Coupon Savvy, Not Coupon Crazy (continued Part 2)

To continue from the first post on my part series on being Coupon Savvy, Not Coupon Crazy. Today I wanted to discuss coupon organizing in more depth with some great tips and recommendations to help you with getting all those coupons under control.grocery

I really struggled in the beginning with how to organize all my coupons, it took me awhile but after much research and reading other great suggestions from experienced couponers, I have finally been able to get my coupons organized.

Let me first say there are numerous ways to organizing your coupons. There's organizing based on expiration dates, based on aisles in the grocery stores, and so on. . .

At first I would buy my Sunday paper and then spend most of Sunday clipping all my coupons out of the paper, picking and choosing which coupons I thought I would or could use, and I have to say wasting a lot of time and hours and money that way. Not to say that this method may not work better for some, but I'd like to suggest a way that is less time consuming and will help get you the best deals, and you can easily find the coupons you need, when you need them.

Six Easy Tips To Coupon Organization:

1. Hold on to ALL of your coupons. Do NOT clip all of your coupons out at once and toss out the ones you think you will never use. You will be surprised at how often you may find you'll use coupons you never thought of using before. 
2. Match your like coupons together. For example if you buy at least 2 Sunday papers, take both of your SS inserts and match the pages up together, and staple all the like pages together. This will make it easy to find when you need a certain coupon and do not have to go searching through pages of coupons to find each and every coupon.
3. File based on insert & date of Sunday paper. All of your coupon sources will list the coupon with name of the insert (RP, SS, PG,ect..) and the date of the Sunday paper it was found in. I keep mine in file folders with the insert name and date, which makes it very easy for me to go and pull.
4. File IP coupons in a binder. I personally use the Coupon Clutch to file and organize my printable coupons. I file all the manufacture printable coupons based on tabbed dividers that were part of the Coupon Clutch organization. 
5. File Store/Competitors Coupons in separate files. You can also file these in the Coupon Clutch, as well. I have added extra plastic 3-hole folders/files, that I use, to file my store coupons and keep them organized this way. My Target store coupons are filed in their own section of my binder, and my Publix store coupons are filed in another file of their own. 
6. Use a small coupon binder for every day shopping. A small coupon organizer, that you can find in most stores in the office supply section, for organizing your coupons you will using for shopping that day. I have found this tremendously helpful, especially if I don't end up using all my coupons at the store because they may be out of the product, I can then later easily retrieve the coupon(s) that I did not use at the particular store. It also makes it easy to file multiple stores, and will keep your coupons in one spot and less likely to lose. 



Small Coupon Organizer

1. This is also a great way to store your Register Rewards (RR) & Extra Care Bucks (ECB).
2. Another great place to temporarily place blinkies, tearpads, and other random coupons you may find on your shopping excursions (always be on the look out!).

There are definite pros and cons to this particular system, but I have found it to be the most effective in terms of both time and money. Some serious couponers like to be able to carry all their coupons with them at all times. And I use to do this but have since pulled away from this.... which leads me into part three of Coupon Savvy, Not Coupon Crazy.