I’ve been using grocery coupons for about 20 years. I know this shopping method can be frustrating, especially during weeks when the best coupon deals don’t match up with your wish list.

But it’s not accurate to refer to coupons, as some frugal living critics do, as “only for junk food”.

If you don’t buy or have a need for a particular product, you don’t have to clip that coupon. After all, I’m not clipping the dog food coupons. We don’t have a dog.

I do, however, find something useful in my coupon stack every week.

I live in Monroe, Mich. There are three different Sunday papers available in my city. I have a home delivery subscription to The Monroe Evening News, the newspaper where I work. It is also possible to get same-day delivery in my area of The Blade from Toledo, Ohio; and The Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Mich. (I get hand-me-down coupons from someone else’s subscriptions on the out-of-town papers.)

More than 90 percent of my manufacturer coupons come from those three Sunday newspapers. Yes, a lot of the coupons are duplicates. Some of them are different. If I wasn’t getting hand-me-down coupons, I would probably get the Detroit newspaper delivered to the house in addition to the Monroe newspaper.

The remaining coupons I get are from women’s magazines or trade-offs from family members who live in other cities.

Now on any given week, there may not be any coupons at all, or the coupon selection may be limited.

But when you take the time to look through what goes into circulation during the month or two that most grocery coupons are valid, you will be quite surprised at the variety of products you can purchase for less than retail with the help of coupons. The list is NOT all junk food! While you may be annoyed at the plethora of granola bars and frozen dinner coupons if you prefer to do your own cooking, it really is very difficult to get coupons for soft drinks, ice cream and potato chips.

See for yourself: Here are some the name-brand products for which I actually have coupons in my coupon box (or my give-away pile) this week:

Baking or pantry supplies

• Splenda.
• Eagle Brand condensed milk.
• Heinz vinegar.
• McCormick spice or herb.
• Mazola cooking oil.
• Fleischmann’s yeast.

Beverages

• Lipton tea bags.
• Luzianne tea bags.
• Tropicana orange juice.
• V-8 High Fiber vegetable juice.

Bread

• Mission tortillas.
• Aunt Millie’s hamburger or hot dog buns.

Breakfast foods

• General Mills cereals
• Selection of Total cereals.

Cleaning and household supplies

• Electrasol dishwasher detergent.
• Dixie paper napkins.
• Ziploc freezer bags.
• Cottonelle toilet paper.
• Ivory liquid soap.
• Comet cleanser.
• Lysol bathroom cleaner.
• Simple Green cleaning product.
• Snuggle dryer sheets.
• Dry Cleaner’s Secret sheets.
• Duracell batteries.

Condiments

• A-1 steak sauce.
• Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
• Smucker’s Sugar Free ice cream toppings.
• French’s classic yellow mustard.

Baby care

• Pull-Ups training pants.
• Huggies Little Swimmers sun care products.
• Mott’s for Tots juice.

Over-the-counter medical supplies

• Maalox.
• Visine.
• Nature’s Bounty vitamin or supplements.
• Motrin.
• Sudafed.

Personal care products

• Cover Girl lip product.
• Satin Care shave gel.
• Suave deodorant.
• Q-tips.
• Band-Aid bandages.
• Schick disposable razors.
• Crest rinse.
• Sensodyne toothpaste.
• L’eggs pantyhose.
• No Nonsense pantyhose.

Cookies, candy, chips and snacks

• Kellogg’s All-Bran Crackers.
• Tostitos.
• Snyder’s of Hanover pretzel pieces.
• Jif snack nuts.
• M&Ms dark chocolate candy.
• Russell Stover boxed chocolate.
• Adkins Advantage Bar.
• Soyjoy Bar.
• Ensure.

Meat or main dish ingredient

• Bob Evans fresh roll sausage.
• Morningstar Farms veggie foods.
• Ragu pasta sauce.
• Hebrew National beef franks.

Dairy

• Country Fresh milk.
• Daisy cottage cheese.
• Sargento shredded cheese.
• Carnation Instant Breakfast.
• Yo-Plus yogurt.
• Half and Half whipping cream.

Convenience foods

• South Beach Living frozen pizza.
• El Monterey Taquitos.
• Knorr side dishes (Pasta Sides).
• Weight Watchers Smart Ones frozen entrees.
• Chef Boyardee canned pasta.

Fruit and vegetables

• Dole mandarin oranges (canned).
• Mott’s applesauce.
• Dole 7 lettuces or tender garden “salad in a bag”.
• Rubbermaid produce saver container.

Now, is it possible to buy these food and personal care products on their generic equivalents? Sure, it is. For example, most of my family’s over-the-counter medicine purchases are the generic brands.

But if you can get a favorite name-brand product for cheaper than the generic product by using a coupon, which would you rather buy? Do the math now …

And if you had never tried a particular product, would you put it in your basket if you could get it free after coupon, sale and / or rebate? Think real hard on that one.

Keep in mind: You don’t have to live in triple coupon value market or where the stores double up to $1 on special days to make coupon clipping worth your effort. Click back one post to see what Anna and I did at Meijer this week (our Meijer store doubles coupons up to 50 cents).