someone is making huge sacrifices to serve our country.

So start decluttering those coupons and send a batch off already! Here is your entry form: