Coupons & couponing
If I am making a “big buy” with my coupons, I’ll tote my coupon binder with me to the store. However, if I’m going to make a quick trip or have relatively few coupons I plan to use on that trip, I pop the coupons out of the binder and put them in my handy $1.00 coupon organizer from Dollar General that fits nicely in my purse.
That said, I’ll show you and explain my coupon binder, which is the backbone of the system I use to keep my coupons organized, easy to find, and easy to maintain.
I’ve always used a 3-ring binder, but have most recently moved from a standard plastic binder to a cloth-covered zipper binder to keep my papers a bit more contained as I shop. 3 ring binders tend to sit up nicely in the shopping carts between the handle and the back of the toddler seat, so it makes it easy to shop with coupons right at hand.
I chose a binder that has a flap section inside the front cover where I can slip my sale fliers for easy reference. I also use the front of the first index divider to hold my “buy list”. My “buy list” is the spreadsheet that narrows down all possible coupon purchases to just those I am interested in buying during that shopping trip. A buy list from a week or so ago is still in this pocket as I’ve not made my buy list yet for this week (it’s a task I have to do later today!), so you can see that I’ve already marked up my regular prices and calculated my total purchases and savings/savings percentages.
Binder
I use special binder index dividers to divide my coupons into sections. I prefer dividers that cost a little more but stick out further than the pages themselves because when I’m shopping and couponing, time is of the essence and I don’t want to be fumbling through the binder. It annoys me, and watching me fumble through a binder of coupons is annoying to other customers.
I think how you label your dividers and organize your coupons depends a great deal on personal preference and level of detail you think you need to have. I tend to think/shop in more general terms and use less specific index tabs that many people. For example, I use the tab “Boxed/Bagged” for all dry perishable goods that are boxed or bagged.
This section holds coupons for a wide variety of food products, including cookies, rice mixes, dry soup, crackers, cereals, etc. Some ladies I’ve seen shopping have separate sections for cookies & crackers, cereal, mixes, etc. For me, it’s a bit overkill, but it’s completely a personal preference.
I want my binder to be neat and tidy, with easy-to-read on the fly tabs, so I took the time to use a label maker to make the labels for the index tabs. My index tabs look like this:
Tabs
The organization of the tabs themselves is another personal choice. Some people do their tabs in order of aisles in a particular store. Others use an alphabetical listing. Mine is a hybrid thing…I put my food coupons in the front of the binder (as they are most important to the survival of my family) and put those food dividers in alphabetical order, then put the non-food tabs in the back, again alphabetized except for the tab MISC which goes in the very back.
I use the pocket slips of the sections to hold unfiled coupons with the following rule: any coupon not filed when I get the next Sunday’s paper gets pitched. And I can’t stand to pitch out good coupons, so I make myself file!
I use baseball card clear plastic sheets to hold the actual coupons in the sections. All coupons that are identical go in one slot in the page. If there are ANY differences in the coupons, I use another slot in the page. This helps me keep all coupons of a like offer and expiration together.
Organization
Many girls file their coupons within the baseball card pages by expiration date or alphabetical by product. Honestly, I hate filing the coupons in the sleeves, and hate the thought of undoing, resorting and refiling to keep a perfect date or alphabetical order even more. Where they get stuck, which is the first available open slot in that section, is where they stay until they are used or expire and get tossed.
Expiration
I remove all expired coupons weekly.
Hint: I will pluck all soon-to-expire coupons that I really, really want to use out of the binder and put them in my purse organizer at the start of the week they will expire. If I don’t I find that sometimes I will overlook them if there’s not a particularly good sale event going on that week for the particular item.
I pull all expired coupons out of my binder each and every week when I start my coupon filing process. The first step I take with my Sunday coupons is to take out all expired coupons and throw them away, then I go in and clip and file the new ones. That way there are no expired coupons in my binder, and I am assured that my maintenance work on the coupon system is done regularly.
This system may or may not work for you, but it works for me. Now…I have to get with the program and make my buy list so I can eat!