Organizing Coupons

When you are clipping coupons it is as important to organize them as it is to clip them. Remember, clipping coupons and using them is almost like a part-time job. So disciplining yourself is like working online with your business, you need to have a schedule and stick to it.

What is the best way to organize your coupons? You have this pile of coupons that you just searched for and clipped. The pile needs to be broke down and separated out into different categories.

In order to make coupon usage work for you the first rule of thumb is: You Must Comment to this project.

Yes it does, if you organize them. Let's paint a picture of a typical day devoted to couponing.

-You get your Sunday paper (s)

-You clip the ones that you know you will use

-You search the online sites and gather the coupons you use, print them, cut them out and stack them up.

-You have this pile of coupons in front of you, now what?

The coupons needs to be sorted into stacks of products and organized into some kind of filing system. If you do not do this, all of the time and effort you have put into this project is going to be wasted. I will admit, it is so much easier to just throw your coupons into your purse which by the way is often referred to as the "Black Hole". Than when your grocery shopping you have to fumble around in this "Black Hole" and try to figure out what coupon you have and what coupons you do not have.

Now comes the fun part, you get up to the check out lane and the cashier is ringing up your groceries. You begin to search for coupons you know you have, but the other customers in line are in a hurry to check out and you begin to feel you are holding everyone up so you just forget about the coupon and pay for your groceries.

Now, do not think about all of the money you just "threw" away because you were unorganized..

I have tried a lot of different ways to organize my coupons (and have just started a new way, which I will share in a moment.)

Throughout the years I have tried several different systems. I have separated my coupons into piles and placed each pile in its own envelope, writing the category on each envelope; as an example: dairy, can goods, meats, breakfast, household items, asprine and other drug items, and so on. This worked okay for a while, but the envelope soon filled with out dated coupons and I missed a lot of sale items that I had coupons for and that mean I lost money!

I have tried using those little spiral folders that has several pages with slots on the front that you slip your coupons into. For me it did not work because there was not enough pages to separate my coupons into categories the way I wanted them. So I trashed that idea.

I have tried making piles of coupons and paper clipping them together with not much luck. I have been using a little coupon holder that fits nicely in my purse with tabs that I could write the category on, and although this method worked pretty good, somehow I still became unorganized with my coupons.

My newest system: A three ring notebook with clear sleeves that have three sections on each page. I believe that almost everyone has an old three ring notebook in their house somewhere. I personally purchased my clear sleeves on Amazon and just started organizing my coupons this afternoon.

Since most coupons have an expiration date I devoted my first page to expiring soon coupons. I am planning on writing a label for each section on the sleeves, devoting that slot to that particular item. I got 20 pages of sleeves which have three sections on each page; that gives me sixty different categories I can assign and if I want more, all I have to do is purchase another package of sleeves.

I will be adding some loose paper in the notebook to write out my grocery list and make sure I have a pen with me. I know carrying the notebook into the store will feel a little odd at first, but if you look at it, you are really being organized, if you find sale items you have coupons for they are right in front of you and really it does not take up that much more room than having your coupon wallet with you, a grocery pad and plus have a separate paper clip to hold together the coupons you are using.

I first heard about this system from a lady in Walmart, she even added dividers to her notebook. Since than Stick'em has blank tabs that would work just as good or you can even make your by using a blank label and folding it over a sleeve. I was lucky enough to find some dividers I had purchased in the past and decided to use them.

I believe this system of organizing your coupons can be done for less than $10 (that is if you do not have a three ring notebook) It cost me $6.00 to put my notebook together which is a small fraction of what I saved last week in using my coupons.