Hands down, the biggest $ saver for me has been my second freezer. I have a smaller chest freezer and that thing has paid for itself at least four times over in the last two years. It is honestly such a blessing to be able to buy meats on sale and keep them to use later, like when it's snowing and icky and I just can't muster up the energy to leave the house.
When I find veggies, meat, cheese, bread, yogurt, OJ/other juice like lemonade or iced tea, coffee creamers and milk on sale, I try to buy several to freeze. And I have honestly had very few issues in doing this.
Sometimes yogurt has a funny consistency but that can nearly always be remedied by stirring the cup for a moment with your spoon. I've read that folks need to shake their milk jugs post freezing but I've never had to do that. I also only drink skim so perhaps that's the difference there.
I really only take one precaution when freezing anything. When it comes to milk, I make sure to open the jug and pour off 1/2 a cup. I then put the cap back on and pop that puppy in the freezer. If you don't do this, the milk will expand too much when frozen and break the container. Which will then leak once defrosted. Trust me as I learned this the hard way.
To defrost, I leave the milk on a tea towel on the counter for several hours. Then I eventually move it to the fridge. It's usually about a 24 hour process for me to defrost milk. But I never have taste or consistency issues.
Last night I bought three 1/2 gallons of chocolate milk. Something I would never normally purchase. But I got such a great deal that I decided I would just use it for hot cocoa. I poured off 1/2 cup from each jug and they are now sitting in my freezer to use later.
So my two big coupon tips are to buy at least two newspapers and a second freezer. Life changing.
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