Back in the Golden Age, I remember nobody would be caught dead using a coupon except the occasional housewife or senior citizen or maybe the college kid who would open the envelope of them that was sent by Mom.

I still get those envelopes sent by Mom, and if I actually used all those coupons, I’d have a dog so obese that that she resembled Jabba the Hut and enough feminine products to build a fort, so I’m going to guess the target coupon consumer is someone purchasing a product where there is strong similarity between brands and not a lot of brand loyalty. Not that anyone I know would say this about dog food or tampons, but I digress. Lately, deal-hunters are printing coupons like the Fed prints cash, and laying in supplies of canned and boxed goods that should be sufficient to keep them in petrol for months when everything turns to Bartertown:

Under a futon in her Charleston, S.C., apartment, Stacy Smith has stashed boxes of soy bars, bags of potato chips, bottles of vitamin water, canned vegetables, soup, barbecue sauce and antibacterial wipes. Her bedroom closet is jammed with soda and shampoo, her bookcase with garlic salt and meat marinades. No, Ms. Smith isn’t stocking up for a hurricane. The 39-year-old’s apartment is stuffed with groceries because she’s one of a growing flock of “extreme couponers.”

These discount devotees have formed vast online communities that collectively unearth and swap digital, mobile-phone and paper coupons. The cleverest shoppers combine dozens of coupons and go from store to store buying items in quantity, getting stuff free of charge.

VitaminWater, bbq sauce and anti-bac wipes — party at Stacy’s house! LoLo, Esq., whom y’all know loves her dealz, actually schooled me in coupon usage recently, and it’s quite true: combine those coupons from in-store with the ones in the Sunday paper and, on really good days, buy one get one free deals, and you can get free chow. It’s usually prepackaged stuff that the guy who wrote In Defense Of Food would cringe if he saw you throwing it in your cart, but hey, who the heck does he think he is to stand between you and free Tuna Helper?

One woman in this article seems to think 100 packs of free toilet paper are attainable, which is cool. That’d go especially well if you can get some coupons for free Old El Paso refried beans. (Or, you could build a fort. For some reason I am all about building the forts tonight.) But where do you draw the line? Do you clear the shelf? Half of it? What if you end up with a ton of stuff nobody wants?

Carrie Petersen of Columbia, Md., says she tries not to abuse discounts. Recently, Ms. Petersen, 38, took 50-cent coupons for meat seasonings to a number of supermarkets that were doubling the coupons’ value. Because the seasonings were already on sale for $1 each, Ms. Petersen got them for nothing. Instead of scooping piles of packets into her shopping cart, she bought just five at a time at each of the stores she visited. “I never clear the shelf: I don’t think that’s right,” Ms. Peterson says. “I probably only got 30.”

Bringing home huge piles of stuff doesn’t always work out. Julie Felton, a 39-year-old respiratory therapist from San Marcos, Texas, says she was ecstatic when she combined 20 coupons from a retailer and a manufacturer to get $5 bags of dog food for nothing—a six-month supply. Ms. Felton’s dog didn’t like the food. Neither did her cat, nor the deer that wander into her yard. She wound up donating it to a local animal shelter.

So there’s the code of conduct, if you are so inclined to join the coupon brigade: taking home 30 marinades is acceptable restraint, and if you have a product that is rejected by your pets and various woodland mammals, there’s always charity.

Or you could just save it for Bartertown.