Can You Afford to Be a Stay-at-Home Mom? 10 Creative Ways to Plug Money Leaks With Office Depot Coupons

In the 80s, the notion of being a stay-at-home mom was repulsive, at least to the college-educated woman. After all, why pay for four expensive years in a liberal-arts women's college preparing for a supposedly high-powered career if you didn't intend to put the children where feminism dictates they belong - in daycare? In recent years, however, there has been a dramatic change in female perspective. More and more women are giving up their corporate jobs so they could focus on rearing their kids themselves. Others continue to work but discover the downside to the working mom equation: they work to pay for child care so they could keep working --- to spend for child care.

Can you afford to be a stay-at-home mom? The answer is yes. Here are a few money-saving tips that will let you and your family live on a single income.

1. Buy two-ply toilet paper and separate these into two rolls. Or, get toilet paper on the cheap with Office Depot coupons.

2. Economize on clothes. Make dickies out of old silk shirts, tailor blouses from the Salvation Army and thrift shops, or even dye the jeans that have faded over time.

3. Save on school supplies by getting these in bulk from the Office Depot. Reduce the tab even more with Office Depot coupons.

4. Make your own household cleaners and laundry soap. To ensure you stick to your budget, get the paraphernalia you need using Office Depot coupons. Grate a bar of bar soap, melt it in heated water on a stove, and then toss in laundry soda and borax. Store these in old laundry jugs.

5. If you can't put off buying a computer or printer for the kids, get the best deals possible. Office Depot coupons should lower your bill considerably.

6. Stop your subscription to a favorite magazine. Instead, wait until this becomes available at the local library. In time, the library would discard their copy, and you could get your reading material for free.

7. Don't renovate unless you truly need to. Remodeling is cheap. To get more space for your growing brood, simply rearrange the furniture, or sell those huge cabinets and use your Office Depot coupons to get smaller, more portable ones.

8. Choose generic over name brands. With this tactic, you could easily shave off $100 on your grocery or medicine spending.

9. Make use of the coupons you get in the mail or could cut out of the papers. Coupons like Office Depot coupons and grocery coupons let you get more for the same amount of money, apples bargain-priced at 30 cents apiece, for example. You could also use the items you got with Office Depot coupons as presents for friends and family. Office Depot carries a wide range of items, including desk and wall accessories and executive gifts.

10. Plan meals, snacks, and activities around what's on sale. Stockpile on the food and materials that are being sold cheaply.

Yes, it's possible for your family to survive on a single income. All it takes is perseverance, creativity, and coupon-collecting stamina.